The Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) Program for Women announced its 2007-2008 class of fellows. Forty-eight senior female faculty were selected to participate in this program, including 15 chairs or vice/associate chairs, 16 division chiefs or center directors and nine deans' staff throughout the United States, as well as in Canada and Puerto Rico.

This is the second year that candidates from public health institutions will participate. Two ASPH faculty members Dr. Lisa Sullivan, chair, Biostatistics Department and associate professor, Boston University School of Public Health (BU SPH); and Dr. Karen Emmons, professor, Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health were selected to participate in the program.

Children playing on the grounds surrounding Baphumelele Orphanage in Khayelitsha, South Africa. Many of the children at the orphanage are infected with HIV and like most children worldwide, despite poverty and health circumstances, create unique ways to play.

Photo taken by: Ms. Amanda Selin, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, while working with an HIV clinical trial for six months in South Africa.

With funding from Pfizer’s Public Health Group, ASPH announced this week the launch of the ASPH/Pfizer Public Health Academy of Distinguished Teachers. The advisory group for this Academy has developed the following purpose statement: "The Academy seeks to elevate the excellence, visibility, scholarship and impact of learning and teaching in public health. It achieves these goals by publicly honoring faculty who excel in learning, teaching, and student mentoring; by sharing and disseminating discoveries in learning and instructional scholarship and experience; and by providing opportunities and resources to promote the role of teaching and learning among public health colleagues, programs and schools."

Last month, ASPH hosted the spring meeting of its Education Committee in Chicago, Ill. The purpose of this gathering of approximately 80 members and practice partners was to discuss and make recommendations for three key committee projects: Pathways to Public Health, DrPH Competencies and Applied Epidemiology Competencies; and, to disseminate information and hear input on how schools are implementing the MPH cross-cutting competencies.

The organizers of the 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Cancer Conference invite students to attend the biannual meeting scheduled for Monday, August 13-Thursday, August 16 in Atlanta, Ga. The overarching focus of the 2007 conference is on meeting future public health challenges in cancer prevention and early detection.

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 (http://www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=747). Listed below are grant opportunities that have been posted in the last seven days.

The purpose of this program is to improve the contribution law makes to the health of the public and to the performance of the public health system through development and dissemination of information, training and learning materials on public health legal preparedness for public health practitioners, policy makers, emergency management officials, the legal community and others key to public health and public health legal preparedness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Procurement and Grants Office has published a program announcement titled, "Program for Computational Toxicology Methods to Assess Health Effects from Exposures to Hazardous Substances."

The purpose of this cooperative agreement funding is to enhance the leadership knowledge and competencies of federal, state and local health officials and other public health professionals by continuing to develop their skills through annual training and development residential programs, distance based learning opportunities, networking events and other learning activities.

The National Center for Minority Health Disparities (NCMHD) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a call for applications this week, to support disease intervention research in reducing and eliminating health disparities using community-based participatory research that is jointly conducted by health disparity communities and researchers.

The Greenwall Foundation has announced a fourth round of pilot project grants ($25,000-$50,000 awards) to support research on issues in bioethics and public health. Through its Interdisciplinary Program in Bioethics, The Foundation provides funding for physicians, lawyers, philosophers, economists, theologians and other professionals.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement is to invite grant applications to support research in two key emerging areas in HIV neuropathogenesis research. One key area relates to understanding the mechanisms that regulate the changing phenotype of HIV-associated central nervous system (CNS) disease in the era of highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART). A second area of emphasis are studies of viral (clade diversity) and host genetic mechanisms regulating HIV neuropathogenesis from a world wide perspective.

This funding opportunity announcement solicits grant applications from applicant organizations that propose to conduct summer institute programs to enable faculty and scientists from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and faculty and scientists with disabilities to further develop their research skills and knowledge, enhancing their career development as faculty members or scientists.

The Homeland Defense Journal will hold a training conference, "Physical and Critical Infrastructure Resilience," on Tuesday, October 9 at the Crowne Plaza National Airport in Arlington, Va.

"Our graduates today are going to be facing some pretty big problems," said Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Yale School of Public Health’s 2007 Commencement speaker. "I regret that those of us who’ve been in the profession for a long time have not left you a legacy of a world that truly is safe and healthy for everyone."

Dean John Finnegan of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health was part of a School delegation that visited the University of Iceland recently. The purpose of the visit was to renew a 25-year agreement between the two universities and award an honorary doctor of laws degree to Iceland Prime Minister Geir Haarde, who is an alumnus of the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Sheila Leatherman, health policy research professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health, received the title of Honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Sir David Manning, British ambassador to the United States, will present the insignia of the order to Dr. Leatherman on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen at an investiture ceremony at his residence in Washington, D.C., this summer.

Three journalists have been awarded Nieman Fellowships in Global Health Reporting for the 2007-2008 academic year. The fellowships, a joint initiative between the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and the Harvard School of Public Health, are supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the purpose of addressing the critical need to improve public understanding of health issues that affect the developing world.

The Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute staff announced this week, the appointment of Professor Robert Blum as the Institutes new director. Dr. Blum, who has served as the Institute's interim director since last May, has greatly broadened the conversation at Johns Hopkins about urban health and the role and future of the institute in promoting healthy communities in the city of Baltimore.

Professor Donald Steinwachs, a 34-year member of the Johns Hopkins University faculty, has agreed to serve as the university's interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Dr. Steinwachs will serve in that capacity effective Wednesday, August 1. Dr. Steinwachs served as the chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Bloomberg School of Public Health for 11 years and now holds the position of director of the School’s Health Services Research and Development Center. Dr. Steinwachs also holds joint appointments in the schools of Medicine and Nursing and teaches undergraduates in the public health studies major at Homewood.

Nashville’s daily newspaper, The Tennessean, published five pieces on global health research in its editorial/opinion section Sunday, May 27, after its editorial board met with the Tennessee based Rogers Society Ambassadors, Dr. James Hildreth of Meharry Medical College and Dr. Sten Vermund and Dr. Peter Wright, both of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. During the meeting, the three Ambassadors shared stories of their work and discussed the many reasons why U.S. investment in global health research is important.

A simple method of flash-heating breast milk infected with HIV successfully inactivated the free-floating virus, according to a new study led by researchers at the Berkeley and Davis campuses of the University of California. Notably, the technique – heating a glass jar of expressed breast milk in a pan of water over a flame or single burner – can be easily applied in the homes of mothers in resource-poor communities. The findings, to appear in the Sunday, July 1 print issue of the Journal of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, but now available online, provide hope that mothers with HIV in developing nations will soon be able to more safely feed their babies.

Middle-aged men and women with a history of migraine and other headaches are more likely to have retinopathy, damage to the retina of the eye which can lead to severe vision problems or blindness, than those without a history of headaches, according to a study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Newly identified inherited variants of a single gene increase breast cancer risk for women of European ancestry approximately 20 percent if they carry one copy of the gene and by 60 percent if they carry two copies, finds a new study. These variants, in the FGFR2 (Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 2) gene, were found in more than half of the women studied. The discovery appears to be the most important breast cancer-associated gene since BRCA1 and BRCA2 were identified in the 1990s. The variants in FGFR2 were initially associated with postmenopausal breast cancer and then confirmed in premenopausal women. Inherited mutations in the BRCA genes are much less common in the population.

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 http://www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=924.

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) this year. The NHIS has been fielded continuously since 1957.  To mark the occasion, NCHS will hold a one-day conference on Monday, June 25 at its site in Hyattsville, Md., (close to Metropolitan Washington, D.C.). 

The Mayo Clinic Cancer Center will hold the "Seventh National Changing Patterns of Cancer in Native Communities: The Power of Partnerships" from Wednesday, September 5-Saturday, September 8 at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis, Minn.

New!
Volume 122
Issue 3
May/June 2007

New!
Volume 122
Supplement 2

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