Department of Epidemiology was established in 1999. The department started the master’s degree program in 1990 and PhD program in 2003. These programs are also the key parts of primary discipline doctoral programs and post-doctoral stations of public health and preventive medicine in NJMU. In 2006, Epidemiology and Biostatistics was granted as one of the key disciplines of Jiangsu Province for “11th 5-year plan” and became a core component of cancer research center in NJMU.

The department has 12 professors (all of them are PhD supervisors), six associate professors, three senior experimentalist, three experimentalist and one faculty postdoctoral fellow. Among these staff members, there is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, two chair professor of “Chang-Jiang Scholar Programme”, three winners of “National Distinguished Youth Foundation”, one winner of “National Outstanding Youth Foundation”, one winner of “National Outstanding Scientific and Technological Workers”, one winner of the “New Century Hundred, Thousand and Ten-Thousand Talent Project” at the state level, three winner of “National Young Talents Support Program”, and one winner of the “Program for New Century Excellent Talents” of the Ministry of Education.

The ongoing research grants in the department include National key research and development program, National Distinguished Youth Foundation, National Outstanding Youth Science Foundations, National Natural Science Foundation of Global Outstanding Young Scientist Award, and more than seventy projects from other foundations. The total ongoing research fund is more than 50 million RMB.

The department has received several science and technology awards, including the second class award of State National Natural Science Prize, the first-class award of Nature Science Prize from the Ministry of Education, the second class award of State Scientific and Technological Progress Award, the first class award of Science and Technology Award of China Anti-Cancer Association, the first class award of Huaxia Medical Science and Technology, award for Young Cancer Scientist of China, the first class award of Science & Technology Progress Prize from Jiangsu Province, the first-class award of Science & Technology Progress Prize from the National Population and Family Planning Commission, and some other awards.

During the past five years, more than 200 papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals and more than 100 were published in journals with Science Citation Index (SCI), which includes Lancet, Lancet Oncology, Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Cell Research, Gut and other high quality journals.. There is one winner of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertations, five winner of excellent doctoral dissertation of Jiangsu Province.

The department offers diverse programs including undergraduate programs and postgraduate programs. The courses include Epidemiology, Clinical Epidemiology, Molecular epidemiology, Data Management & Analysis and Evidence-Based Medicine, etc. Epidemiology was honored as a national bilingual model course and national excellent course. Two textbooks, Epidemiology (bilingual) and Data Management & Analysiwere listed as the national textbooks for the 11th five-year plan.