Welcome to the SPHSS

The School of Public Health and Social Sciences (SPHSS) is one of five schools within Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS). The School came into being in the year 2003 after merger of the former Institute of Public Health, the Institute of Developmental Studies and the Institute of Primary Health Care and Continuing Education. All the former institutes date back to July 1991 when they were established after the then faculty of medicine was upgraded into a Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences.

Currently the SPHSS has six departments: Behavioural Sciences; Community Health; Development Studies; Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Parasitology and Medical Entomology; and Environmental and Occupational Health. The vision of the Muhimbili School of Public Health and Social Sciences is to become a centre of excellence in the field of Public Health both at home in Tanzania, East Africa, and beyond. The mission of SPHSS is to improve the health of people in Tanzania through teaching, research, consultancy and public health services using public health principles. All these elements also aim at addressing the core functions of the University: training of human resources for health in both formal and continuing education as well as using professional development approaches; conducting research relevant to solving community health problems; and providing technical assistance in various public health disciplines to partners, collaborators, ministries and implementers of public health interventions. The School realizes that collaborative work with various stakeholders and partners is fundamental to achieving these noble objectives.

The School has a total of 48 members of staff 29 of them having acquired PhDs from various re-known Universities across the world thus bringing home a wealth of skills, experience and competences to share with stakeholders especially students. The School has a wealth of experience in conducting research and community service activities within Tanzania and beyond and collaborates with a number of partner Universities, Governments, and Research Institutions and not least the communities we serve.

The school members of academic staff teach across the University in cross cutting subjects, and the School is host to one undergraduate and seven postgraduate programmes with a total of 71 undergraduate and 145 postgraduate students.

The undergraduate program is namely Bachelor of Science in Environmental Health (BSc. EH) while postgraduate programs are Master of Public Health (MPH); Master of Arts in Health Policy and Management (MA HPM); Master of Science in Tropical Disease Control (MSc. TDC); Master of Science in Epidemiology and Laboratory Management (MSc. ELM); Master of Science in Applied Epidemiology (MSc. AE); Master of Medicine in Community Health (MMed. CH) and Master of Science in Parasitology and Entomology (MSc. PE) respectively. 

The School realizes that to achieve its vision in addressing the public health concerns of the population, the current number and the type of graduates output is inadequate in view of the ever-increasing demands by both the public and private sectors. At this pace, the School may not be able to create the required critical mass of these specialists within reasonable time.  The school therefore is looking forward to strengthen the existing programs as well as establishing the new ones. One new undergraduate programme namely BSc Health Psychology and four new Master Programmes namely MSc Monitoring and Evaluation, MSc Biostatistics, MA International Health and Gender Studies, are planned in the near future.