ASPH would like to wish everyone a safe and happy Independence Day holiday and weekend!

In order to help citizens avoid injury and harm, especially firework-related injuries, during this festive time, Prevent Blindness America, a non-profit organization, offers ways to safely celebrate Independence Day. The news release can be found online here. Information about fireworks injuries from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can be found here.

The ASPH student affairs council is organizing a Student Services Workshop, which will be held in San Diego, CA on Friday, October 24. The workshop will be hosted by San Diego State University School of Public Health. The planning committee includes Mr. Vincent Atchity (Berkeley), Ms. Brenda Fass-Holmes (SDSU), Ms. Nancy Murphy (SLU), Dr. Kay Perrin (USF), Ms. Tammi Thomas (Louisville), Ms. Chris Tisch (Arizona) and Ms. Pam Williams (UAB).

The Curricular Innovation and the Science of Public Health Education Supplement of Public Health Reports features an article by Dr. Joel Lee of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, which explores a new issue in public health education—how a graduate or professional program can address previously completed undergraduate public health coursework. This situation as arisen out of the growing number of undergraduate courses, minors and baccalaureate degrees in public health.

ASPH regularly provides members and Friday Letter readers with information about grant opportunities. New opportunities are listed each week in the "Funding Opportunities" section of the Friday Letter. Readers can access a full listing of grant notices by visiting the "Funding for Faculty" section of the ASPH web site. You may want to bookmark this page (www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=747). Listed below are grant opportunities that have been posted within the last seven days.

Higher Education for Development (HED), in cooperation with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), anticipates making one award of up to $300,000 for a three-year partnership to improve the health of underserved populations through strengthened training of health care practitioners and graduate students in Paraguay's medical schools.  Applications are due Wednesday, September 24 at 5 p.m. (Eastern).

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) solicits Research Project (R01) grant applications from applicant organizations to develop theoretically grounded approaches to prevention of HIV infection and transmission that incorporate biobehavioral approaches in studies that are culturally appropriate.

The South Central Public Health Training Center has a new online course titled "Collaboration: The Key to Public Health System Improvement."  This course covers why collaboration is essential to public health, how it differs from other strategies, what is needed for successful collaboration, what common pitfalls and challenges often occur and how to address them, as well as assuring results and keeping momentum.

As a follow up to the National Public Health Week campaign, students from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health posted a video on YouTube depicting students participating in the "This is Public Health" sticker campaign. The video can be seen at www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3s7QEiq7-s. This video and other student videos are posted on the "This is Public Health" web site at www.thisispublichealth.org/schools.html.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and collaborators from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have launched a Safe Surgery initiative to introduce new safety checklists for surgical teams to use around the world as a simple and effective way to reduce millions of deaths and injuries from medical errors during major surgery. The effort has been led by Dr. Atul Gawande, an associate professor of health policy and management at HSPH, whose team developed the surgical checklists and introduced them in hospitals in eight pilot sites around the world to demonstrate that following these checklists could significantly reduce death and injury.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) School of Public Health a $3.4 million grant to help the school strengthen its research portfolio in computational toxicology and bioinformatics.

Dr. Hilary Godwin, most recently chair and professor of environmental health sciences, was named the new Associate Dean for Academic programs at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Public Health, effective July 1. She replaced Dr. Gerald Kominski, who stepped down after seven years to devote more time to his research and return full time to the School’s department of health services.

Dr. Peggye Dilworth-Anderson, professor of health policy and administration in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) School of Public Health, has been elected president of the Gerontological Society of America. She will assume the presidency in 2009. The society, the country’s leading scientific organization in aging, aims to promote the scientific study of aging, encourage exchanges among researchers and practitioners from various disciplines related to gerontology and foster the use of gerontological research in forming public policy.

Since 2002, the Northeast Regional Public Health Leadership Institute (NEPHLI) has recognized individuals and/or organizations that demonstrate exemplary leadership skills. For 2008, NEPHLI has posthumously awarded the NEPHLI Excellence in Leadership Award to Ms. Nancy Alfred Persily, former Associate Dean at the University at Albany-SUNY School of Public Health.

Research!America's web site, www.researchamerica.org, was redesigned late last year to improve access to information about advocacy for health research. The web site’s new features are listed below:

Leading authorities in competency-based and accreditation movements in global health promotion, health education and public health reached an accord on what should comprise the domains of core competency in health promotion and health education at the Galway Consensus Conference, which convened June 16-18 and was hosted by the National University of Ireland in Galway.

The National Association of State Medicaid Directors has posted an issue brief, "Serving the Needs of Medicaid Enrollees with Integrated Behavioral Health Services in Safety Net Primary Care Settings," on its web page at www.nasmd.org. This issue brief identifies important partnerships that have developed to address the need for behavioral health services.

A survey conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) research consortium found that the United States had among the highest lifetime rates of tobacco and alcohol use and led in the proportion of participants reporting cannabis (marijuana) or cocaine use at least once during their lifetime.

ASPH will regularly provide members and Friday Letter readers with links to other electronic newsletters that may be of interest to the public health community. Links to E-newsletters will be added to a web page found at www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=924. This week’s additions include:

AAMC STAT: Association of American Medical Colleges, June 30, 2008 Issue
www.aamc.org/newsroom/aamcstat/aamcnews.htm

At The Frontline: Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, July 2008 Issue
www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/news/e-newsletter/index.html

CCPH E-news, Community Campus Partnerships for Health, July 2008 Issue
http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/enews.html

Harvard Public Health Now: Harvard School of Public Health, July 3, 2008 Issue
www.hsph.harvard.edu/now/

A special issue of the Johns Hopkins Public Health magazine is now available online. "The Sex and Health" issue includes stories on conceptual problems, generation sex, child brides, the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs, stories of sex workers, perspectives on HIV testing and much more. To access the online issue, please visit http://magazine.jhsph.edu/2008/spring/.

The University of Alabama is the inaugural home for a new research journal, The Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, that will provide a mechanism for faculty, staff, students and community partners to disseminate scholarly works from all academic disciplines with the goal of integrating teaching, research and community engagement. Papers are being accepted for upcoming issues.

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) is soliciting applications for its Centennial Travel Award, sponsored by an unrestricted grant to ASTMH by the Pfizer Foundation.  The purpose of the award is to facilitate international collaboration in basic science aspects of tropical infectious diseases and to provide interested physicians or scientists the opportunity to obtain hands-on field experience in combination with laboratory studies of parasitic, bacterial or viral infectious diseases in endemic developing countries.

The Kelsey Research Foundation invites all individuals with an interest in innovative research on healthcare to submit abstracts for poster presentation at the 9^th Annual Health Services and Outcomes Research Conference, which will be held on December 3 from 8:15 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Houston Medical Center Marriott in Houston, TX. Poster presentations will focus on the six major components of quality of care: Effectiveness, Efficiency, Equity, Patient Safety, Timeliness of Care and Patient-Centered Care.

The Gorgas Memorial Institute Research Award is designed to enhance and facilitate the development of scientific linkages between Panama, nations of Central America and the Caribbean Islands and the United States and Canada through support of short-term travel for young research investigators from these regions.

Abstracts are currently being accepted for the Medical Education for the 21^st Century: Teaching for Health Equity Conference, which will be held November 30-December 3 in Havana, Cuba. The deadline to submit abstracts is Tuesday, September 1.

The Global Health Council is hosting a discussion with the Minister of Public Health of Afghanistan, Dr. Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatimie, on Tuesday, July 22 from 10:30 a.m.-12 p.m. (Eastern). The minister will discuss the current health situation in Afghanistan and focus on the Ministry of Public Health's role and experience in rebuilding the country's health system after over 20 years of war, as well as the particular problems of nutrition and the health of women and children. A Q&A session will be held afterward.

This week was Ms. Sarah Ramirez’s last week at ASPH. Ms. Ramirez served as Manager, Research and Education Programs at ASPH. She will be taking a new position in the Global Health Department at the Department of Health and Human Services. ASPH thanks Ms. Ramirez for all her work and wishes her the best in her future endeavors.

New!
Volume 123
Issue 4
July/August 2008

Public Health Reports (PHR) is an informative and accessible resource for practitioners, teachers and students of public health. The Journal provides important research and key discussions on the major issues confronting the public health community. Subscribe Today!

New!
Volume 123
Supplement 2

This supplement is titled "Curricular Innovation and the Science of Public Health Education." Public Health Reports (PHR) is an informative and accessible resource for practitioners, teachers and students of public health. The Journal provides important research and key discussions on the major issues confronting the public health community. Subscribe Today!