You don’t have to look far to find a School of Public Health (SPH) graduate among the people working within the Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD) to ensure the well-being of western Pennsylvanians.
"The school really is a feeder institution," says LuAnn Brink (EPI '99), PhD, a 12-year ACHD veteran and chief epidemiologist since 2014. Brink supervises the county's Bureau of Data Reporting and Disease Control and oversees surveillance...
VOICE OF AMERICA - Pregnancy puts women at higher risk of severe medical complications or death from COVID-19, according to a new study of more than 1,300 women in sub-Saharan Africa. "Africa is not Europe, is not the U.S.A.," said IDM and EPI's Jean Nachega, lead author of the new study. "We should not just rely on data coming from the U.S., Europe or China to try to understand COVID on the continent."
In the study , published in the jou...
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...
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”.
IDM student Bethany Flage won the Rosenkranz Award for the project, “Heme as a causative factor for Plasmodium falciparum sexual commitment”.
U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT - A groundbreaking analysis of decades-old stool and blood samples from the early AIDS epidemic suggests that men who had high levels of inflammation-causing bacteria in their intestinal tract may have had a greater risk for contracting HIV. "A healthy gut microbiome is essential for many bodily functions…" said IDM’s Yue Chen, lead author. “Scientists are increasingly learning that it has other wide-ranging impacts.
...
Shauna Clark (IDM '08) awarded 2021 Distinguished Alumni Award for Teaching and Dissemination in recognition of significant contributions to teaching and dissemination, either in the classroom or in the field.
Alexandra Bhatti (IDM '11) awarded 2021 Early Career Excellence Award in recognition of significant achievements early in an alumnus or alumna's career.
KDKA RADIO – Alex Sundermann (IDM ‘14, EPI ‘22) explains that one in thirty patients gets at least one health care-associated infection – one acquired while in the hospital. “Typical tests see what type of organism it is but that test doesn’t tell you, was it transmitted from a patient or from somewhere in the environment? [Genome surveillance is] like fingerprinting for that test – who has that same organism and who is transmitting to who when ...
A native of Hanover Park, IL, Diana Bellino is pursuing an MPH with a concentration in infectious disease management, intervention, and community practice. She studied public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is interested in cooking, painting/crafting, and anything outside.