Grinning with anticipation, 8-year-old Ty’rique Brock waited patiently to hear if he was one of the lucky few to win a prize at the grand finale celebration of the Scorecard program, held Nov. 7 at Jackson Heights Recreation Center in East Tampa.

Ty’rique has spent the past couple of months filling up his own scorecard with stamps and signatures that verified his participation in physical activity. Football, kickball, relay races, playing in the park; these were some of his choice activities. At the finale, he was among the three dozen young students from two area elementary schools who had filled the 24 spots on at least one scorecard and could now be in the running for one of the grand prizes: two bicycles, a Wii console and games, scooters, tickets to USF basketball and football games and to the Florida Aquarium.

Scorecard Community Coordinator Bonnie Salazar with Ty'rique Brock, his mother Andrenna Brock, and a full scorecard.

The Florida Prevention Research Center (FPRC) at the USF College of Public Health helped Robles and Sulphur Springs Elementary Schools implement the Scorecard program, which offers elementary aged students action outlets for physical activity in their community. The program encourages youth to try new activities with an emphasis on fun rather than health or skill.

“It’s all about providing an opportunity for them to try new things, to spend time with friends and family, to find something they like to do, and to have fun,” said Robert J. McDermott, PhD, professor of public health and co-director of the FPRC with Carol Bryant, PhD.

Students use the card to track their physical activity. When they have been active for a designated period of time (typically one hour) at a Scorecard site or at home, an adult stamps or signs one of the 24 squares on the card. Once all of the squares are filled, the card is redeemed for physical activity related prizes (such as Frisbees, beach towels, water bottles, backpacks), and makes them eligible for grand prizes.

The Scorecard program began in 2004 in Lexington, KY, and USF’s FPRC earned a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006 to fund Scorecard locally.

The FPRC ran a pilot Scorecard program for middle school students in Sarasota County in 2006, then the full program for elementary school students in Hillsborough County last spring.

“One key point we learned from the Sarasota program was that it is better to target younger kids because as the kids start to enter their teens, they start to favor sedentary activities, like video games and television,” Dr. McDermott said.

“So the point is to interest them in activities earlier because by the time students are teenagers, it might be too late.”

During the past year, the FPRC worked with Robles and Sulphur Springs Elementary Schools, as well as other community partners in the Sulphur Springs and Robles areas, to build a comprehensive plan for tailoring the Scorecard program to fit local needs, with the goal of helping Tampa’s youth become more physically active throughout the year.

Prior to choosing the schools that would participate, Dr. McDermott’s team assessed the environment surrounding the schools, looking for those that were more kid friendly, with parks that had amenities like bathrooms and benches, and with ample venues for planned activities, such as bowling alleys, skating rinks, etc.

“We want the kids to feel safe, so if the nearby park is littered with broken bottles or drug paraphernalia, we weren’t likely to include that school,” he said.

Local venues participated by hosting regularly scheduled events for the students. Terrace Sports, for example, hosted weekly timeslots when students could bowl for $1 per game with a $1 shoe rental. Weekends were filled with events, such as track meets or baseball clinics at local parks, or activities like the Too Good For Drugs Walk and KidFest at MOSI.

Much of the support provided by FPRC came from public health graduate students John Trainor, Emily Koby, and Alyssa Mayer, Dr. McDermott said. They staffed many of the events and evaluated the programs to provide feedback to the school. In addition, the graduate students collected data from last spring’s program and presented it this month at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association. Students will also be involved in the data analysis from the fall program, and will probably present or publish those results, as well as share the results with the schools as feedback.

“They learn something new from participants’ feedback and refine the program each time,” Dr. McDermott said.

From left: Alyssa Mayer (MPH student COPH), John Trainor (PhD candidate Applied Anthropology), Andrenna Brock-Cadet (mother of Scorecard student), Emily Koby (master's student Applied Anthropology), Bonnie Salazar (Scorecard Community Coordinator), and Susan Carrigan (USF Social Marketing Ctr.).

In addition to the graduate students, the program received much support from Tonya Thomas as the neighborhood Scorecard coordinator and Sulphur Springs resident.

Next spring, however, the goal is for the schools to take the program and run with it, Dr. McDermott said.

“We have built an infrastructure with the schools and community organizers so that they could run the program on their own.”

Beyond that, the next task is to apply basic marketing principles and develop a tool kit that can be used in schools around the country, he said.

As for Ty’rique and the grand finale celebration, he didn’t win one of the grand prizes but still came away feeling like a winner. His mother Andrenna Brock-Cadet said that the Scorecard program was great for Ty’rique.

“Sometimes we’re surrounded by a lot of negative and this program was a positive thing for my son,” she said.

“As a parent, I enjoyed seeing him participate. And it helped me get out and move, too. Sometimes I would get in there and run around and play. They definitely need to keep this program going.”

Playing up the grand prizes at the Scorecard Finale Celebration are DJ Ekin (left), radio host for WBTP 95.7 the BEAT, and Acafool, a local hiphop artist.

Students get in the mix at the Scorecard Finale Celebration.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Communications
Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Dr. Alan Zelicoff (front center) with, from left to right, Wil Milhous, PhD, associate dean for research in the College of Public Health; John Sinnott, MD, director of Infectious Disease and International Medicine; and Phil Marty, PhD, associate vice president for USF Health Research.

A little-known smallpox outbreak in the Soviet Union years ago and its implications for biological weapons defense today was the topic when physician-scientist Dr. Alan Zelicoff visited USF Health last week. His Nov. 3 lecture in the College of Public Health Auditorium was sponsored by the USF Health Office of Research.

Dr. Zelicoff, a smallpox expert, is the former senior scientist at the Center for National Security and Arms Control at Sandia National Laboratories. He and experts from the Monterey Institute of International Studies linked a 1971 outbreak in the Kazakh Republic to a Soviet field test of weaponized smallpox. The Soviet Union did not report the outbreak to world health officials as required by law.

In an interview in the New York Times, Dr. Zelicoff called the outbreak a “watershed” because it demonstrated that the smallpox virus was more easily spread than previously thought and that there may be a vaccine-resistant strain.

“His lecture was a reality check on our continued need for diligence in areas of infectious diseases, disaster preparedness and biowarfare,” said Phillip Marty, PhD, associate vice president for the USF Health Office of Research.

Dr. Zelicoff’s current interests include risk and hazard analysis in hospital systems and office-based practice and technologies for improving the responsiveness of public health offices and countering biological weapons and terrorism. His latest book is Microbe: Are We Ready for the Next Plague?, a comprehensive account of the public health threat posed by microbial pathogens, including naturally emerging disease threats, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or West Nile virus.

Tampa, FL (Oc.t 28, 2009) -- You don’t have to look any further than backyard to see that there’s a regional water crisis. A three-year drought has dried up rivers and other water sources, pumping threatens wells and wetlands, and officials have imposed the toughest watering restrictions in the Tampa Bay area’s history.

A special forum at USF on Wednesday, Nov. 4, will focus on how water usage and responses to shortages here in Tampa Bay can have global environmental and health implications. The Tampa Bay chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the USF College of Public Health are sponsoring “The Global Water Crisis: Solutions from Tampa Bay,” at the USF College of Public Health auditorium, 13201 Bruce B. Downs Blvd, in Tampa. Refreshments will be served at 6:30 p.m. and the event starts at 7 p.m.

The keynote speaker, Dr. Noel J. Brown, president and CEO of Friends of the United Nations, is an internationally recognized expert on global water issues and champion of environmental sustainability. Dr. Brown and others have noted the unprecedented demand on water resources can have profound implications for the world’s water supply, protection of human health and the viability of aquatic ecosystems.

A panel discuss will feature Mary Mulhern of the Tampa City Council and Karl Nurse of St. Petersburg City Council, as well as Frank Mueller-Karger, PhD, of the USF College of Marine Science, Dr. David Randle, managing director of Waves of Change, and Phil Compton, regional representative of Sierra Club Florida.

For more information go to www.psr.org/tampa.

The USF College of Public Health, in collaboration with the Hillsborough County Health Department, provided 1,340 free seasonal flu shots Oct. 23 at its annual drive at the college, as well as about a 100  more at the USF Unstoppable Campaign event on Oct. 20. 

COPH students provided the health education materials, while trained USF nursing and medical students supervised by USF Health and health department nurses and physicians, administered the vaccines.

Dr. Donna Petersen gets her shot from nursing students Natalie Bercini and Courtney Abreu.

Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications

Recovery Act funds COPH study and pilot training program

A USF College of Public Health researcher has received a highly competitive National Institutes of Health grant to create and evaluate a web-based training program to help dentists and dental hygienists identify patients with eating disorders and refer them for treatment. Rita DeBate, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, was awarded the two-year NIH Challenge Grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The ARRA funding is expected to be $985,517 over two years.

NIH AARA Challenge Grants were designed to spur new areas of research and trigger an influx of research dollars into communities across the nation starting in September 2009. With NIH receiving 20,000 challenge grant applications, competition was called “fierce.” While Florida universities received 177 awards through the ARRA, only a few were awarded in Florida.

Eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa, have potentially serious health consequences that can contribute to, or cause, death, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics. Most people diagnosed with an eating disorder are under age 25, but deaths from eating disorders are highest among those between the ages of 25 and 64, NCHS statistics show.

Early identification, referral, and treatment significantly increase the likelihood of recovery, said Dr. DeBate. “Oral health providers play a fundamental role in the early detection, patient-specific oral treatment, and referral for care of eating disorders, because they are often the first health professionals to observe overt health effects. However, few dentists and dental hygienists are practicing this important clinical responsibility.”

Rita DeBate, PhD, received one of three highly competitive NIH ARRA Challenge Grants in Florida.

Over the two NIH-funded years, Dr. DeBate, the project’s principal investigator, and co-principal investigator Herbert Severson, PhD, senior research scientist at Oregon Research Institute, will customize their prototype web program, “Eating Disorders and Oral Health,” for use within dental and dental hygiene academic training programs. Adaptation of the prototype will be guided by input from dental and dental hygiene faculty and directors, an expert consultant panel, previous pilot data, and current e-learning methodology. Evaluation of the adapted web-based training program will involve 12 dental schools and dental hygiene programs across the country.

Damage to teeth, gums and oral tissue from disordered eating behaviors can begin as early as three months after excessive dieting or vomiting.

“The state of one’s oral health can be considered an early warning system for numerous health issues, including eating disorders,” Dr. DeBate said. “Consequently, oral health professionals can be among the first to observe the effects of eating disorders, but may not intervene for a variety of reasons. For instance, they may lack training and skill in identification of oral and physical symptoms of eating disorders, such as signs of malnutrition, dehydration and vomiting.”

Dr. DeBate’s previous research, which included focus groups with dentists and dental hygienists, revealed that they often felt uncomfortable approaching patients on sensitive topics such as an eating disorder.

“They realize that this is an important oral/systemic health issue, but also noted that they lacked confidence in patient approach, communication, and referral for treatment,” Dr. DeBate said. “In part, this program aims to improve skills in patient communication regarding this sensitive topic.”

Many dental health professionals also felt they could not start an oral treatment program with patients who, because of the secretive nature of their behavior, might be denying their eating disorder, she said. “Treatment can only begin when patients are ready for it. So assessing patient readiness to address disordered eating behaviors and secondary prevention are linked.”

Dr. DeBate and colleagues hope that the training program will increase dental professionals’ capacity to deliver eating disorder-specific secondary prevention and, ultimately, increase the rates of early treatment for people with eating disorders.

- Story by Randolph Fillmore, Florida Science Communications
- Photo by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Supporters of USF Health kicked off the USF: Unstoppable campaign Tuesday evening, Oct. 20, by toasting with pomegranate “Health-tinis,” playing with a simulator baby used to teach nursing and medical students, and getting free flu shots.

It was all part of a gala to launch the public phase of the most comprehensive capital campaign in USF’s history. The goal: to raise $600 million. More than 500 donors, alumni, faculty, staff and friends were on hand to hear the announcement by Judy Genshaft, president of the USF System, USF Foundation CEO Joel Momberg and Campaign Chair Les Muma.

The USF Health exhibit presented a vision of Health 2020.

So far, the campaign has raised $317 million in donor gifts and pledges.

“Tonight is a night to celebrate two things: perseverance and promise,” said Genshaft. “Our students are solving big problems. Our faculty is changing the world. USF is building the university of the future. We believe our mission to serve the educational, economic and health needs of our community, Florida and the world are too important to be deterred or delayed.”

President Judy Genshaft displays a test tube full of USF Health's favorite beverage: a Health-tini.

Two of the campaign’s most significant early gifts have gone to benefit projects at USF Health. Frank and Carol Morsani donated $10 million, used to help build the Frank and Carol Morsani Center for Advanced Healthcare, as well as for sports facilities.

Muma and his wife, Pam, donated $6 million to fund neonatal research, as well as to build an neonatal intensive care unit at Tampa General Hospital. They gave another $3 million to athletics.

At Tuesday’s event, the USF Marshall Student Center was transformed by nearly two dozen exhibits showing off USF programs. At the USF Health exhibit, guests were treated to the “Health-tinis,” full of pomegranate antioxidants and delivered in mock test tubes. Video monitors featured Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO of USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine, sharing USF Health’s vision for the future of health care, Health 2020, along with a montage of images from medicine, nursing and public health.

NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders gets his balance checked by physical therapy students Heather Matako, left, and Elizabeth Morgan.

Physical therapy students helped guests measure their balance using a Biosway Balance machine. Guests who stood on the machine’s platform – including a spell with their eyes closed, teetering on a block of foam – got to see how they compare to others their age on several measures of balance. Physical therapists can use the data to develop therapies to improve balance and prevent falls.

He may be the CEO, but Dr. Stephen Klasko still delivers babies...real or, in this case, simulated.

The star of the show may have been the exhibit’s youngest member: the simulator baby. Faculty members from the College of Nursing dressed the baby in a “Future Bull” T-shirt and named him Rocky to mark the occasion. A steady stream of visitors came to play with Rocky, hearing him cry, feeling his heart beat, and even watching him turn blue because of breathing difficulties. Each time, of course, he was swiftly rescued by clinical instructor Jenny Molloy and teaching lab assistant Freida Lahti, who demonstrated some of the skills that nursing and medical students learn by caring for Rocky.

Dee Jeffers, program director in the College of Public Health’s Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies, stopped by and was captivated. She donned a stethoscope and listened to Rocky breathe.

“I didn’t know we did this,” she said. “There’s so much happening at USF, you just can’t keep up with it. The knowledge explosion for students – it’s amazing.”

Freida Lahti helps Baby Rocky's simulated breathing return to normal.

- Story by Lisa Greene, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

     Imagine two retirees, both in Florida, both with similar lifestyles and health conditions. The only difference: one lives in Miami, the other in Tampa.

      Chances are, the federal government spends nearly twice as much on the Miami retiree as the Tampa one.

      Those are among the findings of a project called the Dartmouth Atlas, an ongoing examination of differences in health care spending around the U.S. On Friday, Jonathan Skinner, senior author of the Dartmouth Atlas John Sloan Dickey Third Century Chair of Economics at Dartmouth College, discussed those differences at a talk presented by the USF College of Public Health.

     Health economist Jonathan Skinner, PhD, chats with Donna Petersen, ScD, MHS, dean of the College of Public Health

       The nation’s most expensive Medicare patients are in Miami, where Medicare spends $16,351 per enrollee each year. Compare that to Tampa, where spending is $8,911 per enrollee.

      Those cost differences mount up, Dr. Skinner said.

      “You start ending up with enough money for, if not a new Ferrari, at least a used Ferrari,” he joked.

      The cost differences are particularly puzzling when you look at health quality measures , Dr. Skinner said. For example, Medicare spends far less per enrollee in San Francisco than in Miami.

     “Yet by all measures,” he said, “San Francisco is at least as good as Miami.”

      Those differences have important policy implications, Dr. Skinner said – both for reining in Medicare’s spiraling costs and for health care reform. What if we could deliver the same quality of care across the country on a San Francisco budget instead of a Miami one?

      “Could we get closer to universal coverage?” he asked.

      Dartmouth Atlas researchers have tried to find non-medical ways to explain the cost disparities. But possible differences in patients in different cities don’t seem to explain the gaps, Dr. Skinner said. Researchers have adjusted for differences in age, sex, race and income without explaining the disparities.

      What does have an effect? In some places, what Dr. Skinner describes as “entrepreneurial surgeons” – doctors who are aggressive adovocates for a particular procedure – can affect costs. Cardiologists in Elyria, Ohio, for instance, attracted national publicity after Dartmouth Atlas research showed that residents there were getting angioplasties at four times the national average.

      Similarly, another factor that explains regional differences is the amount of money each region spends on health care during the last two years of life -- how chronically ill patients are treated and how often they’re hospitalized.  Small differences in how doctors make decisions about whether to send a patient to a hospital or a specialist can add up to big changes in spending.

- Story by Lisa Greene, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Three College of Public Health faculty members have been recognized with 2009 Outstanding Research Achievement Awards -- John Adams, PhD, Professor, Global Health; Russell Kirby, PhD, Professor and Marrell Endowed Chair, Community and Family Health; and Hamisu Salihu, MD, PhD, Professor, Epidemiology. The awards are bestowed on faculty whose exceptional research was recognized with preeminent awards, grants or publications in top journals during the 2008 calendar year. The $1,000 awards were presented Oct. 9 at a luncheon sponsored by the USF Office of Research & Innovation.

Dr. John Adams was recognized for the publication of “Comparative Genomics of the Neglected Human Parasite Plasmodium vivax Illuminates Malaria Parasite Biology” in the journal Nature and two articles in Public Library of Science Pathogens (PLoS Path). A member of the USF College of Public Health’s Global Health Infectious Diseases Research team, he studies protein ligands that help malaria parasites bind to a person’s red blood cell wall. His team uses advanced analytic technologies to pursue effective vaccine and mosquito-based therapies to prevent malaria caused by P. vivax and P. falciparum, the most common types of malaria. Dr. Adams contributed to a major international research initiative comparing the genome of the malaria parasite P. vivax with other sequenced Plasmodium genomes. Comparing similarities and differences between parasites’ genomes can help determine genetic targets for new drugs and vaccine development. Dr. Adams oversees the Vector-Borne Pathogen Laboratory, or insectary, where researchers study the complex life cycle of the malaria parasite transmitted by mosquitoes.

Dr. Russell Kirby was recognized for receiving the Godfrey P. Oakley, Jr. Award by the National Birth Defects Prevention Network for his significant contributions to the field of birth defects and his senior leadership in several collaborative research projects undertaken by the network. Dr. Kirby is a doctorally-trained geographer with extensive training and experience in public health practice, academic medicine and academic public health. While his research interests in maternal and child health are quite broad, he focuses on population-based research in birth defects and developmental disabilities epidemiology and prevention, as well as on risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes. He recently co-authored the book Perinatal Epidemiology for Public Health Practice, and collaborates extensively with professionals from a variety of disciplines, including medicine, nursing, public health, economics, sociology and psychology. Dr. Kirby is president of the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research and of the Association of Teachers of Maternal and Child Health.

Dr. Hamisu Salihu was recognized for publication of a novel theory called “event memory hypothesis,” which suggests a possible molecular memory-recall programming pattern in human gestation using epidemiological and molecular evidence. The groundbreaking theory suggests that when fetal death occurs the event is retained (memorized) as a program that is replayed in future pregnancies. In 2008 this theory was published in the journals Medical Hypotheses and Obstetrics & Gynecology, and may help to understand and prevent the causes of fetal death. Dr. Salihu, director of the Center for Research and Evaluation at the Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies at USF, is a leading researcher in the field of infant mortality. He is a key player in the Black Infant Health Practice Initiative – a statewide collaborative to address the racial gap in infant deaths in Florida and to recommend policy changes at the local and state levels. He has authored more than 100 journal articles; including recently published studies that shed new light on obesity’s role in the black-white gap in infant mortality.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
- Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Timothy Bender and Desiree Del Orbe are among the USF undergraduate students learning about the ecology of Eastern equine encephalitis with the help of Hassan K. Hassan, MSc (center), a research associate in Dr. Thomas Unnasch's laboratory.

While we spent the summer and entered the fall abuzz over the potential for H1N1 virus, or the ‘Swine Flu,’ to sweep the nation, some University of South Florida students and one high school student found employment that put them in search of mosquitoes carrying a rarer but deadlier virus, Eastern equine encephalitis, or EEE.

“Eastern equine encephalitis is rare, but when humans get the disease the fatality rate is 50 to 70 percent,” says Thomas Unnasch, PhD, a professor in the USF Department of Global Health, College of Public Health. “It is nearly 100 percent fatal for horses. The ecology of EEE in the Southeastern United States is not well understood.”

Beneficiaries of NIH stimulus funding

Dr. Unnasch, who has had ongoing funding from the National Institutes of Health to study the ecology and transmission of EEE and several other diseases, received additional funding under the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” which allocated $21 million nationally over two years for educational supplements to existing research programs. The stimulus funding has provided extended summer employment for more than 3,000 undergraduates and high school students nation-wide.

With his supplemental grant, Dr. Unnasch was able to hire six USF undergraduates and one high school student to take an active role in tracking down which of the 60-plus varieties of mosquitoes in the Tampa Bay area carry EEE. In addition, his collaborators at Auburn University were also able to hire student summer researchers.

The goal of the research is to identify the vectors (the mosquitoes) carrying the EEE virus and identify their feeding sources. Some EEE carrying mosquitoes feed exclusively on birds, says Dr. Unnasch, while others may feed on mammals of several varieties. Because of suburban development, mosquitoes carrying EEE may be coming into closer contact with people, especially in rapidly developing areas such as Hillsborough and Pasco Counties, where USF undergraduate student Timothy Bender and Raphael Shattenkirk, a student at Tampa Preparatory School, trap mosquitoes several days a week.

“Raphael sets the traps in the evening and I pick them up in the morning,” explains Bender, a biology major.

Mosquitoes caught in netted traps left overnight in developing areas of Hillsborough and Pasco counties are frozen and brought to the laboratory for analysis under the microscope. The researchers want to identify the mosquitoes carrying EEE and their feeding sources.

The traps attract mosquitoes using a small light bulb, the release of carbon dioxide from dry ice left overnight, and a small fan that sucks them into the netted traps. In the morning, Bender pops the trap bag in the freezer, which kills them, and then he delivers them to the USF lab where USF undergraduate student Desiree Del Orbe puts the dead mosquitoes, up to 60-100 per day, under the microscope and sorts them by sex, species, and which of the females (the only mosquitoes that bite) have had a recent “blood meal,” evidenced by their swollen bellies. These are the mosquitoes of interest, the ones that may be carrying EEE.

“Ultimately, we want to determine which mosquitoes carry the virus, the source of their blood meals, and the ecological area where the mosquitoes were active,” says Del Orbe. “This information will help the counties with mosquito spraying when they can target specific areas.”

According to Dr. Unnasch, Florida spends $75 million annually on mosquito control, but the efforts are not as efficiently targeted as they could be if we understood more about the ecology of the virus.

Hands-on Research Experience

Students in the lab, under the supervision of Hassan K. Hassan, MSc, research associate, run a battery of tests, including real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) to look for virus RNA, and DNAPCR tests on the blood meal to determine meal source. Their results are shared with both the state Department of Health and the county mosquito control offices. In this win-win summer research project not only do the counties get good data, but students learn the research process from field to bench.

“They get to learn about lab safety,” says Hassan. “They learn why we use this chemical or that one, they learn to use the lab equipment and how to avoid sample contamination. Many students would not learn these things until graduate school.”

Christy Ottendorfer, PhD, a post-doctoral fellow in the lab, says that 2009 has been a “big year” for EEE because of the rainfall amounts and the increased mosquito populations. “Fortunately there have been no human cases, but Florida is leading the nation in equine deaths from EEE,” says Dr. Ottendorfer.

There is a “known unknown” in EEE research. The big issue for the research team is to find what they call the “bridge species” of mosquito. “If mosquitoes carrying the virus feed on birds and non-human mammals, how do people get it?” asks Ottendorfer.

According to Dr. Unnasch, the student researchers are indispensable.

“The real hard part of this research is getting people out there to do the field work, the sample collections,” he says. “It helps to have a bunch of enthusiastic people willing to get out there to set the traps and collect samples. Their help has allowed us to increase the number of collection sites.”

The other benefit to having student help is that with an increase in good data, the NIH is more likely to continue funding the project. The stimulus funding runs through Oct. 31, and then many of the students will continue to work on the project as volunteers, says Hassan.

- Story and photos by Randolph Fillmore, Florida Science Communications

TAMPA, Fla. (September 4, 2009) -- Researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the College of Public Health were recently awarded a three-year, $800,000 grant from National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to establish a Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics at USF.

Led by Yiliang Zhu, PhD, professor in the College of Public Health, the USF team draws upon a wide array of expertise from researchers at Colleges of Public Health, Medicine, Nursing, Moffitt Cancer Center, Jaeb Center for Health Research, and Tampa VA hospital.

The summer institute, which will open in the summer of 2010, is a part of a national effort to train the next generation of biostatistical scientists. Its aim is to address a persistent shortage in biostatistics training and to support medical and health research.

Undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing an academic program or a professional career in biostatistics should consider applying to participate in the six-week summer institute. For more information, email Yiliang Zhu at yzhu@health.usf.edu.