UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH & PRIMARY CARE WORTS CAUSEWAY

The Department of Public Health and Primary Care (DPHPC) is one of Europe’s leading academic departments of population health sciences, top-ranked in Epidemiology and Public Health in the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2001-2008. It has been headed by Professor John Danesh since 2001 and comprises over 300 staff and graduate students. Groups in the Department are underpinned by major programme grants, exemplifed by those from the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), the Wellcome Trust, the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Cancer Research UK, the UK National Institute of Health Research, the European Union, the US National Institutes of Health, industrial partnerships, and several other sources.

Strangeways Research Laboratory was ‘born’ in 1905 as a small research hospital founded by Thomas Strangeways in Hartington Grove, Cambridge. The hospital moved to its current location in Worts Causeway in 1912 and was renamed the Strangeways Research Laboratory in 1928. The Laboratory has had a distinguished history as a centre for research into rheumatoid arthritis and other connective tissue disorders. Since 1997, however, the building has been a centre for genetic epidemiology. The Strangeways Trust was set up as an independent charity. The sole trustee is now the University of Cambridge with the building housing the Department of Public Health and Primary Care. The Department now manages the site on behalf of the Clinical School. The Laboratory also houses other research groups who work closely with the department.