The School of Public Health was initially set up in 1931. In 2000, Beijing Medical College remerged with Peking University and has since been known as Peking University Health Science Center (PUHSC), of which the School of Public Health constitutes an important part. Over the past eight decades, the school has grown from an office of fewer than ten staff members to a leading public health school in China that boasts 167 faculty members (including 42 professors, 42 associate professors and 30 doctoral supervisors), 960 students (including 103 doctoral candidates, 254 Master's degree candidates, 201 MPH candidates and 402 undergraduates) and a full range of disciplines. Its alumni are found all over the world playing major roles in preventive medicine, public health, health management and medical education.
The school consists of ten departments (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Department of Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences, Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, Department of Maternal and Child Health, Department of Toxicology, Department of Health Policy and Management, Department of Social Medicine and Health Education, Department of Laboratorial science and Technology in Preventive Medicine, Department of Global Health, Department of Biostatistics), one central laboratory, two research institutes (Institute of Child and Adolescent Health and Institute of Reproductive Health, PKU), five joint research centers (Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, Nutritional and Functional Food Assessment Center, Health Emergency Management Center of PKU,.In 2003, the school launched the MPH program. In 2009, as part of the MOE pilot project for Master’s program reform, the school expanded the MPH program to a full-time program.