[2] The Nuffield Department of Population Health was formed from the merger of eleven research units in the Medical Sciences Division in 2013, the majority of which were in the Department of Public Health which ceased to exist.

The department is named for Viscount Nuffield, a major benefactor in establishing medical sciences at the University in the 1930s.

[3] Research has focused on a broad range of public health science including the benefits of reducing meat intake, the efficacy of statins, and women's health through the Million Women Study.

[4][5][6][7] NDPH researchers, Michael Parker and Sara Wordsworth, contributed to Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies' 2016 annual report on genomics in health care systems.

based in two buildings on the Old Road Campus in Headington, Oxford: The Big Data Institute opened in 2017 as a collaboration between NDPH and the Nuffield Department of Medicine.