NEW YORK TIMES - "With my unvaccinated children, we will not be socializing maskless indoors with other families with kids. My kids go to school and day care, and I am not willing to risk introducing Covid in those settings due to our family's socialization activities," said BCHS's Stina Mair.
Teaming grants through the University's Momentum Funds are utilized for early-stage planning of large multidisciplinary projects. BCHS' Patricia Documet (BCHS '95, '02) along with a group of Pitt researchers for a project entitled "Developing a Latinx Youth Research Advisory Board to Address and Dismante Structural Inequities in Emerging Latinx communities."
EPI's Nancy Glynn (EPI '94) is the PittCoVax volunteer coordinator and has volunteered herself with students and staff from Pitt Public Health. "I was thrilled to work side-by-side with an awesome, energetic group of faculty, staff, and students," said Glynn. She also talked about building community and the importance of the vaccine.
"Congratulations as you step down from your successful tenure as chair of BCHS, and on your 2021 Fulbright!" said Phil Hallen, president emeritus of the Falk Foundation. "As the third holder of the Hallen Chair in Community Health and Social Justice, you have honored the chair's intent in your work with students and faculty in the community."
Congrats to Chinwoke Isiguzo (BCHS '22) on her award from the BCHS Karen S. Peterson Memorial Research Award for Women's Health for training in longitudinal data analysis. The award will support her dissertation research on stress as a mediator of discrimination shortening breastfeeding among Black women.
Dean Lichtveld announced upcoming leadership changes: Steve Albert to step down as BCHS chair with Velpandi Ayyavoo to serve as interim chair; Eleanor Feingold to become vice dean, Jessie Burke to interim as Feingold receives American Council on Education Fellowship. Dan Weeks will be interim chair of HUGEN.
In conjunction with Dean's Day, Praveen Kumar (HPM '21) and Alexander Sundermann (EPI '22) received the Center for Public Health Practice Award for Translation and Application of Research to Public Health Policy and Practice. In addition, Darien Beall (EPI '21) and Stephanie Christian (BCHS '23) were awarded with the Catherine Cartier Ulrich Memorial Award for Service to the Underserved.
Chinwoke Isiguzo (BCHS '23) received the prize for the master's category and Sarah Sanders (BCHS '22) received the doctoral prize.
eBRAIN - Congratulations to Jason Flatt (BCHS '13) for winning an NIH Sexual Gender and Minority Research Investigator Award for work Identifying Risk and Protective Factors for Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias Among Sexual and Gender Minority Older Adults. Flatt is an assistant professor in the Social and Behavioral Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Public Health.
WESA - Lead author Beth Hoffman (BCHS '19, '22) lays out five guidelines for future pro-vaccine events, for example: be inclusive, make sure participants have suggested tweets in hand and are trained in how to respond to messages, and share personal stories and science-backed information. Hoffman noted that engaging with vaccine hesitant people "to inoculate them against misinformation" is often better than engaging with the relatively small per...
In collaboration with the Center for Global Health, Pitt held its first-ever Global Health Case Competition last fall. Pitt supported the winning team from that competition to enter Emory University's Morningside International Global Health Case Competition. Emily Crisan (BCHS '24) joined five undergraduate students and faculty mentor HPM's Elizabeth Van Nostrand and won third place out of 53 teams from across the U.S. for their plan and strateg...
NIMHD - The Science of Health Disparities Research is an in-depth volume for comprehensive information on conducting clinical and translational health disparities studies and features EPI's Tiffany Gary-Webb and BCHS' Sara Baumann (BCHS '19) authored the chapter "Racial/Ethnic, Socioeconomic, and Other Social Determinants."
WASHINGTON POST - One of the biggest challenges for state and local officials has been getting vaccines to homebound older adults, said BCHS Chair Steven Albert. "This is an invisible population. They're not like long-term care residents in nursing homes. They are very elderly and frail and they live at home and are an afterthought, in some cases."
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pitt Public Health and the Allegheny County Health Department had to think fast and act quickly to implement its long-standing public health internship safely. Robin Leaf, director of strategic academic initiatives and accreditation, Jamie Sokol (BCHS '07), and Leah Lamonte (IDM '06), both with the health department, recently presented their work at Teaching Prevention 2021.
AARP - "It's catch-as-catch-can," says BCHS Chair Steven Albert about efforts to get vaccinations to the estimated 2 million older adults in the U.S. who are unable to leave their homes for health reasons. "It really is not as clear or rational as it should be."