London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

History

The school was founded in 1899 by Sir Patrick Manson as the London School of Tropical Medicine and located at the Albert Dock Seamen's Hospital in the London Docklands. Just prior to this teaching in tropical medicine had been commenced in 1899 at the Extramural school at Edinburgh and even earlier at London's Livingstone College founded in 1893 by Charles F. Harford-Battersby (1865–1925). Before giving lectures at St George's Hospital, London, in 1895, Livingstone College afforded Manson his first opportunity to teach courses in tropical medicine. Manson's early career was as a physician in the Far East where he deduced the correct etiology of filariasis, a parasitic vector based disease, transmitted through the bite of a mosquito. On his return to London, he was appointed Medical Advisor to the Colonial Office. He strongly believed that doctors should be trained in tropical medicine to treat British colonial administrators and others working throughout Britain's tropical empire. He also encouraged and mentored Ronald Ross during this period to uncover the correct etiology of malaria, which Ross subsequently discovered in 1897, winning the Nobel Prize for his efforts. The original school was established as part of the Seamen's Hospital Society.

In 1920 the school moved, with the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, to Endsleigh Gardens in central London, taking over a former hotel which had been used as a hospital for officers during the First World War. In 1921 the Athlone Committee recommended the creation of an institute of state medicine, which built on a proposal by the Rockefeller Foundation to develop a London-based institution that would lead the world in the promotion of public health and tropical medicine. This enlarged school, now named the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was granted its Royal Charter in 1924.

The school moved to its present location in Gower Street in 1929.

The school is London University's major resource for postgraduate teaching and research in public health and tropical medicine. On successful completion of their studies, students gain a University of London degree.

Building

A competition to design a new school building to be sited in Gower Street, was held involving five architects, all experienced in laboratory design and construction. This was won in 1925 by Morley Horder and Verner Rees who located the main entrance in Keppel Street. This building was opened in 1929 by HRH the Prince of Wales. The purchase of the site and the cost of a new building was made possible through a gift of $2m from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health

The Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health aims to be a methodological centre of excellence for research in national and global health issues, to expand the limits of epidemiological thinking & multi-disciplinary research to further understanding of health issues in their full complexity, to develop, refine and disseminate tools & methods for research design, data collection, analysis and evaluation, and to conduct rigorous research in national and global health.

Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases

The Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases (ITD) was formed in August 1997 and encompasses all of the laboratory-based research in the School as well as that on the clinical and epidemiological aspects of infectious and tropical diseases. It is currently headed by Simon Croft, who is Professor of Parasitology. The Faculty is organised into four large research departments. The range of disciplines represented in the faculty is very broad and inter-disciplinary research is a feature of much of its activity.

The spectrum of diseases studied is wide and there are major research groups working on topics which include:

There is close interaction between scientists in different research teams. The Faculty has overseas links which provide a basis for field studies and international collaborations in developed and developing countries. Funding for research in the Faculty comes from around 45 funding organisations and agencies.

Faculty of Public Health and Policy

The Faculty of Public Health and Policy aims to improve global health through research, teaching and the provision of advice in the areas of health policy, health systems and services, and individual, social and environmental influences on health. Interests and activities embrace the health needs of people living in countries at all levels of development. The School has the largest numbers of research active staff in the areas of epidemiology, public health and health services research in the UK. The Faculty of Public Health and Policy has over 220 members of staff, including epidemiologists, public health physicians, economists, policy analysts, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, psychologists, statisticians and mathematicians. The Faculty's research programmes, with an annual spend of over £7m, focus on public health problems of importance both globally and in the UK, and build on an extensive network of collaborations.

The research programmes exploit multidisciplinary and multi-method approaches, generate new knowledge for specific contexts and test transferability to different settings, and engage with policymakers and providers of health care to ensure research is relevant and translated into practice.

The Faculty hosts School Centres in the areas of History in Public Health, Research on Drugs and Health Behaviours, Spatial Analysis in Public Health, Global Change and Health, Health of Societies in Transition (ECOHOST), and Gender Violence and Health. In addition, staff participate in Centres based in other departments, notably the Malaria Centre and the Centre for the Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Disease.

Research centres

The School is currently home to the following research centres:

Teaching and research programmes

All three Faculties offer a wide range of MSc courses and Research Degrees leading to a University of London degree of DrPH, MPhil and PhD. Courses are delivered both face-to-face in London and via distance learning in collaboration with the University of London International Programmes. The School also offers access to free online courses.

Awards

The LSHTM won the 2009 Gates Award for Global Health established by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and received $1 million in prize money. The award recognises organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to improving global health.

More recently, a team of researchers led by Richard Hayes at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, have been awarded $37 million to test an innovative combination of strategies to prevent HIV in African countries.

Donald Reid Medal

The Donald Reid Medal is awarded triennially by the LSHTM in recognition of distinguished contributions to epidemiology.

Rankings

In 2015 and 2016, US News Best Global Universities Rankings ranked the LSHTM as 3rd in the world for social sciences and public health, ranking behind only Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities. The School also ranked 29th in the world for clinical medicine, 20th for immunology and 39th for microbiology, contributing to an overall ranking of 114th in the world, 38th in Europe and 10th in the UK.

In the 2015 CWTS Leiden Ranking, the LSHTM has been ranked top university in Europe for research impact in all fields, ahead of Oxford and Cambridge. The School is also ranked 6th overall in the world for impact based on the top 1% of published papers in all fields, after MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Stanford and Berkeley, 3rd in the world for biomedical and health sciences, after only MIT and Caltech, and 5th in the world overall for collaborative research.

In 2008, the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) confirmed the School as a world leading centre for research. The School has been ranked one of the top three research institutions in the UK in the Times Higher Education Table of Excellence, which is based on the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise.