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.
Alexander Sundermann (IDM '14, EPI '22), was named a 2021 fellow of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. The status is "a distinction of honor for infection preventionists who are not only advanced practitioners of infection prevention practice, but also leaders within the field." Fellows are selected by their years of experience and contributions to the field of infection prevention. Congratulations!
BLOOMBERG - Clinical trials weren’t designed to study how the vaccines perform in specific subgroups and people with certain medical conditions weren’t included, said EPI and IDM's Lee Harrison, also with Pitt Medicine.
PITT WIRE - Congratulations to HUGEN and BIOST's Eleanor Feingold, recently promoted to vice dean, who was named to the 2021-22 class of the longest-running, cohort-based higher education leadership development progam in the U.S. Many of its alumni are now university presidents and provosts and acceptance is extremely competitive.
Dean Lichtveld announced upcoming leadership changes: Steve Albert to step down as BCHS chair with Velpandi Ayyavoo to serve as interim chair; Eleanor Feingold to become vice dean, Jessie Burke to interim as Feingold receives American Council on Education Fellowship. Dan Weeks will be interim chair of HUGEN.
UPMC - A new project with Washington University School of Medicine funded by the NIH aims to advance Alzheimer's research using whole genome sequencing to address a critical knowledge gap. HUGEN and EPI's Ilyas Kamboh is part of a research team that plans to identify the genetic variants, genes and pathways that lead to formation of plaques and tangles - two biomarkers that appear 15-25 years before symptoms.
US NEWS/POST-GAZETTE - Sixy-seven percent of big outbreaks were in personal care and assisted living homes with dementia units. Just keeping infections from dementia wards has been daunting, said David Nace (EPI '95), chief medical officer for UPMC Senior Communities and co-lead of the state's regional collaborative that responds to outbreaks in long-term care homes in Western Pennsylvania.
MEDSCAPE - Andrew Althouse (EPI '13) authored a piece discussing how the "number needed to treat" (NNT) concept is misleading when applied blindly to vaccine trials for COVID-19.
KDKA AM - "Our hope as public health professionals is that overtime, people that are vaccine hesitant now will be willing to take the vaccine [in the future]," said EPI's Wendy King, lead author on a recent paper looking at vaccine hesitancy by occupation.
WTAE - Brandy Bywra-Hill (EOH '22) was lead author on a recent study in collaboration with ACHD that recounts the impact of the Christmas Eve 2018 fire that destroyed the pollution controls of the U.S. Clairton Coke Works. "This is the type of data that helps shape policy about air emissions, factory emissions, public health - all sorts of things," said Hill.
JAMA NETWORK - EPI Chair Anne Newman is co-author on a recent publication evaluating the affect of remote research needs through coronavirus mitigation efforts on clinical trials, finding that reducing unnecessary participant travel may be beneficial but that other factors can compromise the validity and integrity of certain trials and that deciding to conduct future trials remotely should be considered carefully.
In observance of Black Maternal Health week, EPI's Dara Mendez presented Black Maternal Health in Pennsylvania and the U.S., presenting data, discussing the implcations of racism and next steps. Open for the full recording.
STAR-TRIBUNE - COVID-19 vaccination rates are lagging in parts of Minnesota as the pace of new shots slows throughout the state, an early warning sign that achieving herd immunity could take longer in some places. "In rural areas, the fact is you are still moving around, you are still coming into contact with people," said HPM and PHDL's Mark Roberts. "If only 40% of the people in that geographic area are vaccinated and immune then you have a hi...
WESA - Gary-Webb agrees that the mass vaccination sites were an important and effective way to quickly inoculate a large number of people. But now that nearly half of Allegheny County’s population has received at least one dose of the vaccine, she said it is time to shift efforts to clinics that target specific populations. This is due not only to vaccine hesitancy concerns, but also to the fact that some people who are still unvaccinated face m...
Jennifer Barkin (EPI '09, BIOST '02) is attracting national attention for her work at the intersection of climate/mental health, recently receiving Georgia's Vanguard of Environmental Justice Award for her work. She developed the Barkin Index to measure function during new motherhood and now, she’s working on creating the Climate Distress Index to examine how and to what degree changes in the environment affect a person’s mental health.
Congratulations to Ying Ding! "As a teacher, Dr. Ding can answer very hard theory questions as well as practical problems that students may have about statistics, and she is also experienced in inspiring a student's interests in statistics," said one nominator. Other nominators said she was accessible both in and out of the classroom and willing to encourage discussion and encourage work outside of the classroom.
Xinjun (David) Wang (BIOST ’22) wins 2020 ICSA Student Travel Award for his paper entitled “BREM-SC: A Bayesian Random Effects Mixture Model for Joint Clustering Single Cell Multi-omics Data”.
Darien Beall (EPI '21) won the master's level award and Mary Schiff (EPI 22) won the doctoral level award. Taylor Robinson (EPI '22) and Yu-Husan Lai (EPI '22) won the new Department of Epidemiology Health Disparity Research Award.
Congratulations to first place winner Alexander Layden (EPI ‘20). Second place was awarded to Alexander Sundermann (EPI '22) and third to Tianyu Zou (HUGEN ‘21).
Congratulations to Dean's Day winners in the master's category. Receiving first place is Simon Cao (EPI '21). Second place was awarded to Paula Dzimira (EPI ‘19). Third place was given to Ke'alohi Worthington (EPI '21).