A Diamond in More Ways Than One

Dear Editor,

In 1964, the University of Malaya (UM) established the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine (SPM) within the Faculty of Medicine. The country of Malaysia had been formed the previous year and the new department began to play a major role in supporting public health needs throughout the whole country. Initially, the department supported the university’s MBBS program before expanding to award master’s degrees. The department was the first in Malaysia to offer the Master of Public Health (MPH) degree with the first graduates receiving their scrolls in 1974. In 2024, we celebrate 50 years of graduates in the Master of Public Health program and the major contributions they have made to improving health throughout the country.

In largely rural Malaysia then, it came as no surprise that the MPH program initially aimed to produce competent public health specialists to serve rural areas. It was only in 1989 that the curriculum was changed to produce a multipurpose public health doctor who was equipped with managerial skills and who was thus able to work in the public health as well as hospital settings. Around the turn of the century, the program was changed to a double master’s—a one-year general MPH and a three-year specialty MPH.

The life of the double MPH program was brief. Between 2006 and 2008 and with a view to the future, several far-reaching decisions were made. The one-year general MPH was retained but converted from a term to a semester system. The three-year specialty MPH was phased out and a new semester-based DrPH (Doctor of Public Health) program took its place. The DrPH program was approved by the Ministry of Higher Education in 2008, making the SPM Department the first department in the medical faculty to offer a doctorate level medical specialty program. In 2022, a new one-year MEpid (Master of Epidemiology) program was started, taking the number of degrees on current offer to five—MPH, MMedSc, MEpid, DrPH, PhD.

The number of international postgraduates grew over the years and by 2023, the department had graduated nearly 2000 students including more than 400 from 34 countries. The one-year MPH remains the most popular degree with more than 1200 graduating since its inception. Over the years, the SPM Department continues to set benchmarks, annually graduating a fifth of all doctoral graduates in the medical faculty. Its DrPH program has produced more than 100 public health specialists for the country and is now also the de facto benchmark for other DrPH programs in the country and the region.

The SPM Department was the first department in the faculty to set up two research centers, which has helped it to be consistently ranked among the top three departments in the faculty in publications per capita. Leading the push was the CEBP (Centre for Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Practice). The CEBP started off in 2008 as the Julius Centre UM, ¹ growing out of an EU-funded Asia-Link collaboration between UM, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Oxford and Rumah Sakit Cipto Mangunkusumo, Jakarta. Among its numerous research projects, a few are worth mentioning—the STeMM (Spatio-Temporal Modelling and Meta-Analysis) project, the CLUSTer (Clustering of Lifestyle risk factors and Understanding its association with Stress on health and wellbeing among school Teachers in Malaysia) Cohort, ² and the PEACE (Prevent Elder Abuse negleCt and initiativE) project. ³

CePH (Centre for Population Health) is the department’s second research center, having been formed in 2009 out of a strong collaboration between the department and Queen’s University Belfast. ¹ It also has a strong research record with projects such as the Kavli Trust-funded “Promoting Mental Health among At-Risk Adolescents in Malaysia,” The Malaysian Breast Cancer Survivorship Cohort (MyBCC), ⁴ and the Malaysian Health and Adolescents Longitudinal Research Team Study (the MyHeARTs Study). ⁵

The department research drive resulted in hundreds of PubMed-indexed journal publications, dozens of training workshops, several community-based interventions, the first Cochrane Network in Malaysia, long-term collaborations with state health departments, and a consultancy project to draft a Parliamentary Act on the elderly. In 2023, CEBP and CePH were ranked among the Top 10 performing Science and Technology research centers in UM and eight department academics were listed among the Top 2% researchers in the world by Stanford University in 2024.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the department set up two teams to help advise the Malaysian government—the CEASe (COVID-19 Epidemiological Analysis and Strategies) team and the ICVAC (Independent COVID-19 Vaccination Advisory Committee). ⁶ It also worked with the University of Malaya Medical Centre engineering department to help with outbreak control operations in the hospital. Department academics were vocal with their viewpoints during the pandemic, helping to shape public health policies and increase public awareness. ⁷

Over the years, the SPM Department grew with the times. In 1999, it set up its own website, ⁸ which is now linked to its Facebook page, X feed, and YouTube channel. The department initiated the UM Wellness Programme in 2008, which screened around 1500 university staff. Collaborations with the TDR-WHO Western Pacific Region and Malaysian Global Health Consortium resulted in the setting up of a Regional Training Centre in 2023.

The department has a proud history of organizing international conferences—34th, 40^th, and 46th APACPH (Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health) Conferences and 1st APCEEBM (Asia-Pacific Clinical Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Medicine) Conference. ⁹ It currently hosts the APACPH and APACPH-KL secretariats, two of its academics are APACPH Vice-Presidents and APACPH-KL has always been led by SPM academics.

Despite its small size (20 academics + 20 support staff), several department academics have held top university management positions, including as Faculty Dean, Deputy Dean, Wellness Cluster Dean, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and Acting Vice-Chancellor. Outside the university, SPM alumni and staff have served and continue to serve with distinction globally, including as Health Minister, Director-Generals, Deputy Director-Generals, State Health Directors, academics and researchers in other organizations, as well as office-bearers of statutory bodies and non-governmental organizations.

In 2024, the SPM Department celebrated the golden jubilee of its public health program and its own diamond jubilee. May this diamond of a department remain lustrous in the years to come, enriching lives, growing minds, and shaping the future of public health.