The School of Public Health joined APHA and public health champions around the country for the 2026 theme Ready. Set. Action!
We kicked things off on Monday, April 6 with a service project followed by Featured NPHW Speaker, alumnus Roderick Harris, who advised students towards building a future that’s grounded in purpose while talking about his career leading to his current role as health commissioner of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health in Cleveland.
Also celebrating World Health Day on April 7, the Center for Global Health hosted Thuy Bui, MD, UPMC, for a discussion on global health in a changing world and partnered with the School of Public and International Affairs to provide a free yoga class.
Tuesday evening took us to the Senator John Heinz History Center for the final event in our 2025-26 One Book, One Community program—a documentary screening and panel discussion featuring the amazing story of the first EMS workers, Pittsburgh’s Freedom House Ambulance Service, and highlighted a letter writing campaign seeking a congressional gold medal which picked up around 50 signatures during the event (and rising!).
Dean's Day Research Competition
April 7 also marked the start of our annual student and postdoc research competition, Dean’s Day. A huge turnout, this year’s six poster sessions featured around 100 graduate students from all seven departments as well as ten postdoctoral trainees. The Pitt Public Health community came out to learn about work on the carceral footprint, emphysema severity and lithium exposure, skeletal muscle adiposity, Parkinson’s disease and fairness in AI-driven health care, to name a few, studying populations in Pittsburgh, Appalachia, Suriname, Tobago, Samoa.
“The presentation feedback I received from judges and audience members was nothing short of amazing,” said Mike Dolinger, Director of Student Services. “Being able to effectively talk about one’s research is a needed skill out in the field,” Dolinger said in thanks to the faculty that supported students as judges that the time they spent “will add up to years of help” for presenters.
Sarah O’Connell, MS student in the Department of Human Genetics, won first place in the master's category and Camille Boufford, also from the Department of Human Genetics, took first among doctoral students.
"The Dean’s Day competition is one of my most favorite events of the year. From ticks in birds to dissecting misinformation, and genetic predisposition as a risk factor in disease outcome, I learned how our students are turning research into action," indicated Dean Lichtveld.
Full list of Dean’s Day presenters and winners
BSPH Capstone Symposium
Our Bachelor of Science in Public Health students presented their Capstone projects, also in a poster session on the commons. 46 students presented their work, either from their chosen practicum or group work from a community-based course.
“This is the first year we are graduating students who began with us as freshmen, so we’ve had the privilege of watching them grow over all four years,” said Mara Koperwas, director of undergraduate curriculum. “I taught many of them in Fundamentals of Public Health as first-year students, and now seeing them as seniors presenting their capstone work is incredibly rewarding. I’m so proud of all they’ve accomplished and how much they’ve grown.”
Photos by Amber Curtaccio
From documentation of environmental harm to practice of implementation
Faculty, scholars, community organizations and community members gathered April 8-10 for the Center for Public Health Practice’s third Environmental Summit, From Knowledge to Action: Implementing Science, Justice, and Healing in Pittsburgh, cosponsored by the Cancer and Environment Network. Attendees visited Community Engagement Centers in the Hill District and Homewood plus OneValley in Hazelwood to immerse ourselves in communities with documented environmental harm to learn and reflect together while committing to implement solutions through practice.
“By convening in community, we ensure our dialogue is
physically and intellectually rooted in some of the neighborhoods where implementation matters most. Our goal is to ensure that justice and healing are not abstract goals but lived experiences for our entire region—across racial, economic, geographic and academic boundaries,” Tina Ndoh, director of the Center for Public Health Practice and Dani Wilson, strategic director of the Cancer & Environment Network of Southwestern Pennsylvania, told attendees.
Follow CPHP on LinkedIn for more information and some pictures from the event.
photos by John Altdorfer
On Friday, our Center for Health Equity welcomed Tomar Pierson-Brown, assistant professor at Pitt Law for Health Justice as Praxis, a session applying health justice praxis to the examination of medical, legal and societal systems’ intersection to shape the health and well-being of young adults with disabilities.
We wrapped our observance of NPHW with two events on Saturday. Celebrating Black Maternal Health Week, UPMC held a community event in collaboration with our Center for Health Equity called Equity, for Engaging Fathers: Fortifying Fathers and Families Through the Birthing Journey and Beyond where community members and health care professionals could begin to break down barriers that Black fathers face in the birthing process and create a culturally inclusive and responsive care environment for families of color.
Pitt Public Health also hosted the 2026 National Bioethics Bowl with our own Pitt team coming in at a close second to Stanford University after going undefeated in the first four rounds of the competition.
-Caitlin McCullough