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 inaugural Social Impact Competition

Student Opportunities

Heart Attacks are on the Rise among Young and Middle-Aged Adults in the United States

Vicente Cuevas

Heart attacks are on the rise among young and middle-aged adults in the United States. This brief describes these increases, summarizes the role of behavioral, lifestyle, and societal factors, and provides recommendations for organizations, healthcare providers, and policymakers to combat the increase in early-onset heart disease.

April 2025 | Download Brief

Breast Cancer Diagnoses are Increasing among Racial and Ethnic Minority Women in the U.S.

Esther Oshaji

This data slice examines trends in breast cancer incidence rates among women by race and ethnicity in the U.S. from 2000 to 2021. The author finds that, while incidence rates remain highest among non-Hispanic White women, the largest increases in diagnoses have been among American Indian/Alaska Native Asian/Pacific Islander women.

March 2025 | Download Brief

Older Women in the U.S. Were Lonelier Than Men During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Qiyu Deng

This data slice uses data from the 2020 Health and Retirement Study to examine gender and age differences in loneliness among older adults (50+) in the U.S. during the first year of the pandemic.

March 2025 | Download Brief

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.

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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.

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