News

Children living near Pennsylvania fracking sites are at increased risk of leukemia

WHYY - EOH's Dr. Bernard Goldstein weighs in on this study by researchers at Yale School of Public Health. He states, "It looks at a potential problem in ways that include new exposure metrics, which are really needed." Goldstein also says that though the factors that contribute to childhood leukemia are complex and still unclear, benzene is one known link.

MPH grad focuses on infectious disease prevention

Dream job and publication as first author follow December graduation

Mya Brady (EPI ‘21) knows the value of interprofessional education.

How common are Paxlovid rebound cases?

Dean Maureen Lichtveld said a true “rebound” case means being infected with the same variant. “We know, for example, that with the coronavirus there are a number of variants,” Lichtveld said.

Jeremy Martinson is recipient of 2022 Craig Teaching Award

"The real reward for me has been to get to know such a talented and hardworking group of students. They are going to do great things, and it has been a privilege to play a role in their professional development, no matter how small."

Ying Ding selected as Health Sciences Ascending Star awardee

Congratulations to BIOSTAT’s Ying Ding who was selected as Health Sciences Ascending Star awardee! This honor was established to recognize highly productive, creative mid-career faculty members in the six Schools of the Health Sciences and is accompanied by $25,000 in research support.

Richard Garland featured on Public Health America

On this episode of Public Health America, Richard Garland discusses the national surge in gun violence and how it is a public health problem that requires public health intervention.

A summer academy for high schoolers aims to bring more students to public health

PITTWIRE- To create Pitt’s Public Health Science Academy, take 10 teenagers from three Pittsburgh high schools, add 10 faculty mentors, mix with inspiration for four weeks and finish with possibly life-changing results.That’s the recipe that Dean Maureen Lichtveld crafted to attract more underrepresented students to the field, as well as to college itself.

New Pitt Public Health leaders named

Two School of Public Health departments will welcome new leaders in time for the fall 2022 semester. Mary Hawk, DrPH, has been appointed chair of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences (BCHS) and Yan Ma, PhD, will lead the Department of Biostatistics. Both positions are effective September 1.

Peter Salk says newest U.S. case of polio sounds a warning

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE - After a man in Rockland County, New York, became the first patient to contract polio in the U.S. in nearly a decade, experts such as IDM’s Peter Salk — whose late father, Jonas, developed a vaccine for the disease — said the public shouldn’t be alarmed but warned that children unvaccinated for polio could be at risk. “Polio is only a plane flight away,” Salk said. “Here is a circumstance that demonstrated that.”

Jian Zou awarded the Mihaela Serban Memorial Award for best poster

Congratulations to Jian Zou (BIOST '23) who was awarded the Mihaela Serban Award for best poster in the American Statistical Association (ASA) Pittsburgh Chapter's 2022 poster contest for his presentation "CGMM: an algorithm for constrained model-based clustering". Jian’s work is advised by Dr. George C. Tseng

Ellen Tan receives Student Research Award

Xiaoqing (Ellen) Tan (BIOST '22) received the Student Research Award at the 35th New England Statistics Symposium for her work "A Tree-based Model Averaging Approach for Personalized Treatment Effect Estimation from Heterogeneous Data Sources". This is the work that has recently been accepted to the Thirty-ninth International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML ’22), the leading international academic conference in machine learning.

New Covid Subvariants Highly Contagious, immune evasive, experts say

Dean Maureen Lichtveld said a true “rebound” case means being infected with the same variant. “We know, for example, that with the coronavirus there are a number of variants,” Lichtveld said

Karen Krymski (BCHS '82) wins Network State Star Award

Karen Krymski recently received  the Florida SBDC Network’s State Star Award at the Network’s Small Business Success Summit, held in Tampa on June 28. The award recognizes Krymski for her accomplishments in 2021. Only one State Star is awarded by the Network each year. Krymski, who earned her MPH from Pitt Public Health in 1982, has been a member of the Florida SBDC at the University of South Florida team since 2015. She is a procurement sp...

This Pitt researcher is using data to fight the opioid epidemic

PITTWIRE - Jeanine Buchanich, a research associate professor in Biostatistics, is taking a big-picture approach to figuring out what programs will best tackle the problem.Buchanich has evaluated public health interventions as varied as community-level training for first responders on naloxone use and stigma reduction; county and municipal health department prevention efforts; the Patient Advocacy Program, which helps patients who have been presc..

Study finds health care workers reluctant to post about COVID -19 vaccine on social media

NEXT PITTSBURGH - BCHS' Beth Hoffman and Jaime Sidani led a study, recently published in the Journal of Community Health, which highlights COVID-19 hesitancy, acceptance and promotion among health care workers. Partnering with scientists in the Department of Psychiatry they used Twitter analysis and health care worker surveys to gain insight regarding that hesitancy. Additional authors include BCHS' Kar-Hai Chu, Elizabeth Felter and MPH student,