With respect to the main activities of our department faculty, staff, and trainees, we concern ourselves with work in three primary domains:

(a) research and scholarship,
(b) education  and research training, and
(c) outreach activities.

Within the domain of research and scholarship, our department strives to produce definitive evidence that ultimately will yield improvements in the health of the public, not only in Michigan, but also in the U.S. generally and globally. Our faculty also strives to improve biostatistical and epidemiological methods required to produce increasingly definitive evidence about matters of public health significance.

In the domain of education and instruction, we strive to educate our masters and doctoral research trainees to be leaders and experts in epidemiology and biostatistics. Embedded within the primary care and patient-oriented College of Human Medicine, we also aim to educate our medical students in the concepts, principles, and methods of evidence-based medicine.

In the domain of outreach activities, the work of our department has an international, national, and statewide impact on public health practice. Our international impact is mediated via collaborations with the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, and the Organization of American States. Our national and state-level impact is mediated not only through governmental organizations (e.g. the Michigan Department of Community Health), but also through non-governmental organizations whose goals are disease-specific (e.g., United Cerebral Palsy of Michigan).