BCHS Student Stories

HPP DEBATED - BCHS' Sara Baumann (BCHS '19) talks about a recent article in the journal Health Policy and Planning, Is criminalization the answer? Perspectives of community members and police on menstrual seclusion policy in Far-West Nepal. The study was completed by an interdisiplinary Pitt team including Baumann, BCHS's Jessie Burke, and BCHS students Monica Merante, Chris Wiltrout, and Trevor Cutlip.   

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.   

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.   

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... 

KDKA CBS NEWS — Fueled by a grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, Pitt researchers are studying and combating false online information about vaccines. “Vaccines are often the victim of their own success,” said BCHS doctoral student Beth Hoffman, a research assistant at the Center for Research on Behavioral Health, Media and Technology. “I think one of the reasons we’ve seen a rise in anti-vaccine sentiment over the years is people are l... 

Serwaa Omowale (BCHS ’22), a joint PhD Social Work/MPH student, is the recipient of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) diversity supplement, which will support her work with Dara Mendez of the Department of Epidemiology through 2021. Omowale’s work focuses on understanding, addressing, and improving maternal health and birth outcomes among Black women.