Department of Public Health was established in the year 2013 as a constituent department under K. S. Hegde Medical Academy, Nitte (Deemed to be University). The Department strives to develop competent public health professionals, capable of tackling various public health challenges at both the national and global level. The Department has trained faculty from various disciplines of health sciences with diverse public health career experiences. The Department aims to further technically strengthen itself in terms of a demand-based public health approach such as emerging and re-emerging diseases of the current global public health situations.
The Department as part of the community level public health initiatives is involved in government-sponsored schemes such as Unnat Bharat Abhiyan in two adopted villages of Neere and Belma. Apart from this, a mobile app-based cohort study on mother and child health is in progress in Nitte village with the aim to study the health outcomes of pregnancies among the women and children upto the age of 18 years.
The Department has extensive research experience in tobacco control with its faculty working on projects sponsored by the National Health Mission, and other Non Governmental Organizations in the state of Karnataka. The faculty are also pursuing doctoral programmes in tobacco control.
Geographic Information Systems- enabled study on spatiotemporal pattern of underweight and diarrhoea among under-five children in Karkala Taluk is in progress with a promising outcome towards translational research. This study is also part of the doctoral research of the faculty.
The Department has conducted a state-wide evaluation of infrastructure of special newborn care units (SNCU) managed by the Government hospitals of Karnataka and funded by National Health Mission.