Florida’s rate of ectopic pregnancy deaths jumped in 2009-10 – an increase that may be associated with delays in obtaining care and illicit drug use, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  The state’s rise in ectopic pregnancy deaths, published in the CDC’s Feb. 17 issue of Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, runs counter to the national trend of steadily declining deaths.

“It was surprising,” said one of the report’s co-authors Dr. William Sappenfield, director of the Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies at USF, who was maternal-child health epidemiologist at the Florida Department of Health when the study was conducted.

“Nationwide, ectopic pregnancy death rates are going down, because the condition has become much easier and quicker to diagnose and treat,” said Dr. Sappenfield, chair of Community and Family Health at the USF College of Public Health.

Dr. William Sappenfield of the USF College of Public Health was a co-author
of the report published in the CDC’s Mortality & Morbidity Weekly.

Ectopic pregnancy occurs when an egg is fertilized outside the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube.  If it remains undetected the pregnant woman may die if the tube ruptures, leading to rapid blood loss.

Improvements in pregnancy testing, ultrasound examination and outpatient treatments, including laparoscopic surgery and medications, have contributed to the decline in deaths. This success is largely dependent on access to care so women with signs and symptoms of ectopic pregnancy can be identified and treated before tube rupture, shock and severe blood loss.

Dr. Sappenfield helped staff the multidisciplinary team investigating ectopic pregnancy deaths in Florida, based on a review of cause death, risk factors and prevention opportunities.

Florida’s ectopic pregnancy mortality ratio was similar to the national rate of 0.6 deaths per 100,000 live births during 1999–2008, but increased abruptly to 2.5 during 2009-2010.  This four-fold increase appeared to be linked in part to lack of access to care. The researchers found that the 13 women who died in the one year (2009-2010) were more likely to have collapsed from a hemorrhage before seeking care than the 11 women who died the previous decade from ectopic pregnancies. Of the eight women who collapsed during 2009-2010, six tested positive for illicit drug use.

“We clearly have not reached our potential to prevent this life-threatening condition,” Dr. Sappenfield said.

Based on their review, the investigators wrote: “Efforts to prevent ectopic pregnancy deaths need to ensure early access to care, promote awareness about early pregnancy testing and ectopic pregnancy risk, and raise public awareness about substance abuse risks, especially during pregnancy.”

While ectopic pregnancy cannot be prevented, Dr. Sappenfield said, pregnant women and those of childbearing age should not delay seeking medical attention for continuing abdominal or pelvic pain, usually 6 to 8 weeks after a missed period.  Better to quickly rule out an ectopic pregnancy than to risk future fertility and perhaps dangerous complications if the pregnancy ruptures the fallopian tube.

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

Ray is project director of Florida Covering Kids and Families, part of the Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies, which is operated through the USF College of Public Health. Ray was recognized by CMS – along with nine other organizations and individuals – for her outstanding efforts to identify and enroll eligible children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and was named recipient of ECHOE (Excellence in Children’s Health Outreach and Enrollment).

“The efforts of Jodi Ray and the other honorees have helped eligible children get the high quality coverage and care that Medicaid and CHIP provide,” said CMS Administrator, Donald Berwick, MD. “These honorees have not only helped to improve participation in health coverage, but also have enriched our understanding of the best ways to help consumers obtain and keep health coverage.”

As part of her successful outreach for children’s health, Ray led a statewide effort to engage, train and support 16 local, all volunteer community coalitions covering 30 Florida counties that focus on reducing the number of uninsured children.  Activities to get eligible children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP — the Florida KidCare Program — range from school-based activities, working with the children’s hospitals, providing one-on-one application assistance to families, partnering with both small and large businesses and enlisting municipal governments in outreach activities. In addition, Ray has forged partnerships with veteran’s social services organizations. Under a Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) Cycle I grant, such efforts helped obtain and renew coverage for more than 11,000 eligible Florida children.

Under CHIPRA, CMS has awarded $90 million in outreach grants since 2009.  These grants are aimed at ensuring further improvements in reaching children who are eligible but unenrolled. An additional $40 million in funding will be made available under the Affordable Care Act for improving outreach and enrollment efforts. ECHOE honorees include past and current CHIPRA outreach and enrollment grantees, as well as groups working in partnership with grantees.  Their activities include using technology in innovative ways to enroll eligible children, enlisting schools in effective outreach, sponsoring a successful enrollment telethon and designing the systems needed to ensure that eligible children retain their health coverage for as long as they qualify.

“The efforts of State, Tribal and community partners, like our honorees, have helped to achieve significant progress toward reducing the number of children who are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP,” said Cindy Mann, deputy administrator and director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. “Because of their work, participation rates have improved nationally and in every region of the country, and we are better prepared to meet future enrollment challenges.”

William Sappenfield, MD, MPH, brings nearly 27 years experience in maternal and child health (MCH) epidemiological research and practice at the national, state and local levels.

Dr. Sappenfield joins the University of South Florida from the Florida Department of Health, where for six years he was state MCH epidemiologist and directed the MCH Practice and Analysis Unit. He came to Florida in 2005 after retiring as a commissioned public health officer from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he served for 21 years — most recently as team leader of the CDC’s MCH Epidemiology Program.

William Sappenfield, MD, PhD

Using statistics and other data, epidemiologists measure the health of specified populations and then apply this information to help evaluate whether programs or policies work to improve health or prevent illness.

“We welcome Dr. Sappenfield to the College of Public Health with great enthusiasm. He is well-regarded as a consummate professional, an outstanding scholar and a true leader,” said Donna Petersen, ScD, dean of the USF College of Public Health. “He has a deep passion for excellence, a high regard for our students and a commitment to building a world-class enterprise at USF Health using the best tools of public health — social epidemiology, community engagement, social marketing and prevention efforts — to improve the health of families.”

As an MCH epidemiologist leader at the state and the CDC, Dr. Sappenfield has directed teams of epidemiologists, worked with programs across departments, and collaborated with state and local public health agencies, organizations and universities. When he decided to seek a full-time academic position, Dr. Sappenfield, a board-certified pediatrician with an MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, could have chosen from among many prestigious institutions.

“I’m excited to be here,” Dr. Sappenfield said. “USF has an outstanding college of public health, has a successful track record and is really poised with the right faculty to make a difference in shaping health for the future… The key will be putting together the right partners and finding the right funding sources so we can do what needs to be done to improve the health of mothers and children in Florida.”

At the Florida Department of Health, Dr. Sappenfield directed a variety of MCH epidemiological studies, including assessing the causes of infant mortality in Florida, investigating factors associated with the state’s increase in ectopic pregnancy deaths, examining at ways to improve effective use of contraceptives, and studying in a multistate analysis the reasons for children’s poor access to preventive dental care (Florida ranks last nationwide).

He also worked with public and private partners across the state to help launch the new Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative. USF’s College of Public Health and the Chiles Center, supported by a March of Dimes grant, provide leadership and technical assistance for the initiative. The first project, underway in six hospitals, aims to reverse the rise in cesarean sections and inductions for non-medical reasons before 39 weeks of pregnancy.

Research by Dr. Sappenfield and others has shown that infants born even a week or two early have higher rates of hospitalization and illness than full-term infants; evidence suggests they may even be more prone to learning disabilities. “Sometimes aggressively intervening in a pregnancy is not necessarily better,” Dr. Sappenfield said. “This collaborative has the potential to reduce complications that lead to greater health care costs.”

In addition to overseeing the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative, the Chiles Center was recently selected to evaluate the effectiveness of federally-funded home visiting program models that serve pregnant women and children from birth to age 5. In Florida, the new program will focus on providing integrated health services to families in five high-risk communities, including Pinellas County.

Dr. Sappenfield envisions strengthening the outreach of the Chiles Center to improve perinatal outcomes and children’s health in Florida – a state just starting to show a decline in infant mortality but still reporting disparities, especially for black infants. He will start by forging research collaborations across the university and the state

“I want to help build a place where we can make difference in shaping the future of health in all its dimensions,” he said. “Not only through research and the promotion of prevention and public policy, but also by training and mentoring the professionals who will pick up where we leave off – and hopefully do better.”

Dr. Sappenfield received a MD degree from Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and a MPH degree concentrated in epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. He completed a pediatric residency at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and a preventive medicine residency at the CDC in Atlanta. He also received applied epidemiology training through the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service program.

Throughout his career, Dr. Sappenfield has held faculty appointments in several schools of public health and at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. He serves on several national committees and on the editorial board of the Maternal and Child Health Journal.

Julie Baldwin, PhD, who served as chair of Community and Family Health since 2008, will continue to pursue her research, teaching and community engagement activities as a professor in the department.

- USF Health -

USF Health’s mission is to envision and implement the future of health. It is the partnership of the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, the College of Nursing, the College of Public Health, the College of Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group. The University of South Florida is a global research university ranked 34th in federal research expenditures for public universities.

Media contact:
Anne DeLotto Baier, (813) 974-3303 or abaier@health.usf.edu

Dr. Troutman, who joined USF last fall, will serve this post until Nov. 2014, when he will become president of the organization for a three-year term. He is professor in USF’s Department of Community and Family Health in the College of Public Health and directs the Public Health Practice and Leadership, the Center for Leadership in Public Health, and the Public Health Practice Masters of Public Health program.

“In his role of president-elect and then president, Dr. Adewale Troutman will be THE voice for THE leading authority on public health in this country, and we couldn’t be prouder,” said Donna Petersen, MHS, ScD, dean of the USF College of Public Health and senior associate vice president of USF Health.

The American Public Health Association is the oldest and most diverse organization of public health professionals in the world, she said. Like the American Medical Association or the American Nurses Association it provides critical services and supports to this profession in advocacy, training, standard setting and networking.  Recognizing the importance of both science and practice, APHA publishes the premier journal in our field, The American Journal of Public Health and supports the efforts of public health association chapters in every state.

Dr. Troutman’s work centers on health disparities and understanding why the differences exist. Earlier this year, Dr. Troutman was appointed to the national Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality, a group that reports directly to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His published research has focused on health disparities and health issues affecting African-Americans.

Another key role for Dr. Troutman at USF is directing the HRSA Public Health Training Center, which was funded last fall with a five-year, $3.25 million grant from the Health and Human Resources Administration. The training center assesses the learning needs and further develops the knowledge and skills of the state’s current and future public health professionals. USF was one of 27 accredited schools of public health and other public and non-profit institutions across the country – the only one in Florida – to receive such an award.

Prior to joining USF, Dr. Troutman directed the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, was associate professor at the University of Louisville, School of Public Health and filled the Frederick Douglas Visiting Professorship on Pan African Studies at the University of Louisville. He also serves on the executive committee of the National Academy for Health Equity.

Dr. Troutman earned his medical degree from the New Jersey Medical School and his master’s degree in public health from Columbia University. He also has a master’s degree in Black Studies from the State University of New York-Albany. He spent 13 years directing the emergency medicine services at United Hospital’s Medical Center in Newark, NJ.

Dr. Dennis Kyle, Professor in the Department of Global Health was recently selected as one of only two USF Health Distinguished Professors awarded this year.  This is the highest honor bestowed on a member of the USF Health faculty and we know that Dr. Kyle clearly merits this distinction.

Dr. Kyle majored in Biology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (BA, 1979) and completed a PhD in Zoology at Clemson University (1984). Following a postdoctoral position at the University of Georgia, he began a 21 year association with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR). During this time he led key efforts with the US Army’s Drug and Vaccine Development Programs, eventually serving as Deputy Director of the Division of Experimental Therapeutics. During this period he also served as the Chief, Department of Immunology and Parasitology at the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) in Bangkok, Thailand (1991-94) and was a senior scientist in the malaria drug program at the Australian Army Malaria Institute (AMI) from January 2002 through June 2004. Dr. Kyle has more than 140 publications in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, serves on peer review panels for the National Institutes of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO), chaired the Genomics and Discovery Research Steering Committee and the Compound Evaluation Network for WHO, and has research funding from NIAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Medicines for Malaria Venture.. Dr. Kyle is the principal investigator for a three-year Gates Foundation grant seeking to develop human liver models that could more quickly and accurately test potential drug candidates for vivax and falciparum malaria. On February 2011, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently granted the University of South Florida nearly $5.5 million to find a new way of testing and treating malaria.

His research interests include the discovery and development of new antiparasitic drugs and elucidation of mechanisms of antimalarial drug resistance. Predoctoral training opportunities in the Kyle Lab include basic and translational approaches to drug discovery and development as well as chemical biology of antiparasitic drugs and elucidation of drug resistance mechanisms. All of the current projects in the Kyle Lab are multidisciplinary and result in active collaborations with colleagues in chemistry, molecular biology, pharmacology, and clinical practice.

http://personal.health.usf.edu/dkyle/

Dr. Donna Petersen

“We are an outstanding school of public health and this confirms the quality of our operations and our efforts in addition to the passion we bring to everything we do,” said Donna J. Petersen, MHS, ScD, dean of the College and senior associate vice president for USF Health.

“Accreditation is not just a ‘seal of approval,’ but is an indicator of quality. The very positive report we received indicates that we have a solid foundation from which to continue to build programs of distinction in all facets of public health.  I am very grateful to everyone who contributed to this achievement – from our faculty, staff and students to our colleagues across campus and our partners in the community.  This was truly a team effort.”

Among the strengths was the College’s planning and evaluation process, and student competencies.

“They found our planning and evaluation model to be particularly robust and appreciated how well we track our progress in a fully transparent manner,” Dr. Petersen said. “They particularly praised the sophistication of our competencies. To earn accreditation, schools must have a well-developed set of competencies that drive academic programs, curricula and courses.  Our system, developed over many months by a stellar group of faculty is one of the more mature and dynamic, meaning faculty embrace the concept and students are fully aware of the competencies they are developing through their curricular and co-curricular activities.”

Dr. Deanna Wathington chaired the college’s
Accreditation Steering Committee.

Concerns from the Council included increasing student retention and graduation rates and implementing consistent review processes for courses from external degree programs that substitute for joint degree students’ public health coursework. The College is to provide a report in the fall 2013 showing evidence for improving these areas.

The USF College of Public Health was created by the Florida legislature in 1984 to provide leadership for the Florida public health system through the development of academic programs and by serving as a resource for the state’s public health officials.

Since then, the College has graduated more than 3,000 public health professionals with master’s and doctoral degrees and graduate certificates, and nearly 300 undergraduates have completed a new public health minor. In 2010, the College began offering an undergraduate degree in public health. Faculty have generated more than $275 million in external research funding, and the College’s endowment has topped $13 million.

In June 2009, the 25th Anniversary of the College of Public Health was recognized with a formal resolution offered by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and unanimously passed by the Florida Cabinet. Then Gov. Charlie Crist presented the resolution to USF President Judy Genshaft and Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO for USF Health.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications

With the help of KaBOOM – a not-for-profit organization that funds playground equipment in places where the resources are most needed but ill afforded – the COPH team and other members of the Tampa community turned an empty lot on the corner of 15th Street and 19th Avenue in Tampa into a beautiful children’s park in just seven hours.

In the early morning, the site was an empty lot.

Seven hours later, a playground is ready for play.

“This project put into practice what we talk about in class,” said Carla VandeWeerd, PhD, assistant professor in the COPH’s Department of Community and Family Health and associate director of the James and Jennifer Harrell Center for the Study of Domestic Violence.

“Health is very much a socially determined phenomena and factors, including access to parks and green spaces, can dramatically affect health outcomes like obesity and stress. The project was also a great example of how a group of mobilized, dedicated individuals can make change and affect these outcomes.”

“Building the children’s park was a very low budget enterprise done with man power but without power tools,” she said, “and I am so proud of all the hard work the students put in.”

The volunteers mixed cement by hand, hoe and wheel barrel, and carried and laid  more than 500 cubic feet of  of mulch by tarp. They erected sections of playground equipment and benches via ratchet or hammer, and they painted fence posts and permanent chess boards to ensure kids would have access to a beautiful space for long-term game playing.

Mathieu Poirier cuts holes where the posts will go through the tarp.

Jessica Smith and Mathieu Poirier use a tarp to haul mulch.

Corailia Vazquez-Otero, Katherine Price, Monica Rousseau paint chess boards.

The work brought out local neighborhood kids who were eager to give the new playground a try.

“The kids were so excited that their street was going to have a slide and swings that they could hardly understand why they had to wait to play until the cement dried,” she said. “They too were clearly proud of the new park in their neighborhood; and for the students, it was a real lesson in the ways environment can really foster social capitol and a sense of social cohesion.”

In addition to Dr. VandeWeerd, the COPH team included Saboria Thomas, Coralia Vasquez Otero, Katie Lasch, Tiffany DeFiore, Jessica Smith, Monica Rousseau, Mathieu Poirier and Katherine Price.

The team: Coralia Vazquez-Otero, Mathieu Poirier, Katie Lasch, Jessica Smith, Dr. Carla VandeWeerd, Monica Rousseau, Katherine Price, Saboria Thomas, and Tiffancy DeFiore

“Students in my class draw on experiences from all of their courses as they begin to really understand and tie the multifaceted impacts of socially determined health together, evaluate current programs, and identify additional ways we can make a difference through Public Health,” Dr. VandeWeerd said.

“As a teacher, it was fantastic to see it happen in real time.”

The study, which appears today in the online journal PLoS ONE, suggests that this early-stage dormancy phenomenon contributes to the failure of artesunate alone, or even combined with other drugs, to eliminate the mosquito-borne disease.  Alexis LaCrue, PhD, research associate in the USF Department of Global Health, is the lead author of the study, which was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The emergence of parasites resistant to artesunate therapy along the Thai-Cambodian border could seriously undermine the success of global malaria control efforts, the World Health Organization has reported.

“There is an urgent public health need to understand why this antimalarial drug resistance is happening and the basis for it, so we can help arrest its spread,” said principal investigator Dennis Kyle, PhD, distinguished university health professor at the USF College of Public Health.

“Our study was able to induce the same dormant stage in vivo — in a rodent malaria model — that was previously seen only in the test tube,” Kyle said. “The work suggests that dormancy is involved in the earliest stage of parasite development in the red blood cells. It may be a new mechanism for how the parasite avoids being wiped out by artemisinin drugs.” 

Alexis LaCrue, PhD, lead author of the study, with principal investigator
Dennis Kyle, PhD.

When mice infected with rodent malaria parasites were treated with artesunate, dormant parasites were present in their red blood cells 24 hours following treatment. The researchers also found a positive association between the number of dormant parasites present and when malaria infection re-emerged in the mice.

More studies are needed to help explain the mechanism behind the early-stage dormancy and its contribution to treatment failure.

“Now that we have a robust animal model for studying how the parasites become dormant and then recover,” Kyle said, “we may be able to change our dosing regimens and investigate drug partners for artemisinin that are better at killing the dormant parasites.”

A ring stage malaria parasite in its active and dormant state.

Malaria parasites are transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. In humans, they enter red blood cells and start replicating after being released from the disease’s first target, the liver.   Once parasites escape into the bloodstream, disease symptoms emerge including chills, fever, headache, body aches, vomiting and exhaustion. 

Malaria affects 10 percent of the world’s population, killing nearly one million people a year in developing countries and crippling their economies.  Most who die or become ill are poor pregnant women and children under age 5 in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia and South America.

In addition to LaCrue and Kyle, the study authors were Misty Scheel, Katherine Kennedy and Nikesh Kumar – all members of the USF Global Infectious Disease Research team.

-USF Health-

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group.  Ranked 34th in federal research expenditures for public universities by the National Science Foundation, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university dedicated to student success.

Media contact:
Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
abaier@health.usf.edu or (813) 974-3300

The University of South Florida’s Public Health Dean  rolled up her sleeve Friday and got a flu shot from the University’s highest ranking nurse — Dianne Morrison-Beedy, PhD, dean of the USF College of Nursing.  Donna Petersen, ScD, was among the more than 1,200 people who received free flu shots Oct. 20 at the College of Public Health’s Annual Flu Shot Drive.  Also stopping by to get her flu shot and visit with students was USF President Judy Genshaft.

Working in collaboration with the Hillsborough County Health Department (HCHD), nursing and medical student volunteers supervised by clinical faculty, occupational medicine residents and HCHD nurses provided 1,269 vaccinations against this year’s predicted strains of influenza virus. The USF College of Public Health underwrites the cost of the vaccines, which are supplied by the health department.

This is the 15th year that the college has offered the free shots as a community service to area residents as well as members of USF.

USF President Judy Genshaft with USF nursing students who volunteered
at the College of Public Health’s annual flu shot drive.

MD-MPH student Olga Zayko prepares a vaccine.

Nursing student Crystal Strain administers a shot to medical student Kirk Chassey.

Paula Knaus, associate dean for faculty and staff affairs at the College of Public Health, gets her shot.

Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications, and Ellen Kent, College of Public Health

The USF College of Public Health 15th annual  Free Flu Shot Drive will be held 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Friday, Oct. 21, at the college, 13201 Bruce B. Downs Blvd, Tampa FL 33612 (corner of Bruce B. Downs Blvd and Fletcher Ave.).  The shots will be available to adults ages 18 and older while supplies last.

Working in collaboration with the Hillsborough County Health Department (HCHD), nursing and medical student volunteers supervised by clinical faculty, occupational medicine residents and HCHD nurses will offer vaccinations against this year’s predicted influenza viruses. The USF College of Public Health underwrites the cost of the vaccines, which are supplied by the health department.

Public health students will staff a variety of educational exhibits and help register those receiving the vaccines.

This is the 15th year that the college has offered the free shots as a community service to area residents as well as members of USF.

For more information, please call (813) 974-3623.

“Get reliable. Get forgettable. Get low cost… Get a new method.” That’s a key message of a new USF-directed mobile phone campaign that aims to educate college students about long-acting, reversible contraceptives (LARCs), which are highly effective in preventing unintended pregnancy but do not require daily user attention and can often cost less than birth control pills.

The pilot project, known as Beyond the Condom, or BtC, is funded by a grant to USF College of Public Health researcher Eric Buhi, PhD, by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. BtC  (text “BTC” to 99222) was launched across the USF campus Sept. 28.

Videographer Amy Mariani gets some B-roll of USF undergraduate student Amanda Buck using her smartphone between takes.

BtC involved scripting and developing text messages and mobile videos intended to influence attitudes and behaviors about LARCs – intrauterine devices (IUDs), the implant, the shot, the ring, and the patch.

The project was closely coordinated with a university-community advisory board that included undergraduate students who helped the project team frame the messages. Health care professionals vetted the scripts for the medical accuracy of pros and cons about each LARC featured.  USF students enrolled in sex, health and decision making classes provided feedback on the usability and acceptability of the text messages and mobile videos.

BtC production manager Ryan Morris discusses the video script with Buck.

“This project is different because it’s the first of its kind to study how mobile text and video can be used to promote contraceptive use behavior change, “said Buhi, whose research focuses on the impact of technology and social media on the sexual health and experiences of adolescents and young adults. “ It gives young women an opportunity to text in to learn more about these long-acting, reversible birth control methods in a way that’s convenient for them and very private. 
 
“We’re capitalizing on the mobile technologies young people use in every aspect of their lives today to get across our public health messages.”

As an added benefit to texting in, Buhi said, women are able to access a database, which helps identify LARC-friendly health providers in their area when the user types in her zip code.

USF College of Public Health researcher Eric Buhi, PhD, led the pilot project, which capitalizes on smartphone technology widely used by college students.

This spring and summer, a production team of students and staff led by Buhi, spent several days filming six mobile videos at various locations around USF, including a student’s apartment near the campus, in the USF Library, at the Marshall Center and at Student Health Services. All the young women in the 2-minute conversational videos were USF students, including Amanda Buck.

“I think it’s important for college women to know about birth control options other than the pill, which they may forget to take at the same time every day,” said Buck, an undergraduate theater major who appears in the video about the patch.

The BtC production crew 

The majority of college-age women who use contraceptive (65 percent) are on the pill, despite the increasing variety of LARCs that are “remarkably easy to use, safe and effective in preventing pregnancy,” said Tricia Trow Weaver, assistant director of the Women’s Health Clinic, USF Student Health Services.  

Weaver, a physician’s assistant, appears in the mobile video offering suggestions on what to consider when discussing birth control options with your healthcare provider, including lifestyle, effectiveness, cost, potential side effects and how long you want the method to last.  She emphasizes a message repeated throughout the BtC campaign — whatever contraceptive method is chosen to prevent pregnancy, condoms are still important for protecting against sexually transmitted diseases.

Weaver said she was fascinated by the opportunity to be part of a sexual health campaign that tapped into smartphone technology. “If you’re targeting a college student population, it’s certainly a way to get their attention,” she said. “I can be doing a Pap smear for a young woman, and she’s texting on the phone.”

The campus-wide marketing campaign promoting BtC  includes a Facebook page, flyers, T-shirt giveaways and advertisements in dormitories, on the Bull Runners and displayed on the video monitors in the Marshall Student Center.

Buhi speaks to a student while handing out pens as part of the grass-roots promotional campaign launching the BtC project.

Buhi, assistant professor of community and family health, will analyze the outcome of the project, including how many people accessed the mobile application and opted to watch the videos. If it proves effective in reaching USF students, BtC may be expanded to other college campuses across the state, he said.

MPH students Natalie Rella, left, and Joke Ogunrinde use aerosol chalk to stencil the BtC logo on sidewalk outside the USF Marshall Student Center.

L to R:  Ogunrinde, Buhi and Rella

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, and photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

The award, presented once every two years, recognizes an emerging leader in the field of sexual and reproductive health, where scientific evidence is essential to guiding the policies and programs of the future. It includes a $2,500 prize.

Dr. Buhi’s innovative research focuses on the impact of technology and social media on the sexual health and experiences of adolescents and young adults.

Eric Buhi, PhD, of the USF College of Public Health

“Eric’s work neatly encapsulates the criteria for the Darroch Award: cutting-edge research that has clear application to public policies and programs, leadership in the field of sexual and reproductive health, and a focus on educating students, early-career professionals and the field as a whole,” said Sharon L. Camp, president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute. “In an era when technology plays such an important role in our lives, Eric has been a leader in understanding its impact on reproductive health – and the role it can play in improving sexual health.”

Dr. Buhi has published on the accuracy of sexual health resources online, abstinence-only education programs and the dynamics of sexual exchange in a college setting. His work has led to new understanding of how the Internet and social media affect both risk and protective behaviors among young people.

A strong leader and educator, Dr. Buhi serves as the director of the Collaborative for Research Understanding Sexual Health (CRUSH), which encourages interdisciplinary working relationships between faculty and graduate students engaged in scientific research on sexual health. He has also published several articles introducing advanced statistical methods to a broader audience.

Dr. Buhi is president of the Eastern Region of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality and works with a number of community organizations focused on adolescent sexual health.

The Darroch Award was established in 2005 to recognize excellence among sexual and reproductive health researchers who are in the early or middle years of their career. It is named for Jacqueline E. Darroch, former senior vice president for science at Guttmacher and currently a senior fellow at the Institute, whose three decades at Guttmacher exemplified rigorous and innovative work on sexual and reproductive health issues and a commitment to the practical application of research to policy and programs.

“Our findings show that there are large disparities in infant mortality rates between white and black women and highlight the need for improved public health efforts to reduce infant mortality,” said principal investigator Dr. Hamisu Salihu, professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics at the University of South Florida College of Public Health.

“It is important that clinicians note the potential risk for subsequent stillbirth following infant mortality when they speak with patients in the period preceding their next pregnancy.”

         Dr. Hamisu Salihu

Infant mortality accounts for an estimated 5.75 million deaths annually worldwide and it is estimated there are 3.2 to 3.3 million stillbirths annually worldwide.

This new study looked at 320,350 women who had two single pregnancies between 1989 and 2005. Of these, 2,483 women (0.78%) had experienced infant death in the first pregnancy, while the remaining 317,867 women had an infant in their first pregnancy who survived the first year of life.

Within the study population, 1,347 cases of stillbirth occurred during the second pregnancy, representing a stillbirth rate of 4.2 per 1,000.

Mothers with previous infant death (defined as death of a child within the first year of life) were compared to those whose infant survived their first year.

Adjusted hazard ratios (AHR) were generated to assess the association between infant mortality in the first pregnancy and stillbirth in the second pregnancy.

The study found that overall women with prior infant death were three times as likely to experience stillbirth in their subsequent pregnancy (AHR=2.91).

White women with previous infant death were nearly twice as likely to experience subsequent stillbirth, compared to white women with prior infant survival (AHR=1.96). Black women with previous infant death were more than four times as likely to experience subsequent stillbirth, compared to their black counterparts (AHR=4.28).

The risk of stillbirth among women with and without a history of infant death, neonatal death, and post-neonatal death by race was also reviewed, and the researchers found that black women had the highest rates of stillbirth in subsequent pregnancy. Looking specifically at neonatal death, black women were more than nine times as likely to experience stillbirth as white women. (AHR=9.46).

The study also found that women with infant death in the first pregnancy were more likely to be black, obese, and smoke during pregnancy.

When comparing birth weight of infants associated with the second pregnancy, infants born to mothers with prior infant death were, on average, 293 grams smaller than those born to mothers whose previous infant survived their first year of life.

In addition, pregnancy complications were almost twice as frequent among mothers who experienced infant death during their first pregnancy, as compared to those whose infants survived their first year of life (10.91% versus 6.66%).

Citation:
“Infant mortality and subsequent risk of stillbirth: a retrospective cohort study;” EM August, HM Salihu, H Weldeselasse, BJ Biroscak, AK Mbah, and AP Alio; BJOG An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Published Online 21 September 2011; DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-0528.2011.03137.x

- USF Health -

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group.  Ranked 34th in federal research expenditures for public universities by the National Science Foundation, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university.

Media contact:
Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
(813) 974-3300 or abaier@health.usf.edu

The award was presented August 25, 2011, at a ceremony in Baltimore, MD. Those who receive the Distinguished Alumni Award typify the Johns Hopkins tradition of excellence and are recognized as having brought credit to the University by their personal accomplishment, professional achievement or humanitarian service.

Dr. Petersen was recognized for her efforts to improve the quality of maternal and child health services at the local, state and federal levels and her work in promoting global experiences for students.

Dr. Donna Petersen, USF public health dean, accepts her award from Dr. Michael
Klag, dean of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

She received two degrees from The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health – a master’s of health science in 1984 and the doctor of science degree in 1989. Her work has also been recognized by the American Public Health Association, the Delta Omega National Honor Society in Public Health and the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition.

Dr. Michael Klag, dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, noted that one of the ways a university earns a reputation for excellence is through the extraordinary work of its alumni.

In August, Berger took over as the new Chief Operating Officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with its 10,000 employees, 5,000 contractors, and yes, that $11 billion budget.

“At every decision point, you have to ask: ‘How will this impact the science? What makes sense for making people safer and healthier?’”

It’s her science and epidemiology background that drives those decisions, she says. And her love for creating the structures that support them. “Right now, we’re looking at shrinking budgets. How do we think strategically? How do we provide support for state health departments, which are under pressure, and how do we provide flexibility for them?”

In 1996, Berger graduated from the University of South Florida with a master’s in public health with a concentration in epidemiology.

Her father’s early death of cancer started it. Berger wanted to get answers, and she looked for them in public health, first thinking she’d concentrate on policy studies. But Professor Tom Mason got her excited about cancer epidemiology.

She joined the CDC while still at USF 15 years ago, when she was one of only four people selected for the Association of Schools of Public Health/CDC Experimental Learning Program, a fellowship program allowing her to work as an epidemiologist in Florida while she completed her master’s degree coursework.

While at USF, she was president of USF’s Public Health Student Association. There’s a famous USF photo of her posing with buttons she made to drive attendance for public health week. She wanted to fire up the events.

Sherri Berger was front and center in an issue of the HSC News in 1996, pushing the National Public Health Week celebration on the USF campus.

“None of us who knew Sherri as a student will forget her – she was a ball of fire and emerged quickly as a highly effective student leader,” said Charles Mahan, MD, who was dean of the USF College of Public Health while Berger was there.

“Since I was chair of the CDC Advisory Committee, I was able to keep track of how our students were performing. And they loved Sherri. Actually they have loved most of our students who have worked there and keep telling me to send more, they are so well prepared. We are really proud of her.”

After graduating from USF, Berger relocated to the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta, where she continued her career as an epidemiologist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). Berger was principal investigator for a study showing that landfill emissions are directly related to asthma exacerbations.

Then she found she loved the challenges of organizational development. “I found I gravitated to administration, to personnel and budgets. I enjoy the global perspective, and I enjoy keeping things moving.”

Along the way, Berger was acting deputy director at the National Center for Environmental Health, associate director for Formulation, Evaluation, and Analysis in the CDC’s Financial Management Office, and director of CDC’s Recovery Act Coordination Unit.

One key leadership step was participating in the Senior Executive Service (SES) Candidate Development Program, where she completed several assignments outside of CDC, including time spent at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, HHS Office of the Secretary, and CDC′s Business Services Improvement Office. 

But the key lesson Berger offers current students is simple. 

“Despite the budgets, I encourage people to look at careers in public health – prevention is the key to better health for this country. Find something you’re passionate about and go for it.”

Story by Michael Hoad, USF Communications and Marketing 

The grant is for $100,000 with the USF GME Office providing additional funds over the four-year grant.

The GME Challenge Grants support research and development of successful patient-centered care initiatives and best practices in medical education. Funded proposals include those that demonstrate specific interventions and innovations in graduate medical education programs regarding patient-centered healthcare and/or humanism in medicine.

The challenge grant went to Dr. Charles Paidas and Dr. Deanna Wathington.

Principal investigators for the winning grant from USF are Deanna Wathington, MD, MPH, and Charles Paidas, MD, MBA. Their project was titled “Enhancing Medical Resident Cultural and Linguistic Competency,” which evaluates the efficacy of training interventions that enhanced the cultural and linguistic competency of a diverse group of trainees and program directors across multiple specialties in USF’s large urban residency program.

“We’re really pleased about this incredible opportunity to impact our graduate medical education, our residents and the care they give now, as well as in the future,” said Dr. Wathington, associate dean for Academic and Student Affairs at the USF College of Public Health and associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine in the USF College of Medicine.

“This is an ideal time to explore the depth and breadth of knowledge our residents. We hope to positively impact their skill set and their ability to provide responsive and robust care to all patients. Our residents are more diverse than ever and, being from a major urban area, their patients represent an  increasingly diverse population as well.”

The USF project has several goals. The first is the administration of a base-line survey that will assess current knowledge and cultural and linguistic competency of all USF residents. Others include the utilization of an e-learning module and a one-day workshop for about 50 residents among all the specialties.  The final aim is to attempt to create an ongoing dialogue between patients, residents and faculty on the issue of culture and race in healthcare, said Dr. Wathington, who will work on the grant project with co-principal investigator Dr. Paidas, associate dean for USF’s GME program, professor in the Departments of Surgery and Pediatrics in the USF College of Medicine, and director of the Division of Pediatric Surgery.

Dr. Wathington emphasized how this project encompasses key  principles, criteria and program requirements of the the Picker Institute, the Arnold Gold Foundation and the ACGME.

For the Picker Institute, the principles are:  Respect for patients’ values, preferences and expressed needs while providing information, communication and education. For the Gold Foundation, the criteria are: Show respect for the patients’ perspective and world view, displaying effective and empathetic communication, demonstrating sensitivity in working with patients of diverse cultural and social backgrounds. And for the ACGME, the program requirements are: Demonstrate interpersonal and communication skills that result in the effective exchange of information and collaboration with patients, their families and health professionals, and professionalism. 

Most importantly, ACGME states that residents are expected to demonstrate sensitivity to a diverse patient population, including but not limited to diversity in gender age, culture race, religion, disabilities and sexual orientation.

Among the other recipients of the grants this year were the Children’s National Medical Center, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, the University of Chicago, Mount Sinai Medical Center, and the University of California, San Francisco.

Visit cgp.pickerinstitute.org for more information about the challenge grants.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Office of Communications

Earlier this month, the College of Medicine saw the largest class ever begin, with 19 additional students in the SELECT program.

Ashley Connelly (left) from Tampa, and Jameica Dunscomb from the Bahamas are both entering students in the College of Nursing.

USF Health First Day Highlights

College of Pharmacy: Charter Class
Charter class includes 53 students (68% female, 32% male, and 53% Caucasian, 46% minority and 1 undisclosed ethnicity).

The USF College of Pharmacy was established in 2007. From the outset, founding Dean Kevin B. Sneed, PharmD, set out to build a program unlike that at typical pharmacy schools: One that will be a pacesetter in pharmacy curriculum and clinical experience, incorporating the 360-degree approach that, although drug research and treatment are sciences, every patient is a unique individual with distinct needs.

College of Medicine: Largest Incoming Class Ever
This year welcomed the largest incoming class in the history of the USF College of Medicine, with 139 students – 79 men and 60 women. This group includes 19 inaugural students from SELECT MD program (a partnership of USF College of Medicine and Lehigh Valley Health Network), which lead to this incoming class having the largest number of students from out of state.

College of Public Health: Influx of Undergraduates
This fall welcomed more than 300 students into the College’s newest offering: an undergraduate degree in public health, the first of its kind to be offered in Florida by an accredited college of public health. The new program resulted in a 31.23 percent increase in the number undergraduate students at COPH over last fall. Approved by the Board of Governors earlier this year, the Bachelor of Science degree program will provide the student-centered courses required for entry-level public health jobs found in government agencies, health corporations, community non-profit organizations and health care facilities.

College of Nursing: Growth and New Learning Opportunities
The College continues to address both national and statewide priorities for nursing education and easing the nursing shortage and this state’s critical need for bachelor degree prepared nurses. This fall, there are several new milestones. The College has doubled enrollment in its Doctorate of Nursing Practice program, admitting 14 students this fall. USF nursing students can now participate in a new Clinical Collaborative with Sarasota Memorial Hospital. And the College is offering bachelor students the opportunity to participate its new interprofessional education initiative, in which they work with other USF Health students, learning about each other’s role, learning together, and providing care together through the use of joint education and simulation activities.

School of Biomedical Sciences: More Diversity
College of Medicine’s PhD program saw a high level of diversity and superior credentials among their applicants. Of the 102 applications, 21 students are currently enrolled in courses, with an average GRE score of 1230 and an average GPA of 3.45. Students come from within Florida, as well as from California, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York and Virginia, as well as five international students.

School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences: Increase in Out-of-State Students
The SPTRS saw an increase in the number of students from out of state, many of whom have Florida connections and sought undergraduate degrees beyond Florida but returned for their professional education. In addition to pulling from undergraduate programs throughout Florida, many students starting in the SPTRS this fall came from out of state, including programs Purdue, Indiana, Butler, Georgia, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Michigan, Illinois State University, University of Mississippi, Tennessee Tech, Winona (MN) State.

Story compiled by Sarah A. Worth, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications.

Dr. Amanda Smith, medical director of the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute, is interviewed by Jessica Green, a reporter for The Villages.

Members of a media team for The Villages Daily Sun and VNN- Channel 2 visited USF Health last week to interview some faculty members who will be speakers for the “Tomorrow’s Health Today” lecture series at The Villages.

The crew filmed Dr. Amanda Smith, medical director of the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute, and Dr. Jay Wolfson, distinguished service professor of public health and medicine, for advance stories on the lecture series. They also filmed exterior footage around the USF campus, including the Morsani Center, Byrd Institute, College of Nursing, College of Public Health, and the Marshall Center.

Dr. Wolfson will speak July 26 on the topic “I Can Write My Checks Without Paper and Read My Books – Why Can’t I Manage My Health Paperlessly?”  Dr. Smith’s presentation, “Prevent Alzheimer’s Now Before You Forget,” will be Nov. 22.

Left:  Dr. Smith is miked up by videographer Gary Corsair.  Right:  Photographer Bill Mitchell, in doorway, shoots Dr. Smith consulting with Dr. Ashok Raj.

The series kicked off earlier this month with its first lecture by Dr. Donna Petersen, dean of the USF College of Public Health.  More than 600 Villagers reserved tickets to hear Dr. Peterson address the topic “How Healthy Am I and What Can I Do About It?” During the hour-long conversation and question-and-answer session, Dr. Petersen encouraged residents to be proactive when it comes to their well-being. 

The free lecture series is just one of many programs and events that will be held in The Villages as a result of the recent innovative partnership between the university and the community to create “America’s Healthiest Hometown.”   For more information about upcoming speakers and their topics, visit http://villages.health.usf.edu/calendar.aspx

Dr. Donna Petersen, dean of the USF College of Public Health, was the inaugural speaker for the “Tomorrow’s Health Today” lectures series at The Villages.

L to R:  The media team from The Villages included Bill Mitchell, photographer; Jessica Greene, reporter; and Gary Corsair, videographer.

 - Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

James Mortimer, PhD, FAAN, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, was recently honored as one of 17 world leaders in neuroscience by the Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli. 

The award ceremony was held at the International Conference on New Discoveries in Brain organized by the National Secretariat for Science and Technical Innovation of Panama (SENACT).  In addition to Dr. Mortimer, two nobel laureates and 15 other scientists from North and South America, Europe and Asia, received awards.

Dr. James Mortimer

The awards were based on new discoveries and scientific contributions to the understanding and treatment of neurological diseases.  Dr. Mortimer was recognized for his work on the causes and pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, particularly through the Nun Study. This groundbreaking study provided the first evidence  that early life characteristics accurately predicted who would get the mind-robbing disease more than 60 years later. 

The Nun Study, begun in 1992, followed 678 Catholic sisters, initially 75 to 102 years of age, who were evaluated yearly  for dementia and who agreed to brain donation at the time of their deaths.  In 1996, this study found that Alzheimer’s disease with onset in old age could be predicted accurately from characteristics of autobiographical essays written at an average age of 22.  Findings from the Nun Study have been important in demonstrating the value of magnetic resonance imaging in detecting Alzheimer pathology years before the first symptoms of the illness appear, a critical step in its eventual prevention.

This summer, 14 USF students will take part in the Learning through Experience and Academic Partnerships (LEAP), a program funded through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).

In addition to offering mentoring, the LEAP program has the added benefit of allowing the students to take an active role helping the Department serve its medically underserved populations, said Karen Perrin, PhD, MPH, associate professor of public health and director of undergraduate studies at the College of Public Health, is project leader and principal investigator for LEAP.

“This grant allows the undergrad students the opportunity to touch and feel public health up close for a few weeks this summer,” Dr. Perrin said.

“When I sign their time sheets each week, they give me a brief summary of their activities for that week. They are so excited to actually get to do something ‘real’ in a work environment rather than in the classroom. They all say that they like it so much that they would have done it for free.”

The 10-week LEAP program is based on public health core competencies. The goal of the project is to provide mentoring to undergraduate public health students and to serve the medically underserved population of Hillsborough County. The framework of what the students will experience is based on the Ten Essential Public Health Services from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (see below), Dr. Perrin said.

Part of the program includes particpating in GIFT (Get Into Fitness Today), a six week nutrition education program. The students gather volunteers to participate in the program, and have weekly meetings with them to discuss nutrition, physical activity, and weight loss and healthy weight maintenance strategies. Pictured here are four community health volunteer students, from left, Terrill Curtis, Katherine Hines, Elisabeth Franzen, and Joanna Reid.

In addition to Dr. Perrin, administrators for the program include: Leslene E. Gordon, RD, PhD, community health director for the Hillsborough County Health Department; Jylmarie Lewis, public health manager within Communicable Diseases division of the Health Department; Dr. Deborah Austin, Communication and Community Outreach Director for Central Hillsborough Healthy Start, and Elisabeth Cross, a master’s student who is the graduate student liaison between USF and the DOH and mentor to the undergraduate students in the project.

After becoming DOH volunteers, 14 COPH undergraduate students will receive mentoring from a DOH representative, as well as oversight from a graduate student mentor. With supervision of registered nurses, health educators, or registered dietitians, the mentees will learn to monitor the health status to identify and solve community health problem and link people to needed personal health services in the community, as well as research new insights and innovative solution to health problems related to chronic disease prevention and promotion of healthy lifestyles within the Community Health Division programs at DOH.

“By working with health statistics and data to complete a community health profile, students will learn to diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community,” Dr. Perrin said.

The students’ final report will include analyses of data from weekly journals, pre- and post-surveys, and a satisfaction survey.
Ten Essential Public Health Services from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

1. Monitor health status to identify and solve community health problems.
2. Diagnose and investigate health problems and health hazards in the community.
3. Inform, educate, and empower people about health issues.
4. Mobilize community partnerships and action to identify and solve health problems.
5. Develop policies and plans that support individual and community health efforts.
6. Enforce laws and regulations that protect health and ensure safety.
7. Link people to needed personal health services and assure the provision of health care when otherwise unavailable.
8. Assure competent public and personal health care workforce.
9. Evaluate effectiveness, accessibility, and quality of personal and population-based health services.
10. Research for new insights and innovative solutions to health problems.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Office of Communications

The IHSC team of 21 students from the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and Public Health, and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences worked together to develop sustainable health projects in underserved communities of Panama.

In order to improve the sustainability of the project, the IHSC partnered with the Panamanian Ministry of Health. Dr. Aleyda Tejeira and Dr. Angel Alonzo, the Regional Directors of Health and Public Health, respectively, of the Coclé province of Panama, worked alongside the IHSC team.

During the trip, students carried out community need assessments, daily process evaluations, a health fair, and health education programs in addition to delivering donations for the elementary school and constructing latrines. During this first trip to the area, the group built 14 modified latrines and donated materials for 11 additional latrines (a new record for the IHSC!).

Over the past three years, the IHSC has been actively involved in the development of sustainable health projects in remote areas of Panama, including the Veraguas and Coclé regions and also the predominantly indigenous Ngabe Buglé Comarca.

Check out the new IHSC blog .

Tampa, FL (May 27, 2011) – The challenges and opportunities of sustaining a safe global water supply will be the focus of an upcoming University of South Florida College of Public Health conference bringing together international experts from academia, government, the military, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.

Registration is open for the free event, “Security and Stability Partnerships for Water: Their Impact on Health,” to be held June 13-15, 2011, at the Alfano Conference and Banquet Center, 11606 N. McKinley Dr., in Tampa. Sessions will cover the geopolitical, cultural, religious, environmental and economic issues affecting global water management, with an emphasis on implications for health.

The World Health Organization estimates that about one in eight people lacks access to safe drinking water, and more than 3.5 million people die yearly from water-related diseases. Increasing, and often competing demands, for fresh water because of population growth, agriculture, industry and changing lifestyles are leading to its increasing scarcity, especially in needy communities.

“As a global community, we need better ways to conserve diminishing freshwater resources so vital to the health of individuals and populations,” said conference director Thomas Mason, PhD, USF professor of public health. “USF is committed to providing platforms, like this conference, where experts from various disciplines can address the central role that water plays in the stability of regions and nations. The aim is to develop collaborative activities and policies that foster secure, well managed and shared water resources.”

Katherine Bliss, PhD, director of the Project on Global Water Policy for the Washington, DC-based nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, will speak about key elements affecting access to safe drinking water and sanitation, which are recognized by the United Nations as basic human rights. She is the opening keynote speaker in a lineup that includes:

• Swathi Veeravalli, social scientist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineering, who will talk about discerning water’s role in counterinsurgency operations.

• Greg Allgood, PhD, director of Procter & Gamble’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, will discuss the corporation’s nonprofit project providing water purification at the household level in developing countries to prevent childhood deaths from contaminated drinking water.

• Joe Rozza, global water resource sustainability manager, Coca-Cola Co., and Karin Krchnak, senior advisor for international water policy, The Nature Conservancy, will talk about building public-private partnerships for water sustainability. The company recently worked with the conservation organization to assess Coca-Cola’s water “footprint” – volume of water consumed directly and indirectly to produce a product — to help inform and improve Coca-Cola’s global water stewardship policies.

• Lt. Col. Monir Akhand, Army of Bangladesh, will discuss seasonal floods, salinity of water, rises in sea-level, cyclones and other water-related issues affecting Bangladesh.

• Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, PhD, a U.S. Navy physician and epidemiologist working to strengthen global health and security, will speak about the importance of water for health and human security in Helmand Province, Afghanistan

Conference registration is available here, or for more information contact Thomas Mason at tmason@health.usf.edu or (813) 974-6675.

- USF Health -
USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group. Ranked 34th in federal research expenditures for public universities by the National Science Foundation, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university.

The presentation was a part of Cleveland Clinic’s 4th Annual Aspiring Physicians and Research Scientists Conference (APRSC) representing students from all over the United States. The three-day program seeks to increase participation in research and medicine by establishing a student-physician networking opportunity, as well as a forum for science and research discussion. The event was held in Cleveland March 23 to 25.

Markel was one of the 10 students chosen to showcase his research work in front of the Cleveland Clinic’s world-renowned staff. After months of preparing their research projects, the students had the opportunity to present their work, which was judged on the basis of content, production, display, and adherence to the guidelines. This year, four students, including Markel, were awarded scholarships to help further their educations and keep their research alive.

“It is a great experience, especially in terms of professional development,” said Markel, who had presented research projects as an undergraduate student at the last two APRSC conferences. “Everything done leading up to a study, including methodology, collecting data, and properly analyzing and interpreting of the results, is important. But equally important is translating the research findings. You have to be able to effectively communicate the information to the scientific community and the public.”

Markel is finishing up his master’s degree in public health at USF, with a focus on global health, as he applies for admission to medical school. He earned in his bachelor of science degree in biology from USF in May 2010, and completed a graduate certificate in clinical investigation from the USF College of Medicine.

Markel’s passion for patient-centered research began early in his college career. He was the first USF student to receive the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. As an undergraduate, he spent a summer in Thailand bridging a medical student exchange program between Thai universities and USF Health.

Another summer he earned a spot as a research intern at Harvard Medical School. Supported by an American Microbiology Society Fellowship, he collaborated with MDs and PhDs on research to develop novel techniques for preservation and long-term storage of red blood cells needed for transfusions. The work was recently published online in the journal PLoS One.

For his latest APRSC project comparing antimicrobial prophylactic drug regimens for complex pediatric spinal surgery, Markel worked with Dr. John Sinnott, associate dean of USF Medicine International and director of the USF Division of Infectious Disease and International Medicine, and Sheryl Chewning, director of performance improvement at Shriners Hospital for Children.

“Although I am not a medical doctor yet, this research has allowed me to continue making contributions to life-saving medical care,” Markel said. “I have a passion to continue working at the interface of clinical practice and science.”

Markel will kick off this summer by moving Advocates for World Health, the non-profit organization he co-founded with other college students, into new office and warehouse space and leading a mission trip to Guatemala, where most of the medical supplies and equipment the organization collects are sent. He will then spend three months in Washington, D.C. completing a fellowship at the Food and Drug Administration’s Medical Device Office, Division of Epidemiology. He will analyze post-market surveillance data on ventilator systems and write a review on the current state of ventilator technology.

Tampa, FL (April 18, 2011) – Non-Hispanic black infants born with heart defects are more likely to die within the first five years of life than their non-Hispanic white and Hispanic peers.  For certain types of congenital heart abnormalities, Hispanic children as well as non-Hispanic black children fare worse than non-Hispanic white children.

These findings, detailed in a new study by researchers at the University of South Florida, Texas Department of State Health Services and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, suggest preventive strategies are needed to reduce racial and ethnic disparities among infants and young children with heart defects.   The research is published online today in the journal Pediatrics.

Wendy Nembhard, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology
in the USF College of Public Health, was lead author of the study.

“When you consider that the numbers of minority children continue to grow and are expected to account for more than half of all U.S. children by 2040, it’s clear we need to reduce the racial and disparities that burden the health care system and adversely affect the lives of families,” said lead author Wendy Nembhard, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at the USF College of Public Health.

Congenital heart defects are malformations in one or more structures of the heart or major blood vessels that occur before birth. They are the most common of all birth defects and the leading cause of death among infants with birth defects.

The new study adds to a growing body of evidence that minority infants with specific types of heart defects have poorer survival rates in early childhood than non-Hispanic white infants.

The researchers retrospectively reviewed the records of 19,530 single infants born with congenital heart defects in Texas from January 1996 through December 2005. The study was limited to infants born to non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black and Hispanic women. Linking records from the Texas Birth Defect Registry to Texas death records and the National Death Index, the researchers analyzed survival rates and risk of childhood death within the first five years of life for each type of congenital heart defect.

Among the study findings:

• Non-Hispanic black race/ethnicity was more strongly associated with increased risk of early childhood death than Hispanic race/ethnicity.

• Overall, non-Hispanic black infants with congenital heart defects had a 32 percent greater risk of early childhood death than their non-Hispanic white counterparts.  In contrast, Hispanic infants with heart defects had no overall increased risk of early childhood death when compared with white infants.

• The risk of early childhood death was twice as great for non-Hispanic black infants with a reversal in primary connections of the heart’s two main blood vessels (known as transposition of the great arteries) as for similarly affected non-Hispanic white infants. The same two-fold increased risk was seen in this group for tetralogy of Fallot, a cyanotic heart defect causing low oxygen levels in the blood.

• Of the three racial/ethnic groups, non-Hispanic black infants consistently had the lowest survival rates for congenital abnormalities in the septum (wall) separating the left and right sides of the heart.

• Hispanic children had the lowest survival rate of the three groups for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a rare defect in which the heart’s left side is critically underdeveloped. They were also less like to survive than non-Hispanic whites when born with pulmonary valve atresia without ventricular septic defect, a condition including absence of the pulmonary valve opening in the heart.

The researchers suggest the inequalities in early childhood survival may be caused by several factors:  underlying racial/ethnic biological differences, including severity of the defect or the number of co-occurring defects; lack of timely access to quality health care; and cultural factors or preferences, such as differences in prenatal diagnosis of defects.

Future studies should determine what role these factors and others may play, so that effective public health policies can be devised to improve the health of minority children born with heart defects, the researchers conclude.

Publication citation:
“Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Risk of Early Childhood Mortality Among Children with Congenital Heart Defects,” Wendy N. Nembhard, Jason L. Salemi, Mary K. Ethen, David E. Fixler, Angela DiMaggio and Mark A. Canfield,  Pediatrics published online Apr 18, 2011; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2010-2702

USF Health

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group.  Ranked 34th in federal research expenditures for public universities by the National Science Foundation, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university.

But whatever the reason, early elective deliveries – deliveries scheduled before a baby reaches a full 39 weeks gestational age without a medical reason – are on the rise. It’s a trend researchers say can lead to serious consequences for babies including severe respiratory distress, learning disabilities, problems breastfeeding, and time spent in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

A trend researchers at the University of South Florida, working with the March of Dimes, the Florida Department of Health and partners around the state, are hoping to change.

PILOT PROJECT TAKES AIM AT RISE IN EARLY ELECTIVE DELIVERIES

In the fall, USF’s College of Public Health and the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies at USF received a $100,000 grant from the March of Dimes to establish the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative (FPQC). The initiative brings together public and private health care leaders to improve the health of mothers and babies throughout the state.

The collaborative’s first effort, a year-long pilot test of a toolkit designed to eliminate cesarean sections and inductions for non-medical reasons before 39 weeks of pregnancy, officially got under way in six Florida hospitals in January. USF is providing technical assistance and guidance for the initiative.

“In the whole area of prematurity this is something we can have an impact on,” says Dr. Robert Yelverton, clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at USF. “The biggest challenge is changing the long-term habits generated in obstetricians and midwives over the years.”

And a widely-held misconception that a full-term pregnancy lasts nine months.

RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT CRITICAL PHASE IN FETAL BRAIN DEVELOPMENT

A 2009 study in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that many women do not clearly understand the definition of a full-term pregnancy. About a quarter of moms surveyed considered a baby of 34-37 weeks gestation to be full-term, half defined full-term as 37 to 38 weeks, and 92 percent of women surveyed reported that giving birth before 39 weeks was safe.

“Everyone knows that a pregnancy is nine months, and nine months is 36 weeks,” says Dr. John Curran, associate dean for the USF College of Medicine and chair of the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative. But in reality, a full-term pregnancy is closer to 10 months.

“A critical phase of fetal brain development occurs in the last three weeks.”

USF Health’s Dr. John Curran, chair of the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative, says a critical phase of brain development happens in the last three weeks of a full-term pregnancy.

According to the March of Dimes, a baby’s brain at 35 weeks weighs only two-thirds of what it will weigh at 39 to 40 weeks – a fact that helps make the case against early elective deliveries in the new 130-page toolkit.

Along with basic brain growth information and information about the complications associated with early elective deliveries, the toolkit, developed in California and endorsed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), includes a step-by-step guide for implementing change, ready-made presentations, sample forms, instructions for tracking data, and patient education materials.

“It (the toolkit) puts resources in the hands of the people who need to create change,” says Dee Jeffers, who, along with Dr. Charles Mahan, helped found the Chiles Center, the state’s only research center specifically focused on maternal and baby health. “Without that, it’s hard to pull it all together. The toolkit gives the rationale and data for making the change.”

NEW RESEARCH = NEW PRACTICE

Brenda Breslow, manager of clinical resource management at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital, one of the six participating hospitals in Florida, says the hospital embarked on a week-long information and awareness campaign in the fall. The campaign was aimed at physicians, nurses, childbirth educators, hospital staff and physician practice groups.

For physicians, who have long believed 37 weeks constitutes a full-term pregnancy, the new research represents a change of practice.

“Many (of the physicians) didn’t know how many of these babies were being admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit,” Breslow says. “Once they saw the morbidity data for babies born early without a medical reason, most were open to the change.”

Dee Jeffers holds the toolkit designed to help eliminate cesarean sections and inductions for non-medical reasons before 39 weeks of pregnancy.

That doesn’t surprise Jeffers.

“Practitioners really want what’s best for mothers and babies. It’s a matter of putting the information in people’s hands,” she says.

At Tampa General Hospital, where newborn services are staffed by full-time USF faculty and nurse practitioners, fewer and fewer babies are being admitted to the Muma NICU with complications resulting from early elective deliveries. That’s because of standards put in place two years ago that prohibit the scheduling of deliveries before 39 weeks without a medical indication, says Dr. Lewis P. Rubin, chief of neonatology at USF Health and Tampa General, who oversees all newborn services at the hospital.

“We’ve really taken initiative and been very proactive about preventing early deliveries. If someone tries to schedule an early term delivery without a medical reason, it needs to have further approval.”

While the risk of complications is extremely low at 37 to 38 weeks, “it’s not zero,” says Dr. Rubin, who additionally serves as co-chair of the Florida Chapter of the March of Dimes prematurity prevention campaign.

“The percentage of babies that have problems at the time of delivery are few,” adds Dr. Yelverton. “But when you put all the numbers together, the results are statistically significant.”

That’s something Dr. William Sappenfield, unit director for the Maternal and Child Health Practice and Analysis Unit for the Florida Department of Health, has been studying for the past several years. Even infants born just a few weeks early, his research shows, have higher rates of hospitalization and illness than full-term infants.

SOLUTION COULD IMPACT THOUSANDS OF BABIES

St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital, like the other Florida hospitals involved in the initiative, each which received a modest grant from the March of Dimes to implement the program, now has a strict policy in place for scheduling inductions and cesarean sections – a policy designed to eliminate early deliveries without a medical reason altogether. Other hospitals participating in the effort include Lee Memorial Health System in Ft. Myers, Plantation General Hospital in Plantation, Santa Rosa Medical Center in Milton, South Miami Hospital in Miami, and Broward General Medical Center in Ft. Lauderdale.

The year-long effort is being duplicated in five states. In total, 25 hospitals in Florida, New York, California, Illinois and Texas – which, collectively, represent about 40 percent of all births in the United States, are testing the toolkit. Effecting change in birth outcomes in these “Big 5” states, according to the March of Dimes, can significantly alter national statistics.

Dr. Lewis Rubin is chief of neonatology at USF and Tampa General Hospital. TGH is not part of the FPQC, but has already implemented standards prohibiting the scheduling of early elective deliveries without a medical indication.

“We have identified a problem that we can fix, and that’s something unique in public health,” says Lori Reeves, state program director for the March of Dimes Florida Chapter. “This one is cut and dry; we have a very concrete solution. Often we don’t see that. This has the scope to impact many thousands of babies.”

And save up to $1 billion annually in the United States, according to the Leapfrog Group, an employer-driven hospital quality watchdog group.

In January, the group released new data finding that thousands of babies each year are electively scheduled for delivery too early, resulting in a higher likelihood of death, being admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, and life-long health problems.

LONG-TERM ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF PREMATURE BIRTHS

It is an issue, Dr. Curran says, that has “huge economic consequences” for private payers, insurance companies, managed care organizations and Medicaid, which in Florida, covers about half the state’s births.

Leapfrog is working with the March of Dimes and Childbirth Connection, a national advocacy organization, to share information about the importance of every week of pregnancy.

Cecilia Jevitt, a certified nurse-midwife and associate professor in the USF Colleges of Nursing and Medicine, is a member of the Florida Council of Nurse Midwives. She represents the group on the FPQC. Jevitt says it is the long-term effects of an early birth that cause the group concern – for parents and for the state.

“Each year in Florida, more than 200,000 babies are born, and 30 percent of those babies are born by cesarean section,” she says. “Imagine if you could reduce that rate by half. Imagine the savings.”

But Jevitt, who has been in full-scope nurse midwifery practice in the Tampa Bay region for almost 30 years, knows all too well the challenges facing expectant moms today –pressure to return to work, spouses being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, family members only available to provide childcare at certain times, and the looming fear of losing their job, particularly when a husband has already been laid off.

“We need to improve the economy,” she says. “We need to show women that an early induction may actually waste more time – including recovery time and factors that make breast feeding more difficult for newborns.”

The March of Dimes says scheduled cesarean sections and inductions have become a frequent practice and are viewed as an accepted way to avoid potential complications and problems during labor and delivery. Unfortunately, those good intentions often result in real health problems for a newborn, who may have to spend time in a hospital neonatal intensive care unit, need a ventilator to help them breathe, have trouble feeding because of their early birth or miss an opportunity for the benefits of breast feeding.

A COLLABORATIVE VISION TO IMPROVE PERINATAL OUTCOMES

Dr. Curran, a neonatologist who has cared for thousands of premature babies during his career, and has been involved in the March of Dimes Big 5 State Prematurity Collaborative since 2008, is excited about the toolkit initiative, an initiative that has garnered support from the Florida Obstetric and Gynecologic Society as well as the Florida division of ACOG.

“I really do believe this is going to have a major impact because we have synched it with other initiatives,” he says. “It has major economic implications. This is a collaborative education program implemented in pilot hospitals that will spread around them in concentric circles.”

A program that members of the FPQC hope will be the first of many quality improvement programs focused on the issues of prematurity in the state. Already, the group is looking at a new initiative targeted to newborns in the neonatal intensive care unit.

“The collaborative is working to engage health care institutions across the state – hospitals, clinics, qualified health centers and other professional organizations – to get them all involved in working together to develop a strong vision for improving perinatal outcomes in the state,” says Linda A. Detman, a research associate at the Chiles Center who is coordinating USF’s involvement in the collaborative.

L to r:  Leaders of the FPQC initiative include Lori Reeves, Leslie Kowalewski, Dr. Washington Hill, Bill Sappenfield, Cari Crady (Florida state director of March of Dimes), Dr. Robert Yelverton, Dee Jeffers, Linda Detman, Dr. John Curran and Dr. Bryan Oshiro.

Florida March of Dimes official Reeves hopes USF will become the permanent and long-term home for the FPQC.

“USF has the Chiles Center and the College of Public Health. They have the passion to do it, and already have the active participation of several people,” she says. “Not only does USF have a pool of incredible public health professionals, but they have a pool of incredible public health professionals to come.”

Professionals dedicated to improving outcomes for mothers and babies across the state.

- Story by Ann Carney

The College bestows the award each year to a woman whose career accomplishments and leadership have contributed significantly to the field of public health in Florida. Phelps was honored during an awards ceremony April 6 at the Interdisciplinary Research Building in the USF Research Park.

Annette Phelps, ARNP, MSN

Phelps has been instrumental in policy and program development for public health and public health nursing.  At the Florida Department of Health, Phelps established a state-level maternal-child health infrastructure, including a nationally-renowned epidemiologist, to take Florida to the next level of evidence-based practice.

Nearly all hallmark maternal and child health programs developed in Florida over the last 15 years reflect her influence. A few of the many initiatives she helped develop and nurture include the statewide Healthy Start program, the nationally-recognized Pregnancy Associated Mortality Reviews Program, expanded Medicaid coverage of pregnant women, preconception health, and MomCare, a community-based program to  improve birth outcomes and reduce infant mortality.

Phelps holds a certificate as a Nurse Practitioner in Adult Care and received her Master of Science in Nursing degree from the University of Florida. She also earned a certificate from the Public Health Leadership Institute at the USF College of Public Health. 

Before joining the state Department of Health in Tallahassee in 1989, Phelps worked nine years for the Okaloosa County Public Health Unit in Fort Walton Beach, FL.  She ended her tenure there as the senior community health nursing supervisor.

Phelps has served on several statewide advisory and leadership boards, including the Healthy Families Advisory Committee where she has been a member since 2002.

The Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health Award was initiated by USF in 1988, and nominations are solicited from public health practitioners across the state. Past honorees have included Lillian Stark, PhD, MPH, director of virology at the Florida Department of Health Tampa Branch Laboratory; University of Miami epidemiologist Lora E. Fleming, MD, and Florida’s Division of Environmental Health Director Lisa Ann Conti, DVM, MPH.

- USF Health -

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School Physical of Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group.  With more than $394.1 million in research grants and contracts in FY2009/2010, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university.

Media contact:
Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Public Affairs
(813) 974-3300 or abaier@health.usf.edu

Tampa, FL (April 5, 2011) – David P. Rogoff, director of Hillsborough County’s Family and Aging Services Department, will join the University of South Florida College of Public Health to serve as Center Director for Public Health Preparedness and Training. He will begin the position in early May.

The USF Center for Public Health Preparedness and Training that Rogoff will direct includes the Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center and the Florida Public Health Training Center – new initiatives with more than $8.5 million in federal funding to train the state’s public health workforce and enhance disaster and emergency preparedness.

David Rogoff

“These initiatives are all about building coalitions and educating local communities to prepare for and respond to public health threats,” said Dr. Adewale Troutman, director of Public Health Practice and Leadership at the USF College of Public Health. “With his tremendous depth of public health practice experience, Mr. Rogoff is very well prepared to translate projects from the theoretical level to the day-to-day application level. That real-life expertise is needed to help protect Florida’s communities from all kinds of disasters – from hurricanes, floods and fires to biohazards.”

“Dave Rogoff has been a true advocate for the role of government and the larger society in meeting the needs of its most vulnerable members and has worked tirelessly over many years to improve the quality of life for the citizens of Hillsborough County,” said Donna Petersen, dean of the USF College of Public Health.

“Dave will bring to this new position in our Center for Public Health Practice and Leadership not only an acute understanding of the needs of the public for improvements to their health and well-being but also great insight into how public institutions can best provide the leadership needed to effect change. We are extremely fortunate to have recruited someone of his caliber to join with Dr. Troutman and his stellar team.”

Rogoff will also hold an appointment as a visiting instructor, teaching students enrolled in USF’s recently approved undergraduate degree program in public health.

Rogoff has more than 35 years experience in health care and social services management and consulting, including operations, program and facilities planning, and marketing at health at health care facilities, including teaching facilities, and services for low-income populations.

At Hillsborough County, he was director of Health and Social Services since 2003, before assuming his leadership role last year in Family and Aging Services, which includes the Hillsborough County Health Care Plan. Before joining the county, Rogoff started his own health care consulting company that specialized in helping communities and organizations address the needs of underserved populations. For several years, he was vice president of Planning, Marketing, Public Relations and Community Care at St. Joseph’s-St. Anthony’s Health System in Tampa.

Rogoff received his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and a master’s in hospital administration from the University of Michigan.

- USF Health -

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group. With more than $394.1 million in research grants and contracts in FY2009/2010, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university.

The University of South Florida College of Public Health, 13201 Bruce B. Downs Blvd. in Tampa, will celebrate National Public Health Week, April 4 through 10, with a variety of free activities for the university and Tampa communities.

The theme for this year’s event is “Safety is No Accident: Live Injury Free,” emphasizing the important role public health professionals play in helping ensure citizens live and work productively in safe environments.

Among the highlights will be a “Focus on Home Safety” display in the college’s lobby from 2 to 5 p.m. on Monday, April 4. Interactive exhibits will illustrate what people can do to promote food, water and medication safety and prevent falls, fire and poisonings in their own homes.

The college will host its annual awards ceremony to recognize the scholarly achievement of faculty, students and alumni from 8 to 10 a.m., Wednesday, April 6, at the Interdisciplinary Research Building, 3802 Spectrum Blvd. in the USF Research Park. A highlight of the event is the announcement of the Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health Award, presented each year to a woman whose career accomplishments and leadership have contributed significantly to the field of public health in Florida.

Melissa Perry, ScD, MHS, professor and chair of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, will speak on “Occupational Injuries and Chemical Exposures in High Risk Industries: Implications for Prevention,” at Noon on Friday, April 8, in the college’s Sam Bell Auditorium. Dr. Perry’s talk, part of the Dean’s Lecture Series, is sponsored by the NIOSH Education and Research Center at USF.

For a full schedule of the week’s events, please click here.

His expertise in health disparities, along with a drive to fully understand why the differences exist, has earned Dr. Troutman national recognition, including an appointment in January to the national Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality, a group that reports directly to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Troutman joined USF’s College of Public Health last fall.

He directs the Public Health Practice and Leadership, the Center for Leadership in Public Health, and the Public Health Practice Masters of Public Health program.

“We are indeed fortunate that someone of Dr. Troutman’s experience, reputation and passion for improving health has chosen to join our faculty,” said Donna J. Petersen, MHS, ScD, dean of the USF College of Public Health.

“Dr. Troutman’s expertise and leadership is well recognized nationally and internationally. Just in the past few months he has been part of a U.S. delegation sent by the American Public Health Association to Cuba. We couldn’t have asked for anyone better to lead our public health practice initiatives.”

Prior to joining USF, Dr. Troutman directed the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, was associate professor at the University of Louisville, School of Public Health and filled the Frederick Douglas Visiting Professorship on Pan African Studies at the University of Louisville. He also serves on the executive committee of the National Academy for Health Equity.

Dr. Troutman sees the recent HHS appointment as a way to have a greater impact on the national effort to improve infant mortality.

“We, as a nation, don’t do as well as other nations, especially considering our advanced healthcare system,” Dr. Troutman said.

“The inequities are dramatically higher in the African-American population, about two-and-a-half times higher than in the white population. Some pockets are as much as six times higher.”

Dr. Troutman’s own research, as well as other widely accepted data, attributes this difference to socio-economic factors, pointing directly to access to good health care and insurance, he said.

“We’ve seen huge improvement in the technological aspects of keeping low-birth weight babies alive once they’re born,” he said.

“But we need improvement on the front end. It’s prevention. And that means increased access to good care and an intentional focus on addressing the social determinants of infant mortality.”

Another key role for Dr. Troutman at USF will be to direct the HRSA Public Health Training Center, which was funded last fall with a five-year, $3.25 million grant from the Health and Human Resources Administration. The training center will assess the learning needs and further develop the knowledge and skills of the state’s current and future public health professionals. USF was one of 27 accredited schools of public health and other public and non-profit institutions across the country – the only one in Florida – to receive such an award.

Dr. Troutman’s expertise at the national level is not new. In addition to being named to the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality, Dr. Troutman served on the HHS National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2020. He also co-chairs the Advisory Committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on eliminating health disparities, the executive committee of the American Public Health Association and the National Board of Public Health Examiners.

Dr. Troutman earned his medical degree from the New Jersey Medical School and his master’s degree in public health from Columbia University. He also has a master’s degree in Black Studies from the State University of New York-Albany. He spent 13 years directing the emergency medicine services at United Hospital’s Medical Center in Newark, NJ.

His published research has focused on health disparities and health issues affecting African-Americans.

As an expert on public health issues, Dr. Troutman has been interviewed numerous times by the news media in both radio and television, including being guest expert on televised health panels. Dr. Troutman examined this issue of health disparities in detail three years ago, when he took part in the PBS documentary “Natural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” which focused on how social conditions have a  profound effect on health and longevity, even more than medical care, behavior and genes.

Dr. Troutman has traveled the world on missions related to public health, including Angola, Zaire, Japan, Uganda, India, Austria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Benin, Nigeria, South Africa, and Cuba.

A product of humble beginnings and a risk of living out the bleak statistics for black youth, Dr. Troutman proved school counselors wrong when he went to college. Read more about his story.

“I grew up in a single-parent home in a low-income neighborhood in the South Bronx in a world of low expectations,” he said.

“Now I tell everyone ‘Don’t let anyone tell you what you can’t do.’ ”

Story by Sarah A. Worth, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications

If you think tropical diseases like malaria are no cause for concern in the United States, think again.

In October a Jacksonville woman contracted malaria, despite not having traveled out of the country in a decade. Cases of dengue fever began appearing among tourists and residents in Key West in 2009 and continue to increase — the first reported dengue outbreaks since 1934. Health officials worry that more global travel, urbanization and changing climates mean mosquito-borne, once-tropical diseases such as dengue and West Nile virus are not only here to stay, but may be spreading.

To reduce Florida’s susceptibility to these emerging and re-emerging vector-borne diseases, researchers from the University of South Florida and the University of Florida want to create new drugs to combat vector-borne diseases and get those drugs to consumers faster. Last year, the two institutions were awarded a half a million dollars from the state’s Board of Governors to spur research in this area of drug discovery. The project is part of the New Florida Initiative, a program geared toward diversifying the state economy by funding innovation on university campuses. It is modeled after the Food and Drug Administration’s Critical Path Initiative, which provides guidelines for a fast track approach to help bring new treatments to market – everything from drug discovery and design, preclinical research in laboratory and animal models to clinical trials and FDA approval, to large-scale manufacture of a drug for sale.

Recently investigators from USF and UF as well as other state universities met with partners from biotechnology and pharmaceutical firms across Florida, and public health officials, to discuss how to better move new-line drugs and other therapies from the early research stages to the market. The conference, “Optimizing Detection, Prevention and Treatment of Vector-Borne Disease,” held Jan. 31 at the Sanford-Burham medical Research Institute, Lake Nona in Orlando, included presentations about malaria, dengue, equine encephalitis, West Nile virus and other pathogen-related diseases that Florida residents are somewhat at risk of contracting.

Dr. Glenn Morris (left), director of the UF Emerging Pathogens Insitute, and Dr. Wil Milhous, associate dean for research at the USF College of Public Health, moderated the discussion on building public-private partnerships to advance drug development.

“These vector-borne diseases are very complex. To solve the problems, you frequently have to bring researchers outside their normal comfort zones,” said J. Glenn Morris, MD, MPH&TM, director of the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute. “That means bringing together people from multiple universities who can look at the problem from different perspectives, as well as people from industry and government. Together, we can think about ways to take each of our pieces and integrate them into a whole that results in something meaningful – like the ability to effectively manage a disease like dengue fever.”

Scripps Florida, the Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, Nanotherapeutics and United Therapeutics were among the firms represented at the conference, the first of several to be held this year.

“To be successful in translating research into a commercially viable product, it’s very important for researchers in academic medicine to get to know and collaborate with those in industry who can help guide us in the drug discovery and development process,” said Wilbur Milhous, PhD, associate dean for research at the USF College of Public Health, who has contracted both malaria and dengue fever during his 28-year career developing antimalarial drugs. “Equally important, those in private industry need to appreciate the academic expertise available at the various colleges and schools in Florida.”

Among the conference speakers was Bill J. Baker, PhD, a USF chemistry professor and new director of the USF Center for Drug Discovery and Innovation. Umbrella organizations are needed in the state to more efficiently fight illness, and this conference was a first step in organizing people, databases and shared resources,” Dr. Baker said. “We can make sure people are talking across the state, focused on the same diseases.”

For the last four years, Dr. Baker has worked with Dennis Kyle, PhD, professor of global health at the USF College of Public Health. They’ve focused on isolating and testing chemical compounds derived from the natural world – plants, fungi and microbes – that may act against parasitic diseases like malaria. The compounds have been discovered within the biodiverse resources collected on Dr. Baker’s many research expeditions to Antarctica. Tapping into faster new technologies and procedures, such as mass spectrometry studies and magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the collaboration holds the promise of tapping the vast potential of ocean floors, glaciers and other marine environments.

“Nature is an excellent place to look for potential new drugs, especially marine environments, which have tended to be underexplored,” Dr. Baker said. “The NIH’s (translational research) model of bench to bedside really needs to incorporate the concept of the environment, including beach to bedside.”

Barriers to getting more drugs for vector-borne diseases into the drug development pipeline include lack of economic incentive for pharmaceutical companies to invest in rare and neglected diseases, often with poorly defined markets in underdeveloped countries.

But, USF’s Dr. Kyle, who oversees teams that have attracted research funding from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Medicines for Malaria Venture, told attendees that “you don’t necessarily need big pharma involved to be successful” in moving promising drug candidates into the pipeline.

The key, he said, is public-private partnerships that pull together the “right construct” of people and resources. For instance, he said, that may mean creating an entrepreneurial academic team with expertise in biology, chemistry, pharmacology, toxicology and other disciplines, which works well with scientists and engineers from smaller pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies. The state’s universities often conduct field research in locations where mosquito-borne diseases are endemic, providing an opportunity for testing promising drugs.

Dr. Kevin Sneed, dean of the new USF College of Pharmacy, says the college will work with other institution across the state to develop a curriculum that addresses emerging and infectious diseases.

Other USF speakers were Thomas Unnasch, PhD, professor of global health, and Kevin Sneed, PharmD, founding dean of the USF College of Pharmacy.

Dr. Unnasch shared his expertise on Eastern equine encephalitis, a rare but disabling and potentially deadly mosquito-borne disease that is reported more frequently in Florida than all other states combined. Surveillance is often relied upon detect mosquito-borne diseases and control their transmission, Dr. Unnasch said. “Unfortunately using surveillance strategies to try to knock down mosquito populations is a sledgehammer approach… we could likely do better with new prevention and treatment approaches.”

Dr. Sneed said that USF’s new College of Pharmacy will cultivate student and faculty interest in global health and work with other state’s colleges and schools to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum that addresses emerging and neglected infectious diseases.

Near the close of the conference hosted by USF and UF, the attendees brainstormed about the Florida’s strengths and weaknesses in diagnostics and drug development for vector-borne diseases. They also began prioritizing their disease focus and defining what next steps are needed to encourage drug development, including public-private partnerships that might advance economic opportunities.

The first conference was held at the Sanford Burham Medical Research Institute, an anchor facility at Lake Nona, Orlando.

- Video by Amy Mariani; story and photos by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
- Mosquito photo courtesy of University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute

Tampa, FL (Feb. 8, 2011) – The University of South Florida received $5.45 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The first grant is to create advanced devices that mimic the human liver to better study the life cycle of the malaria parasite – particularly the elusive liver stage where the disease may be most vulnerable to attack. Such human models could help accelerate the discovery of new drugs or even vaccines for Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum, the two most common forms of malaria becoming increasingly resistant to today’s therapies. The second grant is to provide effective therapeutics to prevent and cure malaria by developing long-term continuous culture system for P. vivax

USF will collaborate with Draper Laboratory on the projects. The dynamic public-private partnership combines the USF Global Infectious Disease Research team’s expertise in malaria parasite biology and human model development with Draper’s extensive experience in tissue engineering and the development of human mimetic in vitro (laboratory) models.

“We cannot eliminate one of the most prevalent causes of malaria in the world – Plasmodium vivax – unless we come up with new drugs or vaccines that target the dormant liver forms of the parasite,” said Dennis Kyle, Ph.D., professor of global health at the USF College of Public Health. “Current tools– in vitro and animal models are either largely ineffective or cost-prohibitive in predicting which drugs may work best in humans. New human models are the basic building blocks needed to establish strong, credible drug and vaccine discovery programs, not only at USF but at other universities and companies working on new ways to fight malaria.”

Clockwise from left: Principal investigators Dr. John Adams and Dr. Dennis Kyle of USF Health,  are collaborating with Dr. Joseph Cuiffi of Draper Laboratory.

Dr. Kyle is the principal investigator for a three-year Gates Foundation grant seeking to develop human liver models that could more quickly and accurately test potential drug candidates for vivax and falciparum malaria. Draper Laboratory’s efforts will be overseen by principal investigator Joseph Cuiffi, PhD, of the Draper Bioengineering Center at USF. They are working with John Adams, Ph.D., professor of global health at USF; Jeffrey Borenstein, Ph.D., a Draper physicist and biomedical engineer; and Joseph Charest, Ph.D., a Draper biomedical engineer. The original work on this technology at Draper was funded by the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology of which Draper is a founding member.

Dr. Adams is the principal investigator for a three-year Gates Foundation grant that brings together a worldwide network of leading investigators with the skills and resources needed to create long-term blood stage cultures of vivax malaria. This form of malaria has proven particularly difficult to grow and sustain in the laboratory. Dr. Adams is working with Dr. Cuiffi and Dr. Kyle, as well Dr. Jetsumon (Sattabongkot) Prachumsri of the Vivax Research Center in the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University, and the Armed Forces Research Institute in Bangkok, Thailand; Dr. Peter Siba, director of the Papua New Guinea Institute for Medical Research; Dr. Louis Schofield, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute international research scholar at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia; and Dr. Osamu Kaneko at Nagasaki University in Japan.

“To be able to replicate and study the entire malaria infection process outside the body will be critical in developing new drugs with the potential to eliminate malaria,” said Draper’s Dr. Cuiffi.

USF doctoral student Steven Maher, center, participates in the Gates Foundation projects, in which he is combining engineering with his biology background to advance his technical education.  Maher’s graduate education is supported by a Draper Lab Fellowship; Dr. Adams, right, and Dr. Cuiffi serve as his mentors.

Malaria, the Parasite Life Cycle, and Why Addressing the Liver Stage is Critical

Malaria affects 10 percent of the world’s population, killing nearly one million people a year in developing countries and crippling their economies. Most who die or become ill are poor pregnant women and children under age 5 in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia and South America.

In humans, the liver is the first target of the disease. The parasite is carried there after it enters the bloodstream through the bite of an infected mosquito. Once inside the liver, the infecting parasites for most types of malaria multiply and rupture liver cells, escaping back into the bloodstream. (In vivax malaria, some parasites can remain dormant in the liver for extended periods before infecting the blood.) The parasites, now modified to attack red blood cells, rapidly create more parasites, which spread throughout the bloodstream in waves.

Thus, the researchers are concentrating on the liver stage of the malaria life cycle for several reasons:

• First, at this initial stage of human infection there are fewer parasites — hundreds or a few thousand in the liver compared to millions once parasites start replicating in the bloodstream. That improves the odds of eliminating the parasite, Dr. Kyle said.

• Second, vivax has the potential to lay dormant in the liver and re-activate months or years after treatment, causing relapses of malaria. While parasites are in the liver, the person does not feel sick. Once parasites enter the bloodstream, disease symptoms emerge, including chills, fever, headache, body aches, vomiting and exhaustion. If untreated, the deadly falciparum strain can quickly escalate to severe anemia, convulsions, brain damage and coma. “The drugs available to treat the bloodstream stages don’t work in the liver,” Dr. Adams said. “So if you could get rid of parasites in the liver stage, you could essentially prevent vivax malaria and the transmission of infection.”

• Third, the only drug effective in attacking the liver’s reservoir of dormant malaria parasites to help prevent recurrences of vivax malaria is risky for widespread use. Administering Primaquine to people with a red blood cell enzyme deficiency, known as glucose phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency, may trigger severe and potentially lethal blood loss, Dr. Adams said. “There’s no good bedside test to identify G6PD-deficient individuals, and, unfortunately, this condition most often occurs in those areas where vivax malaria is endemic.”

Close-ups of microfluidic devices used to create human mimetic tissue models for testing potential malaria drugs.

Microfludic Device Technology

To create new models to mimic human body conditions in which malaria parasites replicate, the researchers are using Draper’s prototype microfluidic device technology. The microfluidic device, consists of microscope slide-sized unit containing chambers through which fluid flow is maintained by a micro-pump. It is designed to support complex tissue growth, allowing liver or blood vessel cells to grow in three dimensions while experiencing physiologically relevant forces instead of on the static two-dimensional surface of a petri dish. This technology, previously unavailable in a lab setting, may also prove useful for screening large volumes of potential anti-malarial agents and evaluating their effectiveness.

“The Draper models offer unique microenvironments, so cells grow and function more normally,” Dr. Kyle said. “That’s important because one major roadblock to learning about the liver stage of the malaria parasite has been that the liver cells lose some of their basic functions and no longer metabolize drugs after a few days.”

USF Health

USF Health is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Public Health and Pharmacy, the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School Physical of Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences; and the USF Physician’s Group. With more than $394.1 million in research grants and contracts in FY2009/2010, the University of South Florida is a high impact global research university.

USF-Draper Lab team working on the Gates Foundation projects.

Draper Laboratory

Draper Laboratory is a not-for-profit, engineering research and development organization dedicated to solving critical national problems in security, space systems, biomedical systems, and energy. Core capabilities include guidance, navigation and control; miniature low power systems; highly reliable complex systems; information and decision systems; autonomous systems; biomedical and chemical systems; and secure networks and communications.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people—especially those with the fewest resources—have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, Washington, the foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and Co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Media contacts:
University of South Florida
Anne DeLotto Baier, (813) 974-3300 or abaier@health.usf.edu
Susanna Martinez Tarokh, (813) 974-2776 or smartin1@health.usf.edu

Draper Laboratory
Kathleen Granchelli, (617) 258-2605 or kgranchelli@draper.com;
Jeremy Singer, (617) 258-2464 or jsinger@draper.com

Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

Chosen as professor and chair of the department following an extensive national search, Dr. Williams came to USF from Kansas City, MO. In Kansas City, he was director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Health Services Research at Children’s Mercy Hospitals and Clinics, and professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri Medical School. From 2002 to 2007, he held several positions at the renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN — as chair of the clinic’s Division of Health Care Policy & Research, professor in clinical research at the Mayo Graduate School, and co-director of the clinic’s Knowledge Translation Research Unit, which focuses on translating the best available science into routine clinical practice.

Dr. Williams served on faculty of the University of Florida College of Nursing from 1984 to 1990, giving him a unique understanding of public health and health services in Florida. He has worked with the Rockefeller, Ford, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundations; city, state, and local governments; as well as major health care providers, and served as a consultant to health insurers (Blue Cross & Blue Shield) and private industry (IBM).

Arthur Williams, PhD

Dr. Williams said he looks forward to building on the strengths of the Department of Health Policy & Management to increase its stature as USF and the College of Public Health continue to make national gains.

“USF began primarily as a liberal arts commuter school and has successfully forged ahead to become to a major research university, with modest cost to the state of Florida. That’s quite a unique achievement that greatly benefits students and generates new knowledge and opportunities for economic growth, development, and job creation,” Dr. Williams said. “And for a relatively young school of public health, the USF College of Public Health has already attained an impressive top 20 ranking.” (USF is listed in the top 20 of U.S. News & World Report’s latest ranking of graduate public health programs.)

Dr. Williams has a strong track record of National Institutes of Health-funded research, including studies investigating ways to provide cost-effective, quality home care to patients after hospitalization in order to prevent or reduce the costs of rehospitalizations. His research has focused on health policy and quantitative assessments of the delivery of health care and its outcomes (including cost and quality) for patients, families and communities. For example, with the support of $1.6-million National Institute for Nursing Research grant, Dr. Williams and his spouse (Phoebe D. Williams, PhD, RN, FAAN) demonstrated that an intervention designed to address needs of siblings with chronically ill brothers and sisters and their parents led to improvements in knowledge about illness, mood, feelings of social support, and sibling behaviors over a year of observation.

While at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Williams played a key role in the institution’s successful application to establish one of the country’s first federally-funded Centers for Clinical and Translational Research. He wrote much of the community health section of the prestigious NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA).

Dr. Williams received a PhD in public policy, government and economics from Cornell University in 1981. He holds a MA degree in public finance, economic development, and econometrics from the University of the Philippines, and a MPA degree in urban administration (city management) and economic and social development from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public & International Affairs (GSPIA). He has done postdoctoral training in epidemiology and in health services administration at Johns Hopkins University, the New England Epidemiology Institute, and the Sloan Program in Health Administration(Cornell University).

His numerous honors included an award as 2001-02 Senior Fulbright Research Scholar in the Philippines, where he studied how community characteristics, such as social networks, affect the long-term health of children. With the support of a Fulbright Regional Travel Award, he also taught health outcomes research and quantitative methods at universities in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia and consulted with the ministries of health in those countries.

Dr. Williams has authored or co-authored more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals and six books and monographs. He is a reviewer for several journals, including the Journal of Applied Statistics, the Journal of Health Economics, and the Journal of Behavioral Medicine. He was academically trained in five languages — Tagalog (the Philippines), Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesia), Spanish, French and German.

Dr. Williams steps in for Barbara Langland Orban, PhD, who has served as the chair of Health Policy & Management since 1998. Dr. Orban, an associate professor of health policy and management, is will focus on the college’s Master of Health Administration (MHA) program and related accreditation efforts.

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

Tampa, FL (Dec. 13, 2010) – The University of South Florida College of Public Health scored a coup in getting the latest iteration of the national health agenda to call for more education and training of public health professionals in social marketing.

The College will work with local, regional and national stakeholders to promote the adoption of the nation’s new Healthy People 2020 objectives to support healthier lives for all Floridians.

“We are especially pleased that the work we have pioneered in applying marketing principles and techniques to solve public health problems was recognized by specific objectives for social marketing in Healthy People 2020,” said Jim Lindenberger, director of the Center for Social Marketing at the USF College of Public Health.

The USF College of Public Health has sponsored the nation’s premier conference on Social Marketing in Public Health for more than 20 years, and its Florida Prevention Research Center and Center for Social Marketing are unique in the United States for their focus on social marketing research, training and practice. USF also offers the only graduate certificate program in social marketing as part of its MPH program. A Master’s in Public Health Practice degree with a concentration in social marketing is being developed.

Social marketing applies marketing principles and techniques to enhance people’s lives and improve the world in which they live. Consumer-focused research and evaluation are an integral part of the social marketing process.

A recognition that health and health behaviors are determined at many levels was evident when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month unveiled Healthy People 2020, the nation’s new 10-year goals and objectives for health promotion and disease prevention. The new agenda expands its focus to emphasize social and environmental determinants of health, addressing such issues as neighborhood resources (safe parks, good schools, high employment rates) that are key requirements for better health.

Craig Lefebvre, PhD                                       Jim Lindenberger

Healthy People 2020 is a blueprint for public policy decisions affecting the nation’s health and will be used to measure progress toward such goals as reducing childhood obesity and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health, said Craig Lefebvre, PhD, a research professor at the USF College of Public Health who is an internationally recognized expert in social marketing and health communication.

Dr. Lefebvre was a member of the Healthy People 2020 Health Communication and Health Information Technology workgroup that developed the new national health objectives for social marketing. He is part of the USF social marketing group charged with tracking and evaluating the nationwide progress of two social marketing education and training objectives:

• Increase the proportion of Schools of Public Health and accredited MPH programs that offer one or more courses in social marketing.

• Increase the proportion of Schools of Public Health and accredited MPH programs that offer workforce development activities in social marketing for public health practitioners.

“Our work will have a big impact on the future education and practice of public health practitioners,” Dr. Lefebvre said. “It will help ensure they have the knowledge and skills required to improve the health of all Americans.”

For more information on Healthy People 2020, visit www.healthypeople.gov.

- USF Health -

USF Health (http://www.health.usf.edu is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health; as well as the schools of biomedical sciences and physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $394.1 million in research grants and contracts in FY2009/2010, the University of South Florida is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of only 25 public research universities nationwide with very high research activity that is designated as community-engaged by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

News release by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

The USF chapter was honored Nov. 8, 2010, during Delta Omega’s Annual Business Meeting at the American Public Health Association’s Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. The only other chapter recognized by Delta Omega was the George Washington School of Public Health and Health Services’ Omega Chapter, which was named Active Chapter of the Year.

As “Chapter of the Year,” South Florida’s Tau Chapter was recognized for its year-long dedication and efforts in promoting excellence in public health academia and community service through Delta Omega. Some examples of the many activities and events hosted or co-hosted by the Tau Chapter throughout the year include:

• Sunshine Education & Research Center (SERC) Research Day
• USF Health Research Day
• Dean’s Lecture Series
• Service trips to Dominican Republic (March)  and Panama (May)
• Participation in the USF Health Service Corps
• “Health Ed for Everyone!” at Farm Workers Self Help in Dade City
• Annual Flu Shot Clinic
• Blood Drives
• Health fairs
• Step out for Diabetes Walk & Health Expo

Karen (Kay) Perrin, PhD, MPH, RN, director of Academic & Student Affairs at the USF College of Public Health, is president of the college’s Tau Chapter.

For more information about the Delta Omega Society, visit www.deltaomega.org.

Mike Conway, recently retired USF campus police, gets his flu shot from nursing student Nereida Valle, with nursing student Alys Garcia in background.

Working in collaboration with the Hillsborough County Health Department (HCHD), the school’s clinical faculty and HCHD nurses provided 1,237 adults with their vaccinations against this year’s predicted influenza viruses (H1N1, H3N2, and B/Brisbane). The HCHD provided the clinical supplies and the vaccine, and the COPH purchased the vaccine from the health department as a public health service to the community.

COPH Global Health graduate student Elizabeth Helfert helps register.

In addition to the vaccinations, educational exhibits were provided, including information on flu prevention, food safety, cardiovascular health, Florida KidCare and Cover Florida, COPH student organizations, USF Health Service Corps, COPH and USF Health academic programs, and USF Health Physicians Group.

Seventy-one volunteers from throughout USF Health helped staff the drive.

“Thanks to all of the volunteers, more than 1,237 adults from USF and our local community benefited from the flu shot drive this year,” said Ellen Kent, MPH, student research grants coordinator and ERC coordinator at COPH and coordinator of the annual community service.

“And a special thanks to our wonderful student volunteers from the medicine and nursing who skillfully administered the flu shots; our COPH student volunteers who helped with the very important aspects of food, registration, greeting folks, parking, and health education tables; our PHSA leaders who ordered the cool t-shirts and refreshments; our  absolutely wonderful colleagues from the Hillsborough County Health Department who provided all clinical supplies and the vaccine; our wonderful USF Health clinical faculty supervisors, Kay Perrin, PHD, MPH, RN, and Deanna Wathington, MD, MPH, and our Occupational Medicine residents;  our COPH Dean Donna Petersen and administration for supporting this annual event; and our entire USF COPH support staff.”

Story by Sarah A. Worth, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications

The College will work with the Florida Department of Health, which received the $3.56-million grant in September from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Adolescent Health. A USF public health team will conduct a five-year, $2.5 million evaluation of a randomized, controlled trial of the Teen Outreach Program (TOP). The project will involve ninth-graders in almost 100 high schools across 26 non-metropolitan Florida counties.

TOP spends less than 15 percent of its curriculum on sexuality, including a brief introduction to pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Instead, the nine-month, school-based program emphasizes developing a positive self-image, life-management skills and setting achievable goals. TOP features a volunteer community service experience as well as a classroom component with facilitated discussion on topics ranging from family conflict to coping with social pressures.

The theory behind TOP is that encouraging teens to address problems in their communities and help others builds a sense of self-worth and enhances problem-solving and leadership skills – which may lead to better decision-making overall and less risky behavior. Data from a previous national, but limited, evaluation indicates the program has resulted in statistically significant reductions in teen pregnancy and school failure.

Eric Buhi, PhD, will lead the evaluation
of the Teen Outreach Program trial.

“Evidence has shown that, in general, young people who volunteer and engage with the community tend to be protected from risky behaviors and have better educational aspirations,” said Eric Buhi, PhD, USF principal investigator for the grant.

“The question remains whether these positive youth development activities lead to prevention of teen pregnancy and more kids staying in school down the road,” said Dr. Buhi, assistant professor of Community and Family Health, College of Public Health. “At the end of this five-year project we’ll have the rigorous, longitudinal data to be able to draw conclusions about the long-term impact of TOP.”

“Teen pregnancy is a serious national problem and we need to use the best science of what works to address it,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, in announcing the grant awards. “This investment will help bring evidence-based initiatives to more communities across the country while also testing new approaches so we can expand our toolkit of effective interventions.”

USF will work with the Florida Department of Health to help design the TOP trial and pilot the intervention. The program implementation by DOH and USF’s initial evaluation are expected to begin in fall 2011. The USF researchers will assess the effects of TOP on participants, compared to demographically similar nonparticipants, as much as three years after the program’s initial implementation. They will measure such outcomes as rates of teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, school suspensions, failures and drop outs.

Co-investigators with Dr. Buhi on the evaluation component of the grant are Rita Debate, PhD; Kay Perrin, PhD; Ellen Daley, PhD; and Stephanie Marhefka, PhD, all of the Department of Community and Family Health, and Wei Wang, PhD, of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

Florida ranks poorly on most adolescent health and education indicators. Among other U.S. states, Florida ranks 28th in teen (15 to 19 years) live birth rates; 43rd in teen syphilis rates; 49th in teen HIV/AIDs rates; and 49th in public school graduation rates.

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

The Bachelor of Science degree program provides the student-centered courses required for entry-level public health jobs found in government agencies, health corporations, community non-profit organizations and health care facilities, said Kay Perrin, PhD, MPH, RN, associate professor and director of Academic and Student Affairs for USF’s COPH.

“The USF is home to Florida’s first and longest-standing public health college so it is very exciting that USF has the first bachelor’s degree in public health in Florida housed in an accredited public health college,” Dr. Perrin said.

   Dr. Kay Perrin, Director of COPH Academic and Student Affairs

“One of the main reasons we started this program is to serve Florida by filling the critical need for health care agencies seeking entry-level personnel in public health settings,” Dr. Perrin said.

“In fact, The Chronicle of Higher Education noted in their Sept.  4, 2009, issue that public health is considered to be one of the ‘five college majors on the rise’ with a list that includes service science, health informatics, computational science, sustainability and public health.”

More than 2,600 students were accepted in the charter class this fall and the program received approval from the Board of Trustees Oct. 7, Dr. Perrin said.

The BS in Public Health is a generalist degree with no concentrations, tracks or specializations, but students can have a double major or an accelerated degree across disciplines (such as a bachelor’s degree in geography and a master’s degree in environmental and occupational health).

COPH student advisor Cherie Dilley talks about the new undergraduate degree being offered at COPH with USF student Colleen Ward, who is currently majoring in social work.

With the new BS program, undergraduate students will be encouraged to seek opportunities to participate in public health research ranging from laboratory studies to participatory community-based research with a focus on the culturally competent aspects of healthy community development including the social, economic, educational components.

“This research provides entry-level student employment opportunities on a variety of specific public health projects while learning basic research skills including data collection, data entry and technical report writing,” Dr. Perrin said.

“Under faculty leadership, students are mentored to achieve personal goals whether they choose employment after their bachelor’s degree or admission into a graduate or professional program.”

Established in July 1984 with an initial enrollment of 100 students, the USF College of Public Health is fully accredited by the Council on Edu¬cation for Public Health (CEPH) and has graduated more than 2,000 students with master’s and doctoral degrees.

Current enrollment includes nearly 600 master’s and doctoral full- and part-time students. Constructed in 1991, the College building houses an auditorium, classrooms, a distance education studio, computer classrooms, and 17 laboratories. More than 91 faculty members provide education, research and service impacting local, state, national and global public health.

Contact Cherie Dilley, undergraduate academic advisor, at cdilley@health.usf.edu or call (813) 974-9135 for more information about the program.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Office of Communications

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awarded the college $4.75- million over five years to establish a center that will enhance the emergency and disaster preparedness of state and local public health workers.   USF was one of 14 accredited schools of public health nationwide – and the only one in Florida — to be funded for a Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center.  Johns Hopkins, Harvard and the University of North Carolina are among the other schools that will be part of the nationwide network.

The Health and Human Resources Administration awarded the college a five-year, $3.25-million grant to support a Public Health Training Center that will assess the learning needs and further develop the knowledge and skills of the state’s current and future public health professionals.  USF was one of 27 accredited schools of public health and other public and non-profit institutions across the country – the only one in Florida – to receive such an award.

“Investing in a well-trained public health workforce is vital to the health and welfare of our communities and state,” said Donna Petersen, ScD, dean of the USF College of Public Health. “These new grants will help insure Florida’s public health system is ready and able to effectively respond to public health threats — whether it’s disasters like hurricanes, chronic conditions such as obesity, or emerging infectious diseases.”

Dr. W. Michael Reid, right, was the lead writer for both federal training grants. Dr. Donna Petersen, dean of the USF College of Public Health, said a well-trained public health workforce is vital to the state’s health and safety.

The funding of the two new federally-funded public health training centers at USF comes at a critical time for Florida, said William Michael Reid, PhD, MBA, associate professor emeritus of environmental and occupational health at the USF College of Public Health, who was the lead writer for both workforce development grants.

Cuts in Florida Department of Health staff and restricted travel budgets have increased the need for accessible, cost-effective training and support.  The need is even more pronounced when factoring in the aging state workforce; agencies like FDOH stand to lose as much as 55 percent of their experienced personnel in the next few years, with few trained employees ready to replace them.

“Employees of the Florida Department of Health have faced sharply reduced opportunities for training over the past few years,” Reid said. “The record of the USF College of Public Health’s Center for Public Health Preparedness in providing training was one reason that the Surgeon General of Florida enthusiastically supported both these grant applications.”

Preparedness and Emergency Response Learning Center (PERLC)

The PERLC features collaboration among the USF College of Public Health’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice, the Sarasota County Health Department, Sarasota County Emergency Services and the Sarasota County Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD).  The partnership will develop a Sarasota-based training institute that allows community representatives from other counties to learn about and replicate Sarasota’s innovative community-based system for disaster preparedness, response and recovery.  The Sarasota system — involving faith-based organizations, hospitals, the school district, businesses and other community partners – emphasizes inter-agency collaboration and promotes sharing of resources.

“Sarasota has established a highly successful, nationally-recognized model that other regions of the state could replicate to become more coordinated in how they plan for and respond to disasters,” said Danielle Landis, PhD, MPH, deputy director of USF’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.

“This is a great opportunity for Sarasota to work with the USF College of Public Health to train others on what we’ve been doing to build community capacity before a disaster like another hurricane or a flu epidemic hits,” said Bill Little, MBA, MPH, director of the Sarasota County Health Department and administrator of Sarasota County Health and Human Services.

Teams of trainees will be recruited from counties across the state in early spring 2011, with the institute’s training program expected to begin in summer 2011.

This latest CDC-funded project will build upon USF College of Public Health’s longstanding relationship with Sarasota County through the college’s Florida Prevention Research Center.  Collaborating with the Sarasota County Health Department and other community stakeholders, the college has conducted several community-based social marketing projects in Sarasota County, including one aimed at preventing tobacco and alcohol use in middle school students and another to promote youth fitness.

The PERLC will also work with the Florida Department of Health, including its Office of Public Health Preparedness, to develop and offer online and onsite courses to the department’s employees and other public health emergency and disaster preparedness workers across the state.  These would include existing courses in mental health support for first responders and front-line health professionals vulnerable to disaster-related stress, in crisis communications and leadership, and in field epidemiology for the state’s strike teams that help communities investigate causes of disease outbreaks and contain their spread. Additional training, based on Florida Department of Health needs, will begin in late spring 2011.

Disaster/emergency preparedness and response training will be a key focus of the new CDC-funded center.

Public Health Training Center (PHTC)

During the PHTC’s first year, USF will work with the Florida Department of Health to better assess the needs of the public health workforce and identify gaps in training among state and local public health workers, Landis said. Areas that require strengthening are likely to include environmental health, communication, disaster-related behavioral health, and crisis leadership, she said. A key partner in the PHTC trainings will be the Department of Health’s Office of Workforce Development.

The PHTC workforce needs assessment will be used to plan and develop training that blends classroom instruction with technologies such as distance learning, podcasting, webinars and online chat rooms for real-time discussions.  USF was the first college of public health in the nation to offer a fully distance-based master of public health degree.

One of the most exciting components of the PHTC will be a web-based mentoring program that matches both junior public health employees and USF public health students with those in leadership positions at the Florida Department of Health to promote sharing of knowledge, skills and experiences, Landis said.

The new grant funding will allow the college to offer stipends to students who qualify for DOH-mentored field experiences, Landis said.  So, for instance, a public health student with a special interest in disaster planning might be matched with a senior director of disaster and emergency management and through that relationship have the chance to travel to Tallahassee or another area of the state to observe an Emergency Operations Command Center in action.

“The placements with mentors will greatly increase our students’ opportunities to gain practical experience in the field,” Landis said, “and that kind of ‘boots-on-the-ground’ training provides a tremendous edge in the job market.”

Both the PERLC and PHTC will be based in the College of Public Health’s Office of Public Health Practice.

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

But now Cindy Selleck, ARNP, DSN, director USF Area Health Education Center (AHEC) Program, is leaving USF Health to take a new position at her alma mater: the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she will be associate dean for Clinical Affairs and Partnerships in the School of Nursing.

Dr. Cindy Selleck

Dr. Selleck joined USF in 1987, teaching Family Health Nursing in the College of Nursing. She went on to chair the graduate concentration in Family Health Nursing as associate professor before being named in 1994 acting center director for the newly formed USF AHEC.

The goal of AHECs, which the Congress formed in 1972, is to forge partnerships between academic medical centers and their communities. One of Dr. Selleck’s first priorities when taking the post 16 years ago was to establish two regional AHEC centers (Gulfcoast North AHEC based in Land O’Lakes and Gulfcoast South AHEC based in Sarasota), expanding USF’s AHEC reach to a nine-county service area: Citrus, Hernando, Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota, Desoto, and Charlotte.

It can be estimated that, under Dr. Selleck’s leadership, USF AHEC secured more than $50 million in state and federal funding and more than 300,000 students, health professionals, youth and community members have benefited from the programs and services of the USF AHEC Program, said Anne Maynard, MPH, CHES, program director of USF AHEC.

Some of these highlights include:
• More than 10,000 health professions students (from USF, as well as from affiliated academic partners) were provided with educational opportunities, including rotations through rural health clinics.
• More than 93,000 students (K through 12, and undergraduate) heard about options for entering health professions through routine ACCESS Days held at USF, as well as off-site informational sessions.
• More than 160,000 people from throughout the state met with AHEC at community events, including health fairs, education classes and group sessions.
• More than 3,000 people participated in AHEC-sponsored tobacco education and cessation programs and/or were trained how to host such programs.
• More than 40,000 health professionals received continuing education through AHEC (such as programs on infectious disease, osteoporosis and domestic violence) and/or were preceptors for students.

“Cindy has always been committed to caring for the underserved, using primary care as her model,” said Laurie J. Woodard, MD, associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine.

“I would invite her to teach our medical students in physical diagnosis the fundamentals of women’s health care because she was able to clearly provide a balanced, informative and compassionate approach to the care of women. Cindy is so bright and articulate. She is someone who can take an idea and bring it to fruition making many friends along the way – a real ‘can-do person’. She has been able to bridge the world of the academic health center and our community with warmth and grace that has been unequalled. She is a very classy woman, an exceptional leader – a truly exceptional person.”

For Dr. Selleck, connecting educational with clinical service is almost genetic. Her father was a physician and her mom was a nurse; her sister is a nurse, and her brother is a veterinarian.  Her research has focused on alcohol and substance abuse (especially for pregnant women), family health issues such as teen pregnancy, health disparities, and medically underserved populations.

The USF Health community will honor Dr. Selleck at a reception Friday, Sept. 24, from 3 to 5 p.m. on the third floor of the Children’s Medical Services Building.

Story by Sarah A. Worth, USF Health Office of Communications

The most serious imminent health risk for workers helping with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup may not be the oil or chemicals dispersants – but the unrelenting Gulf heat.

“It’s was miserably hot and humid,” said Thomas Bernard, PhD, professor and chair of Environmental and Occupational Health at the University of South Florida College of Public Health. “When you have 10,000 people working outdoors in that type of environment, you’re bound to have some heat-related illnesses… Exertional heat stroke is our main acute health concern.”

An expert in heat stress management, Bernard has been tapped to review and evaluate the heat stress management program on behalf of Unified Area Command, which is overseeing the BP oil spill response.

Thomas Bernard, PhD, stands near a decontamination station at an oil spill cleanup site in Grand Isle Beach, LA. Crews pass through the station and cross the orange barrier to the clean side for recovery.

Temperatures were in the mid-90s and the 75° F dew point, a measure of humidity, was higher than normal when Dr. Bernard visited the Louisiana Gulf Coast in late June. He spent three days touring incident command posts in Houma, LA, and Mobile, AL, and observing the cleanup operations at field sites in Grand Isle, LA, and Dauphin Island, AL. He is developing recommendations to maximize workers’ heat protection.

Dr. Bernard plans to return to the Gulf region later this summer to assess Unified Area Command’s implementation of the recommendations. “For instance,” he said “there are some things you can do, like spot check oral temperatures and recovering heart rates of workers, to monitor that their heat stress is being adequately managed.”

So far, less than 50 heat-related problems requiring medical attention have been reported. These have included heat exhaustion, Dr. Bernard said, but fortunately no incidents of the more serious condition, heat stroke. Heat exhaustion, brought on by prolonged exposure to high heat and dehydration, is marked by such symptoms as low blood pressure, fatigue, dizziness, muscle cramps, headaches and nausea or vomiting. Without treatment, it may progress to potentially deadly heat stroke, which happens when core body temperature rises above 104° F and the person loses the ability to sweat enough to cool their body.

A cleanup crew loads bags of contaminated sand into bins. The workers, exposed to extreme heat and humidity under a relentless Gulf Coast sun, take frequent breaks in the shade to reduce the risk of heat illness.

To reduce heat stress, Dr. Bernard said, the oil spill workers wearing regular clothes — those seen wearing long pants, gloves and boots as they clean tar balls off the beach — rest 20 minutes in the shade for each hour worked. Workers wearing protective clothing to guard against contaminated oil, including disposable coveralls, vapor-barrier suits and face masks, need a longer recovery period; they take 40-minute breaks each hour. All the cleanup crews get two hours for lunch in an air-conditioned mess hall. Plenty of water and electrolyte replacement drinks are always available.

Unified Area Command has set up ice-water immersion stations to quickly treat any cases of heat stroke that may arise. “They can lay the patient on a tarp, dump an ice chest on top and wrap the person up with the ice to cool them off,” Dr. Bernard said. “The whole idea is to get that core body temperature down as fast as possible. The higher the temperature and longer it remains above 104° F, the greater the risk for permanent damage and death.”

Overall, Dr. Bernard said, he was impressed by measures put in place to protect workers from heat stress and respond quickly to distress. “From what I observed, they’re doing a lot and getting better at controlling heat-related illnesses.”

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications, and photos courtesy of Dr. Thomas Bernard, College of Public Health

The University of South Florida College of Public Health’s annual social marketing conference continues to carry the banner for the discipline as the cadre of skilled social marketers grows and expands applications beyond health.

“USF’s conference has done more to advance social marketing than any other single effort I know,” said Philip Kotler, PhD, distinguished professor of international marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.

Kotler, who coined the term “social marketing,” joined colleagues Alan Andreasen, PhD, and Bill Novelli to offer their perspectives on the past, present and future of the field at the 20th Anniversary Social Marketing in Public Health Conference. The trio, known as the “Founding Fathers of Social Marketing” spoke at the milestone conference, held June 11 and 12, in Clearwater Beach, FL. More than 300 attendees, including leading social marketing professionals, gathered from 36 U.S. states and nine countries, including China, Australia and the island nation of Palau.

Co-directors of the 20th anniversary conference Carol Bryant (left) and Kelli McCormack Brown flank the three “Founding Fathers” of social marketing, l to r, Bill Novelli, Philip Kotler and Alan Andreasen.

The three early pioneers of social marketing each contributed to the evolution of the field, which applies the principles and techniques of commercial marketing in an attempt to persuade target audiences to change their behavior to benefit themselves and society in general. Consumer-focused research and evaluation are a vital part of the social marketing process.

Kotler said that the social marketing community, like advertising, is shifting to a greater emphasis on emotions rather than ideas as the precipitators of action. “Smokers, drug users, overeaters and others often know better, but fail to do better,” he said. “Getting people to accept something new requires a substitute for the behavior you want to change… for example chewing gum instead of smoking.”

Keynote speaker Bill Smith, executive director of the Academy for Educational Development, moderated the Founding Fathers of Social Marketing panel. An original painting by Smith was used in the conference’s 20th anniversary poster pictured above.

Andreasen, professor and executive director of the Social Marketing Institute at Georgetown University, reviewed the major advances in social marketing since the 1990s. Once dominated by health care, the application of social marketing continues to broaden to other areas, including the environment, criminal justice and finance, Andreasen said. At the same time, more social marketers are focusing their efforts at the systems level – targeting legislators, policy makers and other leaders who can influence the behavior and opportunities of target audiences.

“Behavior can be constrained by barriers. For instance, kids who want to exercise may find their playgrounds frequented by drug dealers and their schools’ physical education teachers and coaching positions cut,” Andreasen said. “Social marketing has to persuade school principals to create new opportunities for exercise, and figure out how to get legislators to change their behavior so they reward school systems that value physical activity.”

More work is needed to build the brand of social marketing (behavior not ideas), measure its effectiveness, increase the buy-in of senior management, and tap into the power of social media like Facebook, Twitter and blogs to reach new stakeholders, Andreasen added.

More than 300 people from 36 U.S. states and nine countries attended.

Novelli helped lead the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, one of the first major social marketing initiatives to emphasize policy advocacy in its efforts to protect children from tobacco addiction and secondhand smoke exposure. The campaign worked strategically to decrease consumption of tobacco with tax increases and for FDA oversight of tobacco products.

Novelli, founder of the worldwide public relations agency Porter Novelli and former CEO of AARP, described two trends he sees with implications for social marketing. The first is the slip backwards in health and well-being in the United States. Many indicators of healthy behavior – including healthy weight, regular exercise, and eating fruits and vegetables – have declined, Novelli said. The second is increased government support for prevention research, including funding sources for social marketing in the new healthcare reform legislation, and more willingness by employers to create health promotion and disease prevention programs at work.

“While healthy behavior is down, social pressure to combat that change is up,” Novelli said. “There is no shortage of opportunities to advance the cause of social change and make the world a better place.”

Among the conference attendees was Beverly Schwartz, a planning committee member, who hasn’t missed a single USF social marketing conference in the last 20 years. Schwartz was one of the first in a federal agency to formally hold a social marketing position – in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of HIV/AIDS during the early AIDS awareness campaigns.

Planning committee member Beverly Schwartz, among the first to hold a formal social marketing position in a federal agency, has attended all 20 of the USF College of Public Health’s socal marketing conferences.

“The first conference was small and intimate; there were less than 50 people,” said Schwartz, now senior marketing counsel for Ashoka, a global association advancing social entrepreneurship. “It’s been great to see this conference grow and become more sophisticated over the years. USF has helped build networks of skilled social marketers and continues to develop the technical expertise to be a leader the field.”

Among the conference’s featured speakers was Carol Bryant, PhD, co-director of the USF College of Public Health’s Florida Prevention Research Center, one of 37 comprehensive health promotion and disease prevention centers nationwide funded by the CDC. The center has applied community-based social marketing and evidence-based research to a variety of projects, including childhood obesity prevention, promoting eye safety among citrus workers, and preventing initiation of tobacco and alcohol use among middle school students.

Carol Bryant talked about lessons learned from community-based social marketing projects implemented by the Florida Prevention Research Center at USF.

“When you partner with people in the community, you tap into their community wisdom and control … and the community’s ability to identify, analyze and find solutions to big social problems,” said Bryant, a distinguished USF Health professor. The result, Bryant added, has been more sustainable projects and a better return on investment for taxpayers.

The demand for social marketing is gaining momentum from several sources, including recent environmental disasters and pressures, the recession, social media growth, and a Millennial generation that wants to give back, Kotler said. “I think we’re really going to take off. In a few years, we may need a stadium to hold everyone, not a hotel conference room.”

Philip Kotler signs a copy of a book he co-authored, “Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviors for Good,” for Jaejin Lee, a University of Florida PhD student in advertising. Lee was a conference scholarship recipient.

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications, and photos by Gil Williams Photography

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=13329 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=13286 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=13286#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:17:35 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=13286 Tampa, FL (June 18, 2010) – Extremely obese women are at greatly increased risk for hypertension in pregnancy – a potential deadly complication — compared to their normal-weight counterparts, new research by the University of South Florida shows.

The findings by Dr. Hamisu Salihu and colleagues at USF Health were recently published online in the international obstetrics and gynecology journal BJOG.

High blood pressure problems, known as pre-eclampsia, affect approximately 6 to 8 percent of pregnancies in the United States, typically starting after the 20th week of pregnancy, according to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. If unchecked, this condition can threaten the lives of both the mother and fetus.

The proportion of super-obese people – those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 50 – has increased five-fold over the last two decades, said Dr. Salihu, professor of epidemiology at the USF College of Public Health. An example of super-obesity would be a 5-foot, 4-inch woman weighing 300 or more pounds.

While obesity before pregnancy has been identified as a risk factor for pre-eclampsia, there is little information on the risks for this growing group of “super-obese” women.

The USF researchers reviewed all birth records in Missouri from 1989 to 2005 (854,085 live births) to examine the correlation between degrees of obesity and the risk for pre-eclampsia. They found that obese women (BMI of 30 or higher) were three times more likely to develop pre-eclampsia than women normal-weight women (BMI of 25 or less).

The overall rate of pre-eclampsia was 4.5 percent. The rate was 3.3 percent for normal-weight women, ranged from about 8 to 11 percent for obese women, and was 13.4 percent for super-obese women.

Regardless of their BMI, the more weight women gained during pregnancy, the higher their risk for pre-eclampsia. The risk for pre-eclampsia in super-obese women with high weight gain was more than 13 times that of normal-weight women with moderate weight gain, and more than four times that of obese women with moderate weight gain.

Physicians should work with obese, and particularly super-obese, women to help make pregnancy less risky for them and their babies, Dr. Salihu said. “Super-obese women would benefit significantly from weight loss before becoming pregnant, and appropriate, well-controlled weight gain during pregnancy.”

Journal article online:
“Super-obesity and risk for early and late pre-eclampsia;” AK Mbah, JL Kornosky, S Kristensen, EM August, AP Alio, PJ Marty, V Belogolovkin, K Bruder, HM Salihu; BJOG; May, 19, 2010; DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-0528.2010.02593.x

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=13286 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=13248 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=13248#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:14:48 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=13248 Benefit for infants born to black women may be greatest, USF study suggests

Tampa, FL (June 17, 2010) — Studies have shown fathers who are active in their children’s upbringing can significantly benefit their children’s early development, academic achievement and well being. Now, a new study by University of South Florida researchers suggests that a father’s involvement before his child is born may play an important role in preventing death during the first year of life – particularly if the infant is black.

The USF team sought to evaluate whether the absence of fathers during pregnancy contributes to racial and ethnic disparities in infant survival and health. Their findings were recently reported online in the Journal of Community and Family Health.

“Our study suggests that lack of paternal involvement during pregnancy is an important and potentially modifiable risk factor for infant mortality,” concluded the study’s lead author Amina Alio, PhD, research assistant professor of community and family health at the USF College of Public Health. “A significant proportion of infant deaths could be prevented if fathers were to become more involved.”

The researchers examined the records of all births in Florida from 1998 to 2005 – more than 1.39 million live births. Father involvement was defined by the presence of the father’s name on the infant’s birth certificate. While this measure does not assess the extent or quality of a father’s involvement during pregnancy, other studies have established a link between paternal information on a birth record and prenatal paternal involvement.

USF public health researcher Amina Alio, PhD, led the study
evaluating the effect of father absence during pregnancy on
racial/ethnic disparities in infant survival.

Among the study’s findings:

- Infants with absent fathers were more likely to be born with lower birth weights, to be preterm and small for gestational age.

- Regardless of race or ethnicity, the neonatal death rate of father-absent infants was nearly four times that of their counterparts with involved fathers.

- The risk of poor birth outcomes was highest for infants born to black women whose babies’ fathers were absent during their pregnancies. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic differences, these babies were seven times more likely to die in infancy than babies born to Hispanic and white women in the same situation.

- Obstetric complications contributing to premature births, such as anemia, chronic high blood pressure, eclampsia and placental abruption, were more prevalent among women whose babies’ fathers were absent during pregnancy.

- Expectant mothers in the father-absent group tended to be younger, more educated, more likely to never have given birth, more likely to be black, and had a higher percentage of risk factors like smoking and inadequate prenatal care than mothers in the father-involved group.

Paternal support may decrease the mother’s emotional stress, which has been linked to poor pregnancy outcomes, or promote healthy prenatal behavior, Dr. Alio suggested. For instance, some studies, including USF’s, indicate that pregnant women with absent partners are more likely to report smoking during pregnancy and get inadequate prenatal care. Barriers to expectant fathers’ involvement in the lives of their pregnant partners, including issues like unemployment, relationship status, and participation in prenatal visits, must be examined to increase the role of men during pregnancy, she said.

Improving the involvement of expectant fathers holds promise for reducing costly medical treatments for the complications of premature births as well as reducing infant mortality rates, particularly in black communities, Dr. Alio said. “When fathers are involved, children thrive in school and in their development. So, it should be no surprise that when fathers are present in the lives of pregnant mothers, babies fare much better.”

Dr. Alio was recently named a member of the national Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ National Commission on Paternal Involvement in Pregnancy Outcomes. The other USF study authors were Alfred Mbah, Jennifer Kornosky, Deanna Wathington, Phillip Marty, and Hamisu Salihu.

- USF Health -

USF Health (www.health.usf.edu) is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.4 million in research grants and contracts last year, the University of South Florida is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of only 25 public research universities nationwide with very high research activity that is designated as community-engaged by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

News release by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=13248 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12885 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12885#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:00:40 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12885 They speak out on prematurity and paternal involvement in birth outcomes

Two USF College of Public Health faculty members were in the national public policy spotlight in May — speaking out on the consequences of prematurity, poor pregnancy outcomes and health disparities.

Charles Mahan, MD, professor emeritus and former dean of public health, testified May 12 in Washington, DC, before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health at a hearing focused on what happens when babies are born too early. Dr. Mahan, founder of the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies at USF, was invited to participate in the hearing by U.S. Congresswoman Kathy Castor.

Amina Alio, PhD, research assistant professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, spoke May 20 at a Capitol Hill briefing on the role of expectant fathers in birth outcomes. Dr. Alio was invited to participate in the briefing organized by Congressman Danny Davis. The briefing coincided with a report released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Commission on Paternal Involvement in Pregnancy.

Charles Mahan, MD, spoke to the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Health about how elective C-sections are compounding the problem of premature births in Florida, particularly among black women.

Florida’s rate of babies born prematurely is higher than the national average, a troubling trend because studies show correlations between preterm births and low-birth-weight babies and neurodevelopental disorders. Roughly 12.3 percent of all U.S. births are preterm – delivered before the 37th week of pregnancy, according to a new report released the National Center for Health Statistics. Nearly 14 percent of babies born in Florida are premature.

The earlier a baby is born before full-term (40 weeks) the greater the likelihood of complications such as respiratory distress from premature lungs.

Now lawmakers are working with experts, including those at USF, to find out why so many babies are born early so that public health interventions can be developed to reduce prematurity. In particular, they are trying to understand why preterm birth disproportionately affects black infants.

In Hillsborough County, the rate of infant mortality is four times higher for black women than non-Hispanic white women. Chronic stress is a factor contributing to higher rates of prematurity and infant mortality in black women, Dr. Mahan said, and rising rates of medically unnecessary C-sections may compound the problem. Black women in the United States have had the highest cesarean rates of any group for more than 10 years.

“In Florida, we are finding that elective induction of labor and C-sections in normal women are producing an excessive number of pre-term babies,” Dr. Mahan said. “Because their brains are not as well developed as full-term babies, these premature babies often do not do as well from a health and development standpoint, which can lead to educational problems when they get to school.”

The USF Chiles Center is helping coordinate a statewide task force of physicians, nurse midwives and public health professionals who can address this problem.

Public health experts at the Joint Commission briefing called for more research and policy changes to boost the involvement of fathers-to-be in helping to ensure healthy pregnancies and births.

Amina Alio, PhD, spoke about fathers’ involvement in pregnancy at a panel sponsored by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

“First, there is a lack of research on this issue, and, secondly, the emphasis on the maternal aspect of reproductive health has caused us to ignore the role of the father beyond conception,” Dr. Alio said in her remarks at the Capitol Hill briefing. “Recognizing the important contribution of men to the physical health and well-being of the family is the necessary first step to addressing problems of health disparities and infant mortality that have plagued out nation for decades.”

Dr. Alio – working with USF’s Hamisu Salihu, MD, PhD, and Phillip Marty, PhD — has conducted studies on whether a father’s involvement during pregnancy makes a difference in infant survival and health. Her research grew out the frustration she heard from community members about the absence of men in programs and activities focused on improving the health of babies.

The USF researchers examined the records of all births in Florida from 1998 to 2005 – more than 1.39 million births. Father involvement was defined by the inclusion of the father’s information on the infant’s birth certificate. Even after adjusting for sociodemographic differences, they found infants with absent fathers were significantly more likely to be born with lower birth weights, to be preterm and small for gestational age. The risks of negative pregnancy outcomes were even higher for black infants with absent fathers.

Infants born to black women whose babies’ fathers were absent during their pregnancies had a seven times greater risk of infant mortality than infants born to Hispanic and white women in the same situation, the USF study found.

Dr. Alio suggested paternal support may decrease the mother’s emotional stress, which has been linked to poor pregnancy outcomes, or promote healthy prenatal behavior. For instance, some studies have indicated that pregnant women are more likely to smoke during pregnancy and get inadequate prenatal care if their partners are absent. Barriers to expectant fathers’ involvement in the lives of their pregnant partners, including issues like unemployment, relationship status, and participation in prenatal visits, must be examined to increase the role of men during pregnancy, she said.

Improving the involvement of expectant fathers holds promise for reducing costly medical treatments for the complications of premature births as well as reducing infant mortality rates, particularly in black communities, she said.

“When fathers are involved, children thrive in school and in their development,” Dr. Alio said, “so it should be no surprise that when fathers are present in the lives of pregnant mothers, babies fare much better.”

- Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=12885 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12783 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12783#comments Mon, 24 May 2010 19:39:21 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12783 Social marketing changes with the times to promote social change

Tampa, FL (May 25, 2010) — Fasten your seatbelt. Get that flu shot. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Turn off the light when you’re not in the room. Save money for your retirement.

There is no limit to the behaviors and attitudes that social marketing can seek to influence. When public health, marketing and environmental science professionals from across the world gather next month for the 20th Anniversary Social Marketing in Public Health Conference, Milestones in Social Marketing: Past, Present & Future, they will discuss how the field is changing and expanding its reach to promote large-scale social change. The integration of digital technology and social media into social marketing will be part of the discussion.

Sponsored by the University of South Florida (USF Health) in collaboration with the Academy for Educational Development, the conference will be held June 11 and 12, 2010, at the Sheraton Sand Key Hotel in Clearwater Beach, FL.

“Our conference is the longest-running social marketing event in the world,” said James Lindenberger, director of the Center for Social Marketing at the USF College of Public Health. “Over the last 20 years USF and its public health practitioners have built strong relationships with thousands of conference participants who continue to share what they’ve learned and to advance social marketing in areas like chronic disease, obesity prevention, smoking cessation, sexual health and global health.”

The conference kicks off with a presentation by three early pioneers of social marketing – Philip Kotler, PhD; Alan Andreasen, PhD; and Bill Novelli. Collectively known as the “founding fathers of social marketing,” they will give their perspectives on how the field has evolved internationally and in the United States.

Kotler, the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, is considered one of the most influential marketing scholars in the last 30 years. Andreasen, professor and executive director of the Social Marketing Institute at Georgetown University, is a consumer behavior expert and a world leader in applying marketing to nonprofit organizations. Novelli, founder of the worldwide public relations agency Porter Novelli, was former chief executive officer of AARP and former president of the Tobacco-Free Kids Campaign.

Social marketing applies the principles and techniques of commercial marketing in an attempt to persuade a target audience to voluntarily accept, reject, change or abandon a behavior to benefit themselves and society in general. Consumer-focused research and evaluation are an integral part of the social marketing process.

Carol Bryant, PhD, co-director of the Florida Prevention Research Center at the USF College of Public Health, will also speak at the conference. Her recent work has focused on designing social marketing-based interventions that get children to be more physically active and eat better.

In the beginning, Bryant said, international health agencies used social marketing primarily with a maternal and child health focus — to help reduce infant mortality, promote family planning, and prevent infectious or parasitic diseases, for example. As the discipline became more widely practiced in the United States, its strategies were tapped by such diverse fields as environmental health, education, and finance.

“Now, you’re seeing community-based social marketing to get people to recycle, conserve energy, stop feeding the bears – all sorts of environmental protection initiatives,” Bryant said. “It’s even used for financial planning purposes …to convince people to save money.”

Conventional marketing, which often relies heavily on mass advertising, can be effective at increasing public awareness and understanding of issues, but its success in altering social behavior is limited.

“We spend a lot of time teaching people what social marketing is not – and it’s not focus groups, advertising and public service announcements,” Bryant said. “It’s far more complicated and powerful than that. It involves in-depth research, integrating that research into program design and sometimes changing public policy and community norms to make it easier for people to adopt the behavior and attitudes you’re promoting.”

For more information on the main conference and the post-conference training academy (June 13 and 14), contact Jim Lindenberger at (813) 974-3603, or visit the conference website at www.cme.hsc.usf.edu/smph

- USF Health -

USF Health (www.health.usf.edu) is dedicated to creating a model of health care based on understanding the full spectrum of health. It includes the University of South Florida’s colleges of medicine, nursing, and public health; the schools of biomedical sciences as well as physical therapy & rehabilitation sciences; and the USF Physicians Group. With more than $380.4 million in research grants and contracts last year, the University of South Florida is one of the nation’s top 63 public research universities and one of only 25 public research universities nationwide with very high research activity that is designated as community-engaged by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

- News release by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=12783 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12668 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12668#comments Fri, 14 May 2010 18:22:25 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12668 Aim is to advance collaborative research and education in Panama

A two-day event focusing on global sustainability and health was hosted earlier this month by the USF College of Public Health and the USF Health International Foundation, in collaboration with Centro Internacional para el Desarrollo Sostenible (CIDES), a major international organization at the Ciudad del Saber (City of Knowledge) in Panama City, Panama.

“Experts from Panama and USF gathered to tackle the thorny issues of protecting and preserving the environment, culture, and health of citizens, while facilitating responsible and sustainable development – issues that are just as relevant to Florida as they are to Panama,” said Donna Petersen, ScD, dean of the College of Public Health.

L to R: College of Public Health Dean Dr. Donna Petersen, Dr. Rodrigo Tarté, Andres Tarté, USF President Judy Genshaft, Dr. Guillermo Castro, Eda Soto, USF Health AVP for International Programs Dr. Ann DeBaldo, and Dr. Arletty Pinel.

The guests from Panama included Dr. Rodrigo Tarté, Executive Director, CIDES, and his son Andres Tarté; Dr. Guillermo Castro, Academic Director, City of Knowledge; Dr. Arletty Pinel, Director, SurGlobal at City of Knowledge; and Eda Soto, Environmental Protection Specialist, Panama Canal Authority.

On May 3, the guests gave a series of presentations on the impact of the Panama Canal’s expansion on the ecosystem, including its implications for local and global health and opportunities for public health and related environmental research initiatives. In addition to being the principal source of water required for ship transits through the Canal, the Panama Canal watershed provides 95 percent of the drinking water for inhabitants of the region. The ongoing expansion, one of the world’s largest water management projects, is adding locks and deepening the Canal’s navigation channel to double its capacity.

USF President Judy Genshaft displays the gift presented to USF by the Panama guests. It was hand-woven with recycled paper and natural fibers by indigenous women in the community of Jaqué in Darién, Panama.

On May 4, the Panama guests met with USF President Judy Genshaft, officials from the USF School of Global Sustainability, the USF Health International Foundation Council and Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO for USF Health and dean of the College of Medicine.

“Their visit has advanced our efforts to build collaborative programs in research and education. We are planning to form a consortium of interested parties, which is needed to apply for larger grants to fund these programs,” said Ann DeBaldo, PhD, associate vice president for International Programs at USF Health. “What better place to study than in a living laboratory, an important and sensitive ecosystem like the Panama Canal watershed?”

City of Knowledge Academic Director Dr. Guillermo Castro with public health doctoral student Ligia Cruz.

The USF Health International Foundation officially opened its doors in the country of Panama in June 2008, and USF Health’s Panama office is located at the City of Knowledge. Their mission is to increase collaboration in education, research and health and training for patient care between USF faculty and students and Panama, as well as other health professionals and organizations throughout the region.

L to R: Dr. Ricardo Izurieta, Department of Global Health, COPH; Eda Soto, Environmental Protection Specialist, Panama Canal Authority; and Dr. Willie Moreno, Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering.

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier, USF Health Communications
Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications, and Ellen Kent, College of Public Health

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=12668 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12080 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12080#comments Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:33:15 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=12080 Frantz Jean Louis and family look ahead to their new life in Tampa, never losing sight of relatives left behind in their earthquake-ravaged homeland

When Frantz Jean Louis and his 2-year-old daughter Aurelie arrived here Jan 20 from earthquake-ravaged Haiti, they had only the clothes on their backs and one small suitcase. No place to live. No idea of what was next.

Three months later, Jean Louis, a Haiti native and 2009 graduate of the USF College of Public Health, has obtained a used car and a modest apartment, works as a biological scientist trainee, and will begin the PhD program in Molecular Medicine at USF this August. But, even more important to Jean Louis, he was rejoined in March by his wife Myriam, a doctor who had stayed behind in a Port au Prince to help care for the sick and injured.

Lto R: Frantz Jean Louis with daugher Aurelie, 2, and wife Dr. Myriam Jean Louis

At a recent lunch break, Jean Louis was joined by his wife and daughter at the Interdisciplinary Research Building, where he works in the laboratory of mentor Alberto van Olphen, DVM, PhD, director of virology for the USF Center for Biological Defense.

“We want to say thank you, thank you so much to everyone, and all our friends at the College of Public Health, who showed their concern and helped us,” Jean Louis said.

Daughter Aurelie (“Lolie” to her parents), wearing a pink shirt with butterflies, sings as she marches confidently around the building’s atrium. The same little girl who just months before lived in the street after the family’s home was damaged by tremors and cringed at the sound of airplanes and helicopters overhead, now nestles next to her “Mama” and “Papa” and sings “Happy Birthday” to them. She is adjusting well to life in the United States and is popular with all the classmates who rush to greet her each day at daycare, her father said. “She’s happier now. She’s likes playing with all the children at school and loves to sing.”

Aurelie has adjusted well to life in the United States,
and made many friends at day care, her parents say.

Primrose School of Tampa Palms offered to subsidize daycare for Aurelie after hearing of the family’s plight. Others in the USF and Tampa Bay communities also made donations through a fund USF established to help the family start a new life. For a while, Jean Louis and his daughter lived with friends from the USF College of Public Health. Former colleagues at the Department of Health, Bureau of Laboratories in Tampa, organized a benefit spaghetti luncheon for Jean Louis, who conducted a field experience there last summer while finishing his MPH degree with a concentration in global communicable disease.

Azliyati Azizan, PhD, assistant professor of global health, was the research advisor for Jean Louis’ dengue fever special project, along with Lillian Stark, PhD, virology director for the DOH Tampa Lab. She said Jean Louis completed his MPH degree in less than two years on a Fulbright scholarship because he was eager to return to his family in Haiti and find a job there. “We were impressed because he was such a dependable, diligent worker,” Dr. Azizan said.

After graduating in the fall, Jean Louis was back in Haiti less than month when the earthquake hit. After a week of living on the street, surrounded by cadavers, with little food and fears of civil unrest, his wife urged him to get on an airplane and take their U.S.-born daughter to safety.

Now reunited in Tampa, the family worries about their homeless parents and siblings left behind as Haiti’s hurricane season approaches. “With all the wind and rain, the tents they are living in would be washed away,” Jean Louis said.

Myriam Jean Louis continues to stay in touch by phone with physician colleagues Centre de sante de Croix des Bouquets Hospital in Port-au-Prince. She is studying for the GRE and TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and plans to apply to enter the MPH program with the Department of Global Health. Meanwhile her husband is working with Dr. van Olphen’s team to help develop a diagnostic tool for the H1N1 virus.

Jean Louis, a graduate of the USF College of Public Health,
is working in the laboratory of Dr. Alberto van Olphen and will
enter the PhD program in Molecular Medicine this August.

They eventually want to return to Haiti to help rebuild their native country. In Haiti, where the average life expectancy is age 56, infectious diseases like malaria and tuberculosis threaten the population more than the chronic diseases prevalent in developed nations, Franz Jean Louis said.

“With more education we will be in a better position to make some changes in Haiti’s health system,” Myriam Jean Louis said.

While grateful for the opportunities here, the couple expresses sadness about leaving their struggling country. They take heart in the encouragement of the USF public health community that has rallied around them.

“Frantz endeared himself to all of us,” Dr. Stark said. “He’s the kind of guy who wants to give back.”

“When he brought his wife to visit us at the college,” Dr. Azizan said. “I told her I wouldn’t be surprised to one day see Frantz as Haiti’s minister of health.”

Story by Anne DeLotto Baier
Photos by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications, and courtesy of Primrose School of Tampa Palms

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=12080 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11996 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11996#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:21:50 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11996 The University of South Florida College of Public Health is one of 37 institutions participating in a new pilot program administered by the National Board of Public Health Examiners.

The 37 institutions were chosen from among more than 100 schools and programs of public health accredited by the Council on Education for Public Health.  They will offer the August 2010 Certified in Public Health (CPH) exam as a pre-graduation test for their students.

Since the exam was first offered in 2008, the CPH credential has provided public health graduates an opportunity to demonstrate that they have met high educational standards and are committed to their ongoing professional development.

Donna J. Petersen, ScD, dean of the USF College of Public Health and immediate Past Chair of the National Board of Public Health Examiners, has been a champion of establishing the pilot test of the CPH exam for public health students.

USF Public Health Dean Donna Petersen

“Through this pilot program, we hope to demonstrate the value of integrating the Certified in Public Health exam as an integral part of students’ academic experience while also providing meaningful quality assessment data for schools and programs,” Dr. Petersen said. “Students taking the CPH exam are differentiating themselves by demonstrating their commitment to the field of public health and their own professional advancement.”

The registration fee for pre-graduating candidates will be $350 through May 25, 2010 (midnight EST). For pilot “pre-graduate” examinees, no CPH will be awarded until the candidate has completed all graduation requirements.  Registration can be completed online at www.publichealthexam.org

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=11996 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11820 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11820#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:38:29 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11820 The 100th Anniversary of the Florida Department of Health’s Tampa Laboratory was a highlight of the College of Public Health’s weeklong celebration

Dr. Phil Amuso, director of the Tampa Lab, Florida Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories, speaks at the lab’s 100th Anniversary celebration. The lab has a strong partnership with the USF College of Public Health.

The USF College of Public Health celebrated National Public Health Week, April 5-11, with activities ranging from a Global Health Career Night and the college’s annual awards ceremony to student-led tours of the environmental and occupational health laboratories.

One of the highlights of the week was the celebration April 8th of the 100th anniversary of the Florida Department of Health’s Bureau of Laboratories, Tampa Branch Laboratory. Since 2001 the laboratory has operated out of the William G. (Doc) Myers Building it shares with the USF Center for Biological Defense on the university’s Tampa campus — strengthening the USF’s longstanding partnership with Florida’s public health system.

Dr. Max Salfinger (left), chief of the Florida DOH Bureau of Laboratories, with Dr. Amuso.

Many of the laboratory’s 60 employees joined public health officials from Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa and elsewhere to recognize the Bureau of Laboratories, Tampa Lab, achievements in promoting, protecting and improving the health of all citizens in the region. The laboratory’s staff provides reference testing for hospitals, commercial laboratories and private clinics as well as performing testing to detect viruses, including influenza, St. Louis encephalitis, West Nile, eastern equine encephalitis, polio, rabies, herpes, smallpox and monkey pox. The Tampa lab is one of five in the state’s public health laboratory network and works in tandem with Florida’s 67 county health departments.

“The country cannot function without a strong public health system, and the public health system cannot function without strong public health laboratory services,” said Phil Amuso, PhD, director of the DOH Bureau of Laboratories, Tampa, and an alumnus of the USF College of Public Health.

Dr. Doug Holt, director of the Hillsborough County Health Department, read a proclamation from the City of Tampa recognizing the laboratory’s service to the community.

Douglas Holt, MD, director of the Hillsborough County Health Department and professor of medicine at USF Health, read a proclamation from Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.

The proclamation read, in part, that the Bureau of Laboratories-Tampa Laboratory’s unique arrangement with the USF Center for Biological Defense “has provided students with a convenient location to perform special research and has allowed collaboration on numerous biodefense-related research projects, including the testing and detection efforts of any significant national biological risks such as the anthrax attacks in 2001 and the H1N1 influenza virus A outbreak in 2009.”

For a description of the National Public Health Week activities at USF, click here.

For National Public Health Week video, click here.

RELATED STORY: Dr. Conti Named Outstanding Woman in Public Health

MORE PUBLIC HEALTH WEEK PHOTOS…

L to R: USF public health students Jennifer Peregoy, Samantha Spedoske, Andrew Romaner and Jadie Dayton, officers in the Global Health Student Association, helped build a world puzzle for World Health Day April 7th.

USF medical student Jessica Goldonowitz swabs her cheek as part of the registration process for the National Marrow Donor Program. NMDP was recruiting donors on Give Life Day April 8 at the College of Public Health.

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

]]> http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?feed=rss2&p=11820 0 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11851 http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11851#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:34:29 +0000 abaier http://hscweb3.hsc.usf.edu/health/now/?p=11851 She improved Florida’s emergency response capabilities by creating Strike Teams and To Go kits. She helped found the Florida Rabies and Control and Prevention Advisory Committee. She was the first leader in a state agency to purchase hybrid vehicles for her agency. And she is now serving as the lead public health professional in the Chinese Drywall issue.

These are among the many reasons Florida’s Division of Environmental Health Director Lisa Ann Conti, DVM, MPH, has been named the Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health for 2010 by the University of South Florida College of Public Health.

The College bestows the award each year to a woman whose career accomplishments and leadership have contributed significantly to the field of public health in Florida. Dr. Conti was honored at an awards ceremony April 7 in the COPH Samuel P. Bell, III Auditorium.

Lisa Ann Conti, DVM, MPH, (left) director of the state’s Division of Environmental Health, accepts her award from Donna Petersen, ScD, dean of the USF College of Public Health.

As director of the Florida Division of Environmental Health, Dr. Conti oversees the statewide activities and programs of the office to maintain and improve the state’s environment, ensure quality services to decrease or eliminate the occurrence of preventable diseases, and to maintain surveillance, investigation and education of diseases of environmental origin.

She leads five bureaus: Environmental Public Health Medicine, Onsite Sewage Programs, Community Environmental Health, Water Programs, and Radiation Control, as well as the Office of Environmental Health Informatics and Preparedness.

During the 2004 hurricane season, when four separate hurricanes crossed the state, Dr. Conti created “Strike Teams” that are made up of environmental and public health professionals trained to address the special needs of disaster ravaged areas. These Strike Teams were outfitted with “To Go” kits that included essential equipment and deployed to assist in the recovery of affected counties. Dr. Conti then developed the curriculum to train environmental professionals statewide. Her Strike Team concept and training have become national models for disaster response.

Dr. Conti earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the University of Florida in 1988, and her Master of Public Health degree from USF in 1993, and she is board certified by the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine. She is currently an adjunct instructor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at UF and has also taught at Florida State University and Tallahassee Community College. Before becoming director of the Florida Division of Environmental Health in 2003, Dr. Conti was State Public Health Veterinarian in the Florida Department of Health.

The Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health Award was initiated by USF in 1988, and nominations are solicited from public health practitioners across the state. Past honorees have included Lillian Stark, director of virology at the Florida Department of Health Tampa Branch Laboratory; Jean Malecki, director of the Palm Beach County Health Department; and University of Miami epidemiologist Lora E. Fleming, MD.

- Story by Sarah Worth, and photo by Eric Younghans, USF Health Communications

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