Portal InstitucionalUFPEL

UFPel’s Graduate Program in Epidemiology (PPGE for its spelling in Portuguese) was created in 1991 as an initiative of a group of professors from the university who had been working with epidemiological research for ten years. This group created the Center for Epidemiologic Research (CPE) and was responsible for one of the largest longitudinal epidemiological studies in the world: the Pelotas Birth Cohort. The first study performed was the 1982 cohort, which is based on the identification and monitoring of all births that took place in the city of Pelotas that year. The study included 5,914 newborns and was so well conducted that in the year following its inception it won funding from the World Health Organization (WHO). Many researchers joined this study and dozens of scientific articles were published in leading national and international journals.

This type of investigation was unprecedented in the country for it was very complex and involved many people in fieldwork, which made the costs of its implementation very high. However, the cohort’s successful outcomes attracted many researchers from the health field, creating the need for qualification. As a result, UFPel professors working in the CPE developed a graduate program built upon their main area of expertise: Epidemiology.

In 1991, the Master’s Degree in Epidemiology was created in association with the university’s Department of Social Medicine. In its first review by CAPES (Brazilian Ministry of Education’s official evaluation system) in 1995, the course received an A grade and was authorized to start its doctorate-level activities in 1998.

In 2003, after CAPES evaluation was redesigned, graduate programs started to receive grades from 1 to 7. UFPel’s Graduate Program in Epidemiology initially received a grade of 6 only to earn the highest score (a grade of 7) in the review of 2007, which has been kept ever since. Currently, the Program is comprised of academic Master's and Doctorate degrees as well as a professional degree.

The Center for Epidemiologic Research (CPE) is recognized for its position as a World Health Organization’s Collaborating Center for Maternal and Child Nutrition; a Ministry of Health’s National Reference Center for Food and Nutrition; and a Welcome Trust Latin American Center of Excellence.