STAT / KAISER HEALTH NEWS - He was surgeon general under President Franklin Roosevelt. He’s been lauded for turning sexually transmitted diseases from a moral failing into a medical concern. During the height of segregation, he acknowledged the need to stem health disparities between black and white America.
Thomas Parran Jr. has also been called an architect of the syphilis experiments on black men and women in Tuskegee, Ala. While surgeon g...
PITT WIRE - In Pitt's graduate student address, EPI doctoral graduate LARA SIMINERIO LEMON told the audience: "You only have one life. So do what you choose with it but remember: it's the only chance you'll get ... Please do not lose the momentum that Pitt has provided to each one of us ... get out there and do what you're trained to do." (View photo gallery)
NEW YORK TIMES - Researchers created a device that can test a drop of blood to tell, in about half an hour, who's immune to certain infections and who's not. The goal is to find groups of people at risk of outbreaks, especially in impoverished and remote areas, in time to save lives. "We need to develop cheaper and more efficient ways to detect outbreaks earlier," said IDM's ERNESTO MARQUES. “This may be one step in that direction.”
PITT WIRE - Led by IDM's TONY SILVESTRE, the Pitt Public Health project serves as the facilitator of the HIV prevention and care community planning process in Pennsylvania. With initiatives like Acceptance Journeys and Project SILK, the work has received recognition from multiple federal health bodies in recent years, helping Pennsylvania set the national standard for integrated HIV planning.
REUTERS - "Caffeine in utero may change how the brain develops," said EPI's LISA BODNAR. "This is important because the brain has a strong influence over appetite." Caffeine passes rapidly through the placenta and has been linked to an increased risk of miscarriage and restricted fetal development, previous research has found.
HOME HEALTH CARE NEWS - Because of the nature of hospice being separate, Medicare Advantage plans are not as familiar with the benefit and its overall costs. “There is a fair amount of uniformity in the concerns around a carve-in…the fact this has been regulated to be off their radar, they don’t have data on [hospice],” says HPM's JULIA DRIESSEN. “[There’s] no incentive for them to understand the hospice landscape.”
It's that time again. Submit your suggestions for next year's One Book, One Community title. We will be celebrating 10 years of this initiative that has encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends through reading a shared book relative to public health.
BIOPHARMA DIVE - Since 2007, invoice spending has grown 60%, yet net spending rose 36%. Less clear, however, is how those dynamics weigh on patients' wallets. "This does not help us figure out what's affecting out-of-pocket costs," WALID GELLAD, HPM professor.
TRIB LIVE - Penn Hills School District will host a safety discussion for eighth grade and high school students and families. There will be a panel of student athletes and coaches, representatives from the municipal police department, United Way, Pittsburgh Action Against Rape and BCHS's LIZ MILLER. It's a great opportunity to see what resources are available at the high school, everything from social to physical safety.
The Milken Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank determined to increase global prosperity by advancing collaborative solutions that widen access to capital, create jobs, and improve health. In 2018, they launched the Future Health Leaders Pilot Program to create the right connections between organizations, students, and schools. Students chosen this year from Pitt Public Health are KAITLYN SAAL-RIDPATH (JD/MPH ’20), JESSICA SALERNO (I...
ASPPH FRIDAY LETTER - Last Thursday, ASPPH Data Center staff visited Pitt Public Health, meeting with administrators, staff, and the university-wide Tableau business intelligence user group. The consultation focused on upcoming ASPPH Annual Data Reporting, ASPPH resources for diversity studies, using the ASPPH Data Center Portal for admissions and careers services strategizing, and how ASPPH is cultivating a data culture among our membership.
TRIB LIVE – LifeX will tackle some of medicine’s biggest challenges for its initial focus. They announced a $2 million grant from the Henry L. Hillman Foundation to help it get off the ground. “The LifeX team is proud to have the Hillman Foundation's support as we continue this longstanding legacy of facilitating cures to the most devastating and prevalent causes of suffering and death”, says CEO of LifeX and HUGEN’s DIETRICH STEPHAN.
NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT from CNBC - Americans are filling fewer prescriptions for opioids, however, heroin and stronger synthetic opioids like fentanyl have overtaken prescription drugs as the biggest causes of overdose deaths. “One of the main [questions] that people are concerned about is whether there’s been a transition to heroin and other forms of opioids because of the reduction in prescription opioids, says HPM’s WALID GELLAD (16:45-19:30...
Doctoral candidate, DIANA DeLUCIA (IDM '19), presented some of her dissertation research on how the cholesterol levels in immune cells might be impacting HIV infection and disease progression to AIDS. It was found that antigen-presenting cells in nonprogressors have lower cholesterol levels which is associated with their inability to pass virus on to other cells.
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On behalf of BCHS doctoral student, SARA BAUMANN (BCHS '19), JESSICA BURKE presented their work in combining filmmaking with community based participatory research. They developed collaborative filmmaking to study chlaupadi in Napal. “It is a local practice where women are banished to sheds during menstruation.” This technique was an effective way to generate knowledge about the menstrual practices and involve participants in the process.
ARIZONA SONORA NEWS - Nationwide studies of sexual assault indicate that racial minorities, transgender people, and people with disabilities are targets of sexual violence at greater rates than the general population. Transgender students were three times as likely to be sexually assaulted than non-transgender men, according to a study conducted by BCHS' ROBERT COULTER and colleagues.
The winners of the 20th Dean's Day Student Research Competition were announced during an Oral Presentations and Awards Ceremony on April 17, 2018. Visit publichealth.pitt.edu/deansday for a list of winners.
SALLY E. WENZEL will take over as chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health starting May 1, 2018. As chair, Wenzel will extend her work on airway disease to build a research program that spans clinical, bench, and environmental exposure science, amplifying the exceptional strengths already present in the department.
“[Jonas Salk] had no idea what was going to come out of this experiment. He was just terrified that it wasn’t going to turn out to work, but it did,” said Peter Salk of his father's early tests of the first polio vaccines. Jonas Salk developed the first successful polio vaccine while working at Pitt. PETER SALK give his personal account of the polio vaccine development and talked about his father's other research and the 21st century work to mov...
Faculty and alumni spoke on a panel to highlight the public health impact on global communities, including immigration crises, planetary health, climate change, and the importance of health systems. KELLY SALDANA (BCHS ’01) talked about creating resiliency and figuring out what that means both at the individual level and the systems level to help lessen negative effects of climate change.