Improving the Health of People in Their Communities for 50 Years
In July 1966, the Duke University School of Medicine established a new department: the Department of Community Health Sciences. Its roots were multiple and complex, and began with a decision to discontinue another department — the Department of Preventive Medicine — which had functioned since the first days of the medical school.
The Department of Community Health Sciences (renamed Community and Family Medicine in 1979) has long been described as a “catch all,” a department that took in divisions and programs that didn’t belong anywhere else in the medical center.