PITT MED - A team of researchers, including epidemiology's REBECCA THURSTON, SAMAR EL KHOUDARY, and KAREN MATTHEWS, recruited about 400 premenopausal women for a multi-institutional study in 1996. They were asking a lot: an extra doctor’s visit once a year, forever. Yet about 400 from Pittsburgh volunteered, and at last count, 90 percent were still in. Though most women now live at least a third of their lives after menopause, its long-term effec...
NEJM - Despite the uncertain evidence of clinical benefit, drugs receiving accelerated approval enter the market as FDA-approved products, and insurers must decide whether and how to pay for them. Those decisions are becoming increasingly complex in light of the rising prices of new drugs. Read about suggestions by HPM's WALID GELLAD and listen to his interview.
POST-GAZETTE - We have two words for you — sushi doughnut. That’s as fair a place to start as any in the discussion of Mount Everest Sushi, a tiny little takeout shop with a few dine-in tables in the shadow of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health building in Oakland. Rest assured that the sushi doughnut is not some sort of a weird bastardization of raw fish, glaze, jelly and jimmies… Rather, it's simply a clever and eye-p...
ACTION NEWS 4 - A random telephone survey of 9000 residents conducted by BCHS' EVALUATION INSTITUTE spotlights trends in important public health topics such as obesity, smoking, insurance access, chronic disease status, and the utilization of health care resources. “This is fantastic data to have at our fingertips,” said County Executive Rich Fitzgerald. “Having data that not only provides us with information on the health and health concerns o...
90.5 WESA - “So in effect, the people with preexisting conditions could find coverage so unaffordable that they don't have access to the market even though the guaranteed issue rule is still in place,” said JULIE DONAHUE, professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh. Donahue said that could lead to a phenomenon called job lock, where people stay in jobs simply for the health insurance. She said the ACA was designed, i...
NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE - In an editorial on “Rory’s Regulations” requiring hospitals follow a protocol to quickly identify and treat sepsis, Pitt Public Health’s TINA BATRA HERSHEY and JEREMY M. KAHN examine the potential of additional state sepsis mandates, noting this represented a major shift in the use of health policy to improve the quality of health care, rather than using market-based incentives and reimbursement penalties. “Sepsi...
POST-GAZZETTE - In an editorial, HPM's HEATHER TOMKO wrote: During a recent browse of my Twitter feed, a quotation from Mayor Bill Peduto jumped out at me. At the National Summit on Design and Urban Mobility earlier this month, he said, “If it’s not for all, it’s not for us,” referring to ride-sharing services like Lyft and Uber, as well as Uber's self-driving cars. But as I continued to browse, I saw a glaring omission: a group of the “all” who ...
Diane Howard will honored at the 2017 Alumni Awards Ceremony for her contributions to the school. She is associate professor and director of student development in the Department of Health Systems Management (HSM) at Rush University Medical Center, where she teaches courses in managed care, health care in America, and professionalism. She serves on the HSM career services, chairman’s council, curriculum, faculty appointments and promotions, recr...
Eric Hulsey is manager of behavioral health analytics in the Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) Office of Data Analysis, Research and Evaluation. In this role, he is responsible for working with key partners to evaluate behavioral health services administered by DHS and find practical applications for research, as well as for managing all research activities, implementation, and reporting efforts; designing and developing quanti...
Michael T. Walsh Jr. is founder and principal of 25 Strategies, a consulting firm focused on creating and deploying impact strategy for foundations, health systems, nonprofit organizations, governmental agencies, and social impact ventures that address public health challenges, strengthen health systems, and build resilient communities.
Walsh is also interim chief of strategy and programs for the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’...
Mary Ganguli is professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and professor of epidemiology at Pitt Public Health. Her research focuses on the epidemiology of late-life mental disorders, particularly neurocognitive disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. She is the principal investigator of several National Institute on Aging (NIA)-funded, population-based investigations in the area of dementia and Al...
Pitt Public Health's 2017 Distinguished Alumni Award for Teaching and Dissemination was presented to Tammy Haley (MMPH '13) at the annual Alumni Awards Dinner. Haley is director of nursing and radiological sciences, associate professor of nursing, and coordinator of the RN-BSN program in the Division of Biological and Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, where she has been a member of the nursing faculty since 2003. Ha...
Annette Fetchko currently serves as the regional manager for the Center for Inclusion Health (CIH), a division of the Department of Medicine at Allegheny Health Network (AHN), with a mission to provide outstanding health care to all people in the region served by AHN, especially socially marginalized and vulnerable populations. Fetchko oversees the operational and strategic development of the programs within CIH.
Prior to her role at CIH, Fet...
Laura B. Gieraltowski is serving as a lieutenant commander with the Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) for which she is a epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Emerging and Infectious Zoonotic Diseases, Division of the Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases’ Outbreak Response and Prevention Branch (ORPB). She regularly leads teams of public health professiona...
The following four individuals will be inducted into the Omicron chapter of the Delta Omega Honorary Society at the Graduate School of Public Health, recognizing merit and encouraging further excellence in, and devotion to, public health work:
Nancy W. Glynn (EPI '94), faculty and alumna; Leah M. Lamonte (IDM '06), alumna; Natalie A. Solomon-Brimage (BCHS '06), alumna; Christopher A. Taylor (EPI '10), alumnus.
The University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health has selected WENDY ELIZABETH BRAUND as the new director of its Center for Public Health Practice and associate dean for public health practice. She will join the school’s faculty as a professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Braund, who has a strong history in public health administration, most recently served as state health officer and public health division admi...
CBS NEWS - "We knew there was an increase in the number of people experiencing problems with alcohol within the first two years of surgery, but we didn't expect the number of affected patients to continue to grow throughout seven years of follow-up," said lead author WENDY KING, associate professor of epidemiology at Pitt Public Health. Her team discovered that 20.8 percent of participants developed symptoms of alcohol use disorder within five ye...
ASA NEWS - Biostatistics professors Jong-Hyeon Jeong and George C. Tseng are to be honored with the prestigious distinction of Fellows of the American Statistical Association (ASA) for their professional contributions, leadership and commitment to the field of statistical science. "The statistics community, as well as other scientific disciplines, needs to look no further than these remarkable individuals who have proven that collaboration, inno...
SCIENCE DAILY - Biostatistics assistant prof JONATHAN YABES crunched data for the first nationally representative analysis of hookah use by young adults over an extended follow-up period. The team found that a positive attitude toward and desire to take up hookah smoking are the most likely predictors of a young adult becoming a hookah tobacco smoker. The research is published in this month's issue of the journal "Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers &...
HOUSTON MATTERS - Siddhartha Mukherjee discusses what happens when a machine begins to read its own instruction manual? I’m talking about humanity’s rapidly increasing understanding of its genome – the code that makes us who were are. We’ve mapped it and identified genes that lead to certain disorders.