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...
TRIB LIVE - Reaction to proposed gun control laws shows that even some local gun owners appear just as divided about the effectiveness of such measures as the politicians debating them. Although many people seem to agree the country has to find a way to stem gun violence on American streets and in schools, there is little agreement on how best to do that. "Much of the gun regulation debate is based on speculation," says EPI's Anthony Fabio. "The...
MAD IN AMERICA - Jennifer Barkin (EPI '09, BIOST '02), a biostatistician and psychiatric epidemiologist, discusses the development of the Barkin Index of Maternal Functioning, the first patient-centered wellness-assessment tool focusing on mothers’ daily lives during the first year after giving birth. “I developed that actually during my doctoral studies… and the reason that I developed it was I linked up with a sort of famous reproductive psych...
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...
NEW YORK TIMES - After meeting through a Craigslist personal ad that neither can remember placing, Jonathan Gann and Michael Shankle (BCHS '96) had their first date at the Million Puppet March in Washington. Shankle is chief operating officer at the Washington Health Institute and serves as the chair of Washington’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission for the Chinatown, Downtown and Penn Quarter areas.
Congratulations to Zachary Clemens and Yuchen Kristine Sun, two second-year doctoral students in Pitt Public Health’s Department of Environmental and Occupational (EOH), who won awards at the annual meeting of the Allegheny & Erie Regional Chapter of the Society of Toxicology, May 31 – June 1, in Morgantown, Va.
Pittsburgh City Paper - BCHS' Richard Garland has been recommended by the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Let's Get Free: the Women and Trans Prisoner Defense Committee, and Book 'Em, to serve on the Allegheny County Jail Oversight Board (JOB). Garland has gained respect and notoriety for his steadfast commitment to violence prevention, trauma-informed care, and re-entry, to the extent that he has received support from Mayor Ed Gainey to fill the o...
Congratulations to Manqi Cai (BIOST '24) who is one of four prize winners of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) Graduate Student Research Conference 2022. Cai is recognized for the best presentation of original research for her presentation titled "Robust and accurate estimation of cellular fraction from tissue omics data via ensemble deconvolution." In addition to a reward certificate, Cai will receive a check in the amount o...
On May 25, Tiffany Gary-Webb, associate professor of Epidemiology, participated in a White House listening session on health equity issues across the Commonwealth. Experts from a range of disciplines – medicine, nursing, public health and social work – participated in the session. Attendees were asked to share their views on health equity and its impact on clinical care.
“While our clinical advancements have been amazing and pivotal, pre...
Congratulations to Molin Yue (BIOST) on receiving the abstract scholarship and 3rd place American Thoracic Society (ATS) Pediatric Trainee abstract award in San Francisco at the annual American Thoracic Society conference, the most prestigious clinical conference in pulmonary medicine. Yue presented two talks; his award-winning "Transcriptome-wide Analysis of Nasal Epithelium Predicts Time to First Severe Exacerbation in Childhood Asthma" as wel...
Dr. Valerian Kagan, professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health, was honored as the “Cover Scientist” of Anti-Oxidants and Redox Signaling , for his pioneering work in the field of redox biology.
In addition to gracing the cover of the premier journal’s May issue, Dr. Kagan’s life and scientific achievements are the subject of a biographical article in the journal.
“Professor...
"Currently, I'm working with Haley Director (HUGEN '22, '26) to educate people about public health genetics through social media. You can find us at genetics.info on Instagram and TikTok!"
"This summer, I'm very excited to perform genetic epidemiology research regarding a form of skin cancer, and I'm also interested in disability advocacy work."
"To me, public health genetics is the intersection of genomics research and population health. I've benefited from public health genetics through the carrier screening program for Ashkenazi Jews, so I know firsthand the impact and importance of public health genetics."
"I am currently completing my practicum with the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation in Pittsburgh, where I am involved with many different facets of the organization. I also work as a research coordinator with the TBRS Community, a nonprofit organization supporting inviduals with the rare disorder Tatton Brown Rahman Syndrome."
Fogarty International Center - Suriname is one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the Western Hemisphere, making for a unique population to study. At just 23 years old, Dr. Maureen Lichtveld began her career working with communities living in the Amazon rainforest in her home country, a small Caribbean nation on the northern coast of South America. While in the Amazon doing clinical work, Lichtveld realized many of the he...
MEDSCAPE - EOH's Sally Wenzel talks to Medscape about asthma study, which is unique in how it delineates groups by age of onset. The study is the largest of its kind and is also multinational, making it very unique.
“In addition to this concept that there’s a difference in asthma by the age that you got diagnosed with it, I think it’s also important to just remember that when any physician, be they a specialist or nonspecialist, sees a patien...
NHLBI News - EPI's Samar El Khoudary shares what healthcare providers and the public should know about reproductive events, such as pregnancy complications or early menopause, that can influence women's cardiovascular disease risks. "We want to make sure that women are aware that heart disease is their number one killer," she says. Knowing about the risks can be the first step to prevention.
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...
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FRONTIERS SCIENCE NEWS - New study within the US Long Life Family Study identifies biomarkers characteristic for people born in – or married into – families with exceptionally long-lived members. Both groups also have a reduced risk of developing type II diabetes. Sharing the household and lifestyle of children of long-lived parents might lead to these marked health benefits for spouses, but it’s also possible that people tend to pick their part...