Evidence. Outreach. Action.

Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health

Today’s population health challenges are complex. Addressing these challenges and building environments that value and promote health for everyone requires expertise from multiple scientific disciplines and public and private partners.

Guided by the principles of scientific rigor, equity, justice, community engagement, and multidisciplinary and multi-institution collaboration, the Lerner Center’s mission is to improve population and community health through research, education, outreach and health promotion programming focused on the social, spatial and structural determinants of physical, mental and behavioral health and health disparities.

With faculty affiliates from public health, sociology, psychology, economics, medicine and public administration, the Lerner Center’s approach to research is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.

Established in 2011 with an endowment from Sid and Helaine Lerner, the center fulfills its mission through the interrelated pillars of research, education, advocacy and action.

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Student Opportunities

Political Polarization Harms Public Health

Shana Kushner Gadarian, Jay J. Van Bavel, Eric Knowles, and Kai Ruggeri

This brief summarizes the impacts of political polarization on public health in the U.S., highlighting the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study on the health risks of polarization. The authors show that, in the United States, one of the strongest predictors of COVID-19 prevention behaviors, such as social distancing and vaccination, was political partisanship.

November 2024 | Download Brief

To Reduce Mental Illness Stigma among Emergency Medical Service Clinicians, Agencies Must Value Workers’ Psychological Safety and Health

Bryce Hruska, Maria L. Pacella-LaBarbara, and Marley S. Barduhn

This data slice shows that EMS personnel at agencies with high-risk PSC levels report 38% more mental illness stigma in the workplace compared to workers at agencies with low-risk PSC levels.

November 2024 | Download Brief

It is Time to Stop Using the Washington Group Questions to Measure Disability in U.S. Federal Surveys

Scott D. Landes, Bonnielin K. Swenor, and Jean P. Hall

This brief summarizes findings from a recent study that shows that, by using the Washington Group Short Set on Functioning (WGSS) questions in the National Health Interview Survey, our federal government is failing to accurately identify the severity of functional limitations specifically related to vision and hearing.

October 2024 | Download Brief

Don't miss Lerner Center's Population Health Brief Series that presents population health research findings to inform the public and policymakers.

Research Projects

Research by Lerner affiliates is regularly funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation and many other federal agencies and foundations. The Lerner Center also funds population health research at Syracuse University through its Faculty Fellows Program.

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Student Opportunities

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student at Syracuse University interested in population and community health? Do you seek a career with meaning and purpose?

The Lerner Center provides distinctive experience that combines traditional and applied training in population health and community health research and engagement to address pressing local, regional and national health problems and reduce health inequities—from academic certificates, to internships, to service learning opportunities and more.

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