Evidence. Outreach. Action.
Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health
Today’s population health challenges are complex. Addressing these challenges and building environments that value and promote health for everyone requires expertise from multiple scientific disciplines and public and private partners.
Guided by the principles of scientific rigor, equity, justice, community engagement, and multidisciplinary and multi-institution collaboration, the Lerner Center’s mission is to improve population and community health through research, education, outreach and health promotion programming focused on the social, spatial and structural determinants of physical, mental and behavioral health and health disparities.
With faculty affiliates from public health, sociology, psychology, economics, medicine and public administration, the Lerner Center’s approach to research is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.
Established in 2011 with an endowment from Sid and Helaine Lerner, the center fulfills its mission through the interrelated pillars of research, education, advocacy and action.
Register and learn more about the Lerner Center’s Social Impact Competition
Most Violence Against Emergency Medical Service Workers Goes Unreported
Lauren Bailey and Bryce Hruska
This brief describes the absence of a national reporting system for EMS and the workplace culture that discourages workers from speaking up. The authors describe how, unlike law enforcement, EMS workers lack federal legal protections and a standardized way to report violent incidents, leaving agencies and policymakers without the data needed to protect them.
October 2026
State Policies and County Contexts Collectively Shape Working‑Age Mortality
Iliya Gutin, Jennifer Karas Montez, Shannon M. Monnat, Emily E. Wiemers, and Douglas A. Wolf
This brief describes how state policy contexts and local economic conditions jointly shape working-age mortality across roughly 3,000 U.S. counties from 1990 to 2019. The authors find that death rates were lowest in economically secure counties located in states with more liberal policy contexts (i.e., states that take a more active role in shaping the economy and supporting residents' material and physical wellbeing).
October 2026
When Every Second Counts: Racial and Ethnic Gaps in Bystander CPR for Opioid-Related Cardiac Arrests
Dessa K. Bergen-Cico, Alexandra Punch, and Mary E. Helander
This brief describes racial and ethnic gaps in bystander CPR for opioid-related cardiac arrests. The authors find that Black patients were 30 percent less likely, and Hispanic patients 19 percent less likely, than White patients to receive bystander CPR. Rates rose across all groups when 911 dispatchers walked callers through CPR instructions, though that benefit was strongest for White patients.
October 2026
Don't miss Lerner Center's Population Health Brief Series that presents population health research findings to inform the public and policymakers.
Research Projects
Research by Lerner affiliates is regularly funded by the National Institutes of Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation and many other federal agencies and foundations. The Lerner Center also funds population health research at Syracuse University through its Faculty Fellows Program.
Student Opportunities
Are you an undergraduate or graduate student at Syracuse University interested in population and community health? Do you seek a career with meaning and purpose?
The Lerner Center provides distinctive experience that combines traditional and applied training in population health and community health research and engagement to address pressing local, regional and national health problems and reduce health inequities—from academic certificates, to internships, to service learning opportunities and more.
Healthy Monday
Learn tips and tricks to jump start your Monday, maintain or promote healthy behaviors and help to end preventable chronic diseases.
Lerner Center In Action
Research
Oct 29, 2026
