University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dept. of Biostatistics.

The Department of Biostatistics is an academic department of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded in 1949 to provide statistical training, consultation, and research directed to the needs of medicine and public health. In 1953, the department established programs of instruction leading to the M.S.P.H. and Ph.D. degrees in biostatistics. The graduate curriculum was subsequently enlarged to include concentrations in genetics (1965, Ph.D. level), demography and population studies (1965, M.S.P.H. and PhD. levels), health services (1970, Ph.D. level), environmental biostatistics (1970, Ph.D. level), and biostatistical methods in mental health (1967, Ph.D. level). Specializations in cardiovascular diseases and data management were added later.

Professional training at the undergraduate level began in the fall of 1976 with the institution of the B.S.P.H. degree in biostatistics. Meanwhile, the graduate curriculum was restructured, allowing students either to choose the M.P.H. and Dr.P.H. programs, which focused on biostatistical applications in public health, or to opt for a more theoretical, research-oriented course of study leading to the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. The M.S.P.H. program, which covered both theory and practice, was discontinued in the early 1980s.

Since the department's inception, its members have undertaken extensive research in the various fields listed above and have served frequently as consultants to researchers in other disciplines. The department also has a long record of providing statistical and data management services to cooperative studies, dating back to the cancer chemotherapy trials of the late 1950s and before. Beginning in 1971, it served as central patient registry and statistical analysis center for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Lipid Research Clinics Program, an international cooperative study of the relationship between lipids and cardiovascular disease. In 1983, it was designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Noncommunicable Disease Prevention and Control.