The Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Population Health is a field of science that uses an interdisciplinary approach, which aims to understand, maintain, and improve the health of human populations and individuals through education, research, and service delivery from a population-based perspective. The core science of this department focuses on three disciplines, namely: Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Population Health.

The Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Population Health wants to promote health for all Indonesian people, who are in communities, districts, provinces, and nationally. This aims to achieve a level of health status comparable to developed countries through strengthening the productivity of education, research, and community service. This department collaborates with all ministries, non-governmental organizations, private institutions and communities to expand public services for all of Indonesia from Sabang to Merauke. The collaboration is carried out using the principles of social justice, evidence-based action, working with all health stakeholders. Public health programs and research included in this Department include (1). developing technical assistance for communities in controlling communicable and non-communicable diseases, reproductive health, public health nutrition, and public health informatics systems to monitor health status, (2). produce multidisciplinary research, involving students and partners outside the university, that concerns about the health problems of vulnerable groups, (3). collaborate in conducting public health research with various international institutions, and (4) disseminate research results in seminars and scientific publications at national and international levels.

The fields of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Population Health began to be considered within the scope of the Faculty of Medicine since the 1980s when Public Health Science was growing. During that period, staff development was the main focus so that more and more staff studied Public Health Science and its supporting sciences. In the 1990s, along with the increasing number of staff who received doctoral education that deepened the diverse science of Public Health, it created a great opportunity for the development of supporting sciences including Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Population Health. In that era, a continuing education program was established for Field Epidemiology and followed by the fields of Health Nutrition and Maternal and Child Health – Reproductive Health. With this rapid development, it was decided to establish the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Population Health.