Delta Omega
Public health honorary society
Delta Omega Society (ΔΩ) is an international honor society for studies in public health. It was founded in 1924 at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The society has chartered 133 chapters.
History
Delta Omega was founded in 1924 by two graduate students at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. The founders were Edgar Erskine Hume and Claude W. Mitchell.
The idea for Delta Omega came while sharing the daily commute between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Both men sought to elevate the relatively young profession of public health to a level similar to other professions, and as such, it should have a fraternity of its own. Hume was the first to insist that the fraternity be honorary, and while Mitchell had originally suggested a social basis, he soon agreed with his friend that the groups should be formed as an honor society. They consulted with members of other fraternities and health experts in other fields.
A group of seventeen students, one faculty member, and one alumnus were chosen to become the charter members of the Johns Hopkins chapter. The charter members were Charles A. Bailey, Milford E. Barnes, Yves M. Biraud, James B. Black, John W. Brown, James Angus Doull, Thurber Fales, Martin Frobisher Jr., Raymond D. Fear, John F. Kendrick, Shelton S. King, Edward A. Lane, Hilario Lara, Hynek J. Pelc, Persis Putnam, George H. Ramsey, and William Henry Welch.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5254700. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Delta Omega” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.