Fogarty International Center - Suriname is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the Western Hemisphere, making for a unique population to study. At just 23 years old, Dr. Maureen Lichtveld began her career working with communities living in the Amazon rainforest in her home country, a small Caribbean nation on the northern coast of South America. While in the Amazon doing clinical work, Lichtveld realized many of the he...
MEDSCAPE - EOH's Sally Wenzel talks to Medscape about asthma study, which is unique in how it delineates groups by age of onset. The study is the largest of its kind and is also multinational, making it very unique.
“In addition to this concept that there’s a difference in asthma by the age that you got diagnosed with it, I think it’s also important to just remember that when any physician, be they a specialist or nonspecialist, sees a patien...
NHLBI News - EPI's Samar El Khoudary shares what healthcare providers and the public should know about reproductive events, such as pregnancy complications or early menopause, that can influence women's cardiovascular disease risks. "We want to make sure that women are aware that heart disease is their number one killer," she says. Knowing about the risks can be the first step to prevention.
HEALIO - Alexander Sundermann (IDM '14, EPI '22) and colleagues find real-time genomic surveillance is able to detect hospital outbreaks using an approach they call Enhanced Detection System for Healthcare-Associated Transmission, which would allow hospitals to detect outbreaks early and intervene quickly. Sundermann says, "We believe that this will substantially improve patient safety" and that "sequencing surveillance will eventually become ro...
FRONTIERS SCIENCE NEWS - New study within the US Long Life Family Study identifies biomarkers characteristic for people born in – or married into – families with exceptionally long-lived members. Both groups also have a reduced risk of developing type II diabetes. Sharing the household and lifestyle of children of long-lived parents might lead to these marked health benefits for spouses, but it’s also possible that people tend to pick their part...
PITTWIRE - Dean Lichtveld and Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, sat down to discuss lessons learned from the U.S. response to the pandemic and the future of the nation's health. As the United States settles into a new phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, mask mandates are few and far between, hospitalizations have plummeted and more than three-quarters of Americans have received at least one COVID-19 vacc...
U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT - EPI's Wendy King weighs in on opioid use during and after bariatric surgery care. States that many weight-loss centers are indeed developing their own opioid-sparing protocols. The majority of patients seem to be on board with these protocols.
EOH student Jessie Klousnitzer won second place among doctoral students for the project, “Characterization of Lysine and Arginine Rich Antimicrobial Peptides”.
BCHS student Chinwoke Isiguzo, won first place among doctoral students for the project, “Effects of discrimination and microaggressions on exclusive breastfeeding: the role of stress”.
IDM student Rachel Merritt won first place among master’s students for the project, “Effects of Climate Change on Lyme Disease Incidence: A Literature Review”.
HPM student Alice Gao won third place among doctoral students for the project, “Explaining Racial-ethnic Disparities in the Receipt of Medication for Opioid Use Disorder During Pregnancy”.
BCHS student Monica Henderson won second place among master’s students for the project, “Black Hair Politics: A Public Health Concern”.
HUGEN student Haley Director won third place among master’s students for the project, “Race- and ethnicity-based insurance coverage gaps for genetic testing for cancer in the Greater Pittsburgh region”.
HPM student Donald Bourne won the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award, Doctoral Level for the project, “Changes in Medication Utilization and Adherence Associated with Homeless Adults’ Entry into Permanent Supportive Housing”.
EPI student Emily Arthur won the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award, Masters Level for the project, “Maternal Health in Rural Virginia”.
IDM student Bethany Flage won the Rosenkranz Award for the project, “Heme as a causative factor for Plasmodium falciparum sexual commitment”.
On May 1, our graduates joined more than 6,600 alumni who are working in the field of public health all over the world. It was wonderful to be back in person to celebrate our graduates from both the classes of 2020-21 and 2021-22 with speaker Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who received an honorary degree from Pitt Public Health.
With a warm and inviting smile – and a colorful tattoo of the Andy Warhol bridge on his forearm – Epidemiology alum Christian Garcia-Calavaro is eager to share his public health journey from his native Chile to Pittsburgh and back again. As he reflects on his experiences at Pitt Public Health he shares, “Through knowledge and example, I learned what made me the public health professional I am today and the foundations of the virtuous person who ...
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE - A recent study looks at the factors contributing to Allegheny County being ranked higher than other populous Pennsylvania counties in its death rate. "Household income is the most important factor, period,” said Donald S. Burke, physician and former dean of Pitt Public Health, who did the study at the request of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with Hawre Jalal, a physician and associate professor of epidemiology at the Univ...
PITT MED - Concerned about the COVID-19 death rate for Black Pittsburghers, Tiffany Gary-Webb and a group of scholars in her sphere reached out to public health officials. When they asked about the rates in the Pittsburgh area, the data were not available to the public at the time. In the ensuing weeks and months, Gary-Webb was part of a collegial huddle working together to put pressure on public health officials. Ultimately, that pressure resul...