The USF College of Public Health provided more than 1,200 free seasonal flu shots this year as part of its annual vaccination effort.   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 […]

Volunteering as athletic trainer for Team USA Quad Rugby turned into gold for Jeff Konin, PhD, ATC, PT, FACSM, FNATA, associate professor and vice chair of the Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. Dr. Konin went on the road with the team of elite wheelchair rugby players last month when they competed and won the gold medal for the World Wheelchair Rugby Championships in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Americans went undefeated in 2010 en route to winning the recent gold and haven’t lost a match at a World Championships or […]

        Health care reform will enable millions more Americans to have health insurance. It will prevent companies from refusing to ensure the sick or limiting the care of costly clients.         But it also is likely to increase insurance premiums. It may require cuts in benefits to people on Medicare. And it won’t bring insurance to everyone.        “This is a massive change in a very practical way,” said Robert Brooks, MD, MA, MBA, MPH, associate vice president for health leadership and professor of infectious disease and public health.          […]

Joy Taylor, a clinical RN with the USF IVF program, was selected as a nominee for the first ever Hope Award for Nursing by RESOLVE, the largest national support organization for couples suffering from infertility. Candidates for the Hope Award for Nursing were individuals who exemplify the field of nursing, specifically in the field of reproductive endocrinology and infertility, providing compassionate and skilled care to all patients. More than 60 nurses across the country were nominated anonymously by patients and these nominees were narrowed to 15 finalists by the RESOLVE […]

Broadway Rocks! — the 9th Annual Hope Through Research Gala to benefit the University of South Florida Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center — will be held 6:30 to 10 p.m., Saturday evening, Sept. 25, at the STRAZ Performing Arts Center Morsani Theatre, 1010 W.C. MacInnes Place, in Tampa. The event will include a food and wine tasting, silent auction and Tampa’s “Frank Sinatra” Dr. Marty Bialow. The festivities will be followed by the musical revue Broadway Rocks! featuring a musical revue by the STRAZ Performing Arts Center cabaret singers. […]

Javier Cuevas, PhD, thought he was prepared for the abject poverty he would see in Haiti. Dr. Cuevas, associate professor of molecular pharmacology and physiology, and a team of other USF and Tampa Bay medical professionals arrived in the small Haitian village of Dilaire in June. It was what they believed to be the village’s first medical mission. Over four days, the team of ten would see more than 1,600 patients, some of whom had rarely, if ever, received medical care.  They treated people with conditions now rare in the […]

Central Florida’s first major clinic focusing solely on patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease – is scheduled to open this fall at USF, thanks to a generous gift from two local business people. Accepting the donation that will start an ALS clinic in the Morsani Center are, from left, Nancy Baily, from the ALS Association Florida Chapter, Stephen Blume, Jennifer Leavengood, and Dr. Clifton Gooch. Stephen Blume and fiancée Jennifer Leavengood presented $100,000 last month to the local chapter of the ALS Association, […]

USF public health professor assesses measures to protect oil spill cleanup workers from heat illness 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 […]

20th anniversary conference features field’s early pioneers and looks ahead 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, […]

        Members of the teen advisory board for Bringing Science Home address the crowd at Friday’s announcement. L to R: Liz Giles, Robert Colon, Laura Bernstein        For Alysia Ekizian, the benefits of USF Health’s newest project, Bringing Science Home, have already begun – even though the project officially kicked off Friday.         “If you had to have diabetes, this is what you want,” Ekezian said. “You want to give your child a voice.”         A voice, she said, and a community.        That’s what Ekizian’s daughter, Melanie, has […]