LA TIMES - The FDA announcement is great news, said BCHS’ ERIC DONNY. He and other researchers found that reducing nicotine substantially leads smokers to be less dependent on cigarettes and smoke fewer of them was found in a study by and other researchers. "If you just reduce it a little, people might smoke more to make up the difference. They need to reduce it a lot." Regulators should consider a 95% to 97% reduction.
CNN – A new study has found that after the expansion of access to naloxone, arrests for possession and sales of opioids increased by 17% and 27%, respectively. However, BCHS's MARY HAWK, JAMES EGAN, and CHRIS KEANE had some cautions. Just because both expanded during the same time period does not mean that one caused the other. Even if that was true, they would not propose removing access to a lifesaving drug, they said.
THE BODY - Long-term survivors of HIV have experienced relentless trauma over the course of several decades, resulting in a syndrome unique to this population called AIDS Survivor Syndrome. Until now, there has been no scientific research to validate it. BCHS’ RON STALL became interested, noting that "street epidemiology tends to be pretty correct and street wisdom raises questions that are worth looking into very carefully."
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE – Health department officials like ERIC HULSEY (BCHS '08) are diving deep into the data in order to predict where and when an opioid overdose is going to occur. The trick will be getting the information, and its implications, out to the broader community. “This is not just the responsibility of the government,” says BCHS’ KAREN HACKER, director, Allegheny County Health Department. “We can hopefully influence the health ca...
ELIZABETH FELTER (BCHS ’09) joined the faculty as assistant professor in 2010. She has been a Certified Health Education Specialist since 2001 and leads the department’s health communication/health risk communication curriculum. Her teaching portfolio has expanded to include development of infographics, preparation of public service announcements, and use of video for public health communication.
TODD BEAR (BCHS ’07, ’13) joined the Pitt Public Health faculty as an assistant professor immediately upon earning his PhD in 2013. His primary research interest is the study of adversity, including child maltreatment and exposure to violence, and its effects on health over the lifespan. He utilizes a life-course perspective to study the behavioral and psychosocial pathways by which childhood adversity affects adolescent and adult health.
HSTODAY - NIJ and the Federal Interagency Workgroup on Teen Dating Violence are hosting a moderated webinar on Monday, February 26, at 1:00 PM to discuss interventions to reduce TDV across multiple settings with potentially high-risk populations, including within adolescent health care settings. BCHS’ LIZ MILLER will talk about universal screening, warm transfers, and reasons patients do not seek or accept assistance.
TRIB LIVE - Analyzing motor-vehicle-related hospital admissions, in-person license renewal laws and vision testing were found to dramatically reduce the number of motor vehicle accidents by drivers with dementia, according to BCHS' STEVEN ALBERT and YLL AGIMI (EPI '12) as published in Neurology.
INSIGHT INTO DIVERSITY - The school began to seriously investigate LGBTQ health topics in the early 2000s, according to BCHS's RON STALL. “In terms of sexual minority health, a majority of public funding has always gone to HIV/AIDS research, and other disparities for [gay men] were relatively unaddressed,” he explains. “For other populations, like trans women and lesbian or bisexual populations, the basic research had never even been done.”
HPC WIRE - Alum JONATHAN RAVIOTTA (BCHS '18) and BCHS's RICHARD ZIMMERMAN are members of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center that received the Hyperion Research Award on High Performance Computing (HPC) Innovation Excellence for their papers using agent-based modeling to examine the effect of choice of influenza vaccine types on vaccine uptake.
BECKER'S HOSPITAL REVIEW - Derek C. Angus (BCHS '92), HPM faculty member and Pitt Med's director of the Clinical Research, Investigation and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness laboratory, has developed an evidence-based approach for managing post-hospitalization sepsis. “We need to focus not only on saving the patient’s life, but on ensuring the patient will have the best possible quality of life after leaving the hospital.”
CNN - The international study, says BCHS’s CHRISTINA MAIR, has a “key strength“ in its “large, population-based database.“ The greater impact of drinking on lower socioeconomic status individuals is “an important health disparity to measure, understand, and seek to reduce.“ Her work focuses on how lower-income neighborhoods have less access to health-protecting resources. “Without addressing disparate environmental conditions...we will not be abl...
WTAE - “We as adults are always trying to make programs or projects that we think that the kids need,” said BCHS’s RICHARD GARLAND. “But my strategy has always been going to the source, so I’d like to talk to the kids and see what they really need and what’s really on their mind.”
POST-GAZETTE - The second, $160,000 grant was awarded to the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences. RICHARD GARLAND, an assistant professor, is leading that effort and has hired two street outreach workers who are focusing on violence prevention through mediation and by building personal relationships with people in Wilkinsburg, Braddock, Rankin, Duquesne, McKeesport, and Penn Hills.