PITTWIRE - HPM's Amy Raslevich received an invitation to attend President Joe Biden’s April 5 signing of the Executive Order on Strengthening Access to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid at the White House. The event also marked President Obama’s first public return to the White House since leaving office in 2017. Raslevich was one of several dozen people in the room on Tuesday afternoon to witness the historic event that also included remark...
Congratulations to Kelly Saldana (BCHS '01) who joins Abt Associates as vice president, systems strengthening and resilience. Saldana was previously employed by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), where she has held increasingly senior roles in the agency's health sector for the past two decades. In her new role, Saldana will lead technical solutions and approaches to international development projects and proposals.
PITTWIRE - EOH's Aaron Barchowsky and colleagues at the Pittsburgh Center for Healthy Environments and Equity Research were awarded a Scaling grant from the 2022 Momentum Funds. A total of 32 research projects were recognized. These awards are aimed at supporting high-quality research, scholarship and creative endeavors. Scaling Grants support the detailed project planning, gathering of results, and reduction of technical risk so that teams can ...
PITTWIRE - Congratulations to the recipients of the CTSI Pitt Public Health Trans-Disciplinary Collaboration Pilot Awards! Five teams of Co-Investigators from Pitt Public Health and School of Medicine begin research on climate change and precision public health. The collaborative pilot investigations are focused on addressing public health under the threat of climate change through precision public health, an emerging field that employs data sci...
“It was honestly an utter surprise, but at least I was dressed professionally because I had recorded my three-minute thesis submission that day!” – Amy Raslevich
HPM doctoral student Amy Raslevich had a live FaceTime call with former president Barack Obama on March 23. To mark the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, the health care advocacy group Protect Our Care, with whom Raslevich is affiliated, organized surprise FaceTim...
WESA - EPI's Andrea Rosso and Tiffany Gary-Webb, Associate Director of the Center for Health Equity, are part of a research study intent on learning how structural racism has affected the cognitive health of Pittsburgh residents in two of the city's historically Black communities: Homewood and Hill District. With funding from the National Institutes of Health, epidemiologists from Pitt and the Rand Corporation will follow 1,100 research particip...
PITTWIRE - The League of American Bicyclists has honored the University's Pittsburgh campus with a Silver-level Bicycle Friendly University award in recognition of the institution's achievements in promoting and enabling safe, accessible bicycling on campus. Achieving Sliver BFU status moves Pitt toward the interim goal of the Pitt Sustainability Plan of achieving Silver by 2020 and Gold by 2025.
EVERYDAY HEALTH - Authors of a study on menopausal weight gain found that exercise and diet during perimenopause may be the best strategy to avoid excess weight. "The results suggest that there are differences in metabolism that are related to exercise according to menopause status," says EPI’s Samar R. El Khoudary. Adding that “findings are in agreement with data from longitudinal studies showing perimenopause as a critical window for body comp...
PITTWIRE - EPI's Jennifer Adibi was selected as an inaugural Social Justice Faculty Fellow! The fellowship supports faculty who are committed to social justice and equity, and is one of several initiatives at Pitt seeking to address structural racism and inequity. Fellows receive a $10,000 award, funded jointly by their respective schools and community partnerships, and are paired with a community organization for an 11-month project that addres...
Haley M. Kulas (HUGEN ’21), passed away peacefully on March 9, 2022, surrounded by friends and family. Haley had a true passion for genetics and she fulfilled that passion by becoming a genetic counselor following her graduation in April of last year. Friends and family will be received on March 13, 2022. Donations in her memory can be made to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
After more than a year of research, Dean Maureen Lichtveld has published the third edition of Environmental Policy and Public Health. This newly released edition, co-authored by Barry L. Johnson of Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, comprises two volumes addressing key environmental factors that impact public health. The first volume, Principal Health Hazards and Mitigation, is complemented by the second volume, Emerging Health H...
Congratulations to assistant professor Richard Garland who has been selected to receive the Chancellor’s Distinguished Public Service Award for his exceptional work to reduce gun violence. Dr. Garland was one of 15 faculty members across Pitt recognized by Chancellor Patrick Gallagher and will be honored at the Faculty Honors Convocation on April 1 at 3 p.m. in Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall.
I am the current Administrative Fellow for St. Elizabeth Physicians, a multi-specialty physician organization that serves the residents of Northern Kentucky, Southwestern Ohio, and Southeastern Indiana. This fellowship appealed to me because I was looking for a fellowship position that had opportunities beyond the typical hospital operations focus that many other fellowships offer. I feel strongly that as healthcare trends towards ambulatory car...
After graduating, I accepted a position as an Administrative Fellow at UPMC, a leading healthcare organization with national and international reach. I am in the Health Services Division Pittsburgh track which focuses in UPMC’s Pittsburgh region facilities but provides exposure across the organization. My prior experiences with UPMC, including my MHA practicum with STAT MedEvac and mentorship from a senior UPMC leader facilitated by the MHA prog...
Since its inception in 2017, Hartford HealthCare’s Bone & Joint Institute (BJI) offers an unparalleled network of coordinated clinical services as the first new stand-alone orthopedic hospital in the state of Connecticut. This one-year, project-based, administrative fellowship has provided an outstanding opportunity to “look under the hood” of a developing integrated health system. I was drawn to the fellowship role with BJI because I wanted an ...
PITTWIRE - The school formally known as GSPH has a new name! Introducing the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health!
"This is an essential step following last month’s announcement of our Bachelor of Science in Public Health degree program. Our school’s future looks bright as we continue to support and celebrate our incredible cadre of graduate scholars, and invest in younger students committed to a career in public health," shares D...
WTAE - Beth Hoffman (BCHS ’22) and friends at Kids Plus Pediatrics tell WTAE how doctors are taking to social media to encourage COVID-19 vaccination and counter misinformation. "The evidence does suggest that what people are seeing on social media is influencing their decision about whether to get themselves or their child vaccinated," said Beth Hoffman, a researcher at Pitt.
The onslaught of questionable information has left many people wond...
Hugen’s Jerry Vockley named as a 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow. Election as a Fellow honors members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and colleagues. Vockley directs an active research program on inherited disorders of energy and protein metabolism, focused on both understanding the genetic causes of these dis...
Health literacy is our ability to find, understand and use information to inform our health decisions, such as when to take prescription medications or seek emergency care. But these skills aren’t just important on an individual level. "Parents, caregivers and many others are tasked with medical decision-making that goes beyond their own personal concerns. Organizations must also make health literate choices," says Beth Hoffman (BCHS '22). Commu...
Congratulations to Na Bo (BIOST '25) who won the 2022 ASA Student Paper Award, LiDS section, for her paper titled "A Meta-Learner Framework to Estimate Individualized Treatment Effects for Survival Outcomes". Winners receive a cash prize to cover expenses for the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) conference. Bo's work is co-advised by Drs. Ying Ding and Chaeryon Kang.