ASPH, through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH), announces the availability of funds to support up to six scholarships of $25,000 each for students currently pursuing their doctorate degrees.

Dr. Craig H. Blakely, associate dean for academic affairs and research at the Texas A&M Health Science Center (HSC) School of Rural Public Health, has been appointed interim dean of the school. He is the sole and final candidate for dean forwarded for approval to The Texas A&M University System Board of Regents. Dr. Blakely will work closely with the leadership of the school to continue the excellence in education, service and research for which the school is known.

Your Congress-Your Health, is urging people to contact their congressional delegation about their views on health and research, which are available on www.yourcongressyourhealth.org. The Your Congress-Your Health web site has three fliers that each highlight a different topic—Research for Health, Health Reform and Economic Competiveness—to help constituents reach out to their representatives.

Comprehensive health reform proposals now before Congress could help bring health coverage to the more than 13 million uninsured young adults, ages 19 to 29, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. For those young adults who now have coverage, the reforms could also help keep them from losing it.

ASPH hosts a public health advocacy section on its web site, which provides an opportunity to share information on advocacy efforts with all ASPH members. The site also highlights information on policy priorities, including several policy papers exploring the nation’s public health priorities, and provides links to sources of legislative information and resources and tips on how to contact Members of Congress. ASPH will also use the web site to post alerts on activities on the Hill that are critical to public health. Visit www.asph.org/advocacy for more information.

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.

The purpose of the Straight Talk on Preventing HIV Program offered by the Office of Public Health and Science is to develop gender- and age-specific HIV/AIDS prevention education that is culturally, spiritually and linguistically appropriate for female teenagers at-risk for or living with HIV/AIDS.

This National Institutes of Health limited competition funding opportunity announcement is to continue the Long Life Family Study (LLFS). The LLFS was designed to determine the degree and patterns of familial transmission and aggregation of exceptional longevity and healthy survival to advanced age as characterized by a variety of phenotypic measures, with a further goal of also understanding potential genetic factors that contribute to exceptional survival.

The ACNM Foundation, Inc. is currently accepting applications for the Hazel Corbin/Childbirth Connection Grant for Evidence-Based Midwifery Care. This one-year, $4,500 grant is designed to support or augment outstanding projects that foster knowledge of the safety and/or effectiveness of midwifery practices for mothers and newborns and the application of this knowledge.

The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) is soliciting applications that promote building new interdisciplinary teams among independent investigators for basic or translational research. These teams should pursue a clear and significant scientific opportunity in an area of shared interest of relevance to NIAMS, and can undertake conceptually and technically novel approaches that would be less likely to succeed if undertaken by a more narrowly focused group of investigators.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is committed to promoting diversity in the biomedical workforce. To address this need, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), is soliciting applications that propose research partnerships between faculty at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and faculty at academic institutions with established reproductive science research programs to form the new Cooperative Research Partnerships to Promote Workforce Diversity in the Reproductive Sciences (CPDR).

The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has announced funding opportunities for Health Care Delivery and Policy Research Contracts for the: assessment of the potential impact of health care reform on people with MS); the evaluation of existing and innovative models of MS health care delivery; and investigator initiated health policy studies in multiple sclerosis. 

Unite For Sight's Global Impact Corps is an immersive global health experience for students and for professionals. All volunteers participating in Unite For Sight's international programs are Global Impact Fellows.  They participate daily with local ophthalmic nurses, local optometrists and local ophthalmologists to support and assist the clinic in outreach programs that reduce all of the barriers to health care, including financial, transportation and education barriers. 

The University of Minnesota Center for Animal Health and Food Safety and Global Initiative for Food Systems Leadership, and the Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay are presenting a program called "Farm to Table Study 2009" in Uruguay from October 25-31. Participants will explore the food system from farm-to-table in Uruguay while considering aspects of animal welfare and health, food safety and public health. 

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) is offering an Intensive Update Course in Clinical Tropical Medicine and Travelers' Health on October 27-28 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, immediately preceding the Infectious Diseases Society of America Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA.

Doctoral students from the Boston University School of Public Health’s biostatistics department are demystifying what it means to be a biostatistician for area high-school students. As part of the Upward Bound Math-Science (UBMS) summer program offered by Boston University, School of Public Health PhD candidates in biostatistics have created an interactive curriculum to introduce the basics of biostatistics to 10 local high-schoolers.

The University of South Florida (USF) system has asked its dean of the College of Public Health to lead and mobilize the university's strategic initiatives in global affairs. After extensive study by a faculty task force, USF President Dr. Judy Genshaft has appointed Dean Donna Petersen as the interim executive director of USF World and of the Patel Center for Global Solutions. Dean Petersen is dean of the USF College of Public Health and will launch the new role. She will make recommendations for a permanent position.

Today, the University of Maryland School of Public Health (SPH), in collaboration with the SPH Alumni Chapter and numerous sponsors, is hosting its sixth annual Wrenn Scholarship Scramble, a golf tournament to benefit the Jerry P. Wrenn Endowed Undergraduate Scholarship Fund. Since 2004, proceeds from the golf tournament have been able to award $27,500 in scholarships to 32 academically qualified seniors with financial need. The tournament will host more than 88 golfers at the University of Maryland Golf Course.

On Wednesday, August 5, the University at Albany School of Public Health hosted a community forum designed to help emergency preparedness officials understand the special needs of three vulnerable populations—elderly adults, residents of isolated rural areas and persons with physical disabilities—during a large-scale emergency.  Representatives from organizations serving these populations met to discuss how people in these groups would access essential services in the event of a widespread public emergency such as a blizzard or pandemic flu.

The George Washington University's School of Public Health and Health Services Public Health Grand Rounds is now online at www.gwumc.edu/sphhs/grandrounds, complete with transcripts, webcasts, podcasts and other materials from these leadership lectures. The 2008-2009 series focused on innovative leadership strategies crucial for successfully addressing present and evolving public health challenges.

The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has been awarded a $7.2 million federal grant to establish the UIC Center of Excellence in Eliminating Health Disparities. The new center, funded by a five-year grant from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities of the National Institutes of Health, will focus on health disparities in prostate and colorectal cancer, community-based breast cancer initiatives, and training and educating the next generation of health disparities researchers.

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases has received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, to study HIV prevention methods among people with acute HIV infection (AHI). Co-principal investigators of the study are Dr. William Miller, associate professor of epidemiology, and Dr. Audrey Pettifor, assistant professor of epidemiology, in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.

This week, undergraduate students from across the country—New Mexico, Louisiana and elsewhere—gave their culminating research presentations and became the first graduating class of the University of Maryland Summer Training and Research (UM STAR) program, which is offered through the University of Maryland School of Public Health. UM STAR is designed to give traditionally under-represented minority undergraduate students career development activities in the areas of the biomedical and behavioral aspects of cardiovascular disease.

Researchers from the Prevention Research Center at Tulane University will examine whether hair stylists and barbers can improve their clients’ health with The Shop Talk Program, an initiative to train staff in 25 urban barbershops and beauty salons to talk to clients about eating habits, getting more exercise, managing blood pressure and making other healthy choices. The PRC has produced 2,600 copies of a 28-page, full-color Feel Good Guide: How to Stay Healthy. The book will be prominently displayed in 19 shops at the beginning of the program and explains how 10 small dietary and lifestyle changes can make a big difference in health.

Dean Robert S. Gold of the University of Maryland School of Public Health was featured on Thursday, August 6, in the "Maryland Voices" section of the Baltimore Sun. In an opinion piece for the paper, titled "An ounce of prevention for the debate on health care reform," Dean Gold advocated that prevention must be included in the efforts to reform America's health care system, and specifically that investments in prevention will pay off in the long term.

Nearly four years after the Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf region, Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and president of the Children’s Health Fund (CHF) testified to Congress that the unresolved conflicts among state, federal and health sector players have paralyzed the decision-making process while families wait for vital medical services to get up to speed.

In an emergency, when electricity, clean water and infant supplies may be unavailable, breastfeeding becomes even more important than ever.  This is a reason why public health advocates support the theme "Breastfeeding: A Vital Emergency Response - Are you ready?" for the 2009 World Breastfeeding Week (WBW), August 1-8. "Children, especially infants, are extremely vulnerable in emergencies," said Dr. Miriam Labbok, professor of the practice of public health and director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute (CBI) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health.

On Tuesday, July 21, Dr. Stefano Bertozzi, founding director of the Division of Health Economics and Policy at Mexico’s National Institute of Public Health (or Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública, INSP), presented a plenary session at the Fifth International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, in Cape Town, South Africa.

University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNT HSC) professor Dr. Terrance B. (Terry) Gratton has received the 2009 Walter F. Snyder Award for outstanding achievement in advancing environmental health by NSF International (NSF International, The Public Health and Safety Company) and the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA). Given in honor of NSF’s co-founder and first executive director, this award is presented annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the environmental health field.

Dr. Olivia Carter-Pokras, an associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of Maryland School of Public Health (SPH), was featured in the July 24, 2009 edition of the Washington Hispanic, a Spanish language newspaper in the DC Metropolitan area. In the article, Dr. Carter-Pokras discusses the recently-passed law which will allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products.

As reported in last week’s Friday Letter (see here), Dr. Richard Besser will be leaving the position of director of the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response (COTPER) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to join ABC News as its senior health and medical director. Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, announced that Captain Daniel Sosin will serve as acting director of COTPER.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, in partnership with two other NIH Institutes—the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI)—are jointly collaborating with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), on a seven million dollar funding opportunity announcement to support research on substance abuse and associated problems among U.S. military personnel, veterans and their families. NIH is the leading scientific agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Without research, we wouldn't have breakthroughs. It's not about discovery for the sake of discovery, but for the sake of better health and saving lives," said Senator Tom Harkin (IA) at a Capitol Hill event Tuesday honoring him, Senator Arlen Specter (PA) and Senator Edward Kennedy (MA). The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation and Research!America recognized the senators for their leadership for research and for highlighting the importance of a shared commitment to making research for health a high national priority.

On Monday, August 3, The Associated Press reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is going to plan more broadly for children and their needs as the government prepares for disasters. Most disaster plans are crafted around adult populations, and people with specific needs—such as children—are often an afterthought, FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate stated in an interview with The Associated Press.

Over the past few months nine college undergraduates have gotten a taste of what public health is all about and public health leaders hope the experience means they have recruited at least nine new future public health workers. The students were part of an internship program made possible by a "Pathways to Public Health" grant that the New York State Department of Health received from the Association of Schools of Public Health and the Association of Public Health Laboratories. The program received 81 applications from students across the state for the nine available slots.

In a new piece in The Huffington Post , Dr. James Marks of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation uncovers the Congressional Budget Office's scoring rule that excludes any returns on health investments that occur after 10 years.  Functionally, this means that early childhood interventions and investments in early detection and prevention—all of which generally show gains well beyond the 10-year window—are not factored into the CBO's $1 trillion projected price tag for health reform. Click here to read his article, titled "What if Benjamin Franklin Ran the Congressional Budget Office?"

Former Senator Bill Frist, who sits on the board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, recently penned an op-ed piece titled "Improve World Health Care by Increasing Prosperity" that appears in the Houston Chronicle. In the article, Dr. Frist describes how organizations, like MCC, believe that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom and investments in people. MCC has set up independent and transparent policy indicators to select which of the poorest countries of the world are eligible for funding. To read the article, click here.

Dr. Timothy Hoff, associate professor of health policy and management at the University at Albany’s School of Public Health, is collaborating with researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Veterans Health Administration to examine the new U.S. government nonpayment policy for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and how it affects practices and patient safety outcomes. The study, "Nonpayment for Preventable Complications: Impact on Hospital Practices and Health," is among the first in the nation to review the decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to no longer pay for certain HAIs. The two-year, $275,000 project is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.

Men who have a regular, ongoing relationship with a health care provider are more likely to receive prostate cancer screening and less likely to be diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, regardless of their race, according to a University of North Carolina study published in the current issue of the journal Cancer. Dr. William R. Carpenter, research assistant professor of health policy and management in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health and a member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, authored the paper.

Hiring the nearly 800,000 workers needed to eliminate the staggering shortage of health care professionals in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015 will cost $2.6 billion a year, or 2.5 times the annual funds currently allocated for health worker wages in the region, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and collaborators from the World Health Organization (WHO) and The World Bank.

Researchers have identified a gene variant that carries nearly twice the risk of developing an increasingly common type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a group of cancers that develops in the immune system's white blood cells. In a study led by investigators at the University of California (UC), Berkeley and at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Arizona, a common variant in a gene called C6orf15, or STG, was linked to susceptibility to follicular lymphoma, which accounts for 20 to 30 percent of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases.

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:

ACPM Headlines, American College of Preventive Medicine, August 6, 2009
www.acpm.org/acpm_pub.htm  (Free for members)

AHRQ News and Numbers: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, #279
www.ahrq.gov/news/newsnumix.htm

CCPH E-news, Community Campus Partnerships for Health, August 2009
http://depts.washington.edu/ccph/enews.html

Global Health Weekly Update, Global Health Council, August 3, 2009
Click here to view.

News PHlash: The New Jersey Center for Public Health Preparedness at UMDNJ, July 24-August 6, 2009
http://lists.umdnj.edu/SCRIPTS/WA.EXE?A0=NJCPHP-BULLETIN

PHAB E-newsletter, Public Health Accreditation Board, Issue #16: August 2009
Click here to view.

Washington Health Policy Week in Review, The Commonwealth Fund, August 3, 2009
Click here to view.

CD Publications, founded in 1961, is reducing the price of Community Health Funding Report, a continuously updated online grant leads and news service. This service offers full contact information, all deadline dates, web sites, dollar amounts available, geographic limitations and award cycles. The offer also includes access to a free grant directory.

Abstracts are currently being accepted for the Global Health & Innovation Conference, which will be held April 17-18, 2010 at Yale University in New Haven, CT. Presented by Unite for Sight, the conference will challenge students, public health professionals, educators, doctors, scientists, lawyers, universities, corporations, nonprofits and others to develop innovative, effective solutions to achieve global goals.

Nominations are currently being accepted for the Peter H. Rossi Award, which honors the lifetime achievements of Dr. Peter Rossi by recognizing important contributions to the theory or practice of program evaluation. The award may be for a recent paper or publication or for an entire body of work. The awardee receives a plaque and recognition at the annual Fall Research Conference of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM), reimbursement for travel expenses to the meeting and a cash award in the amount of $1,000.

The ASPH Friday Letter invites members of the ASPH-community to submit entries for its Photo-of-the-Month Contest. Each month staff will choose a photo that depicts a public health experience of students, faculty and staff of ASPH-member schools or affiliates of ASPH partners. Photo submissions should capture an experience, such as a school/community event or service project, faculty or student research experience, a fellowship/internship experience or a new public health initiative.

On Wednesday, August 26, the Office of Public Health Practice at the University of Michigan School of Public Health is hosting an upcoming workshop titled "Public Health in the Spotlight: a Health Risk Communication Introduction," which will also be available as a web cast. This three-part workshop will show participants how to deliver accurate and timely information to health care providers, the media, and the general public.  

The Public Health Information Network (PHIN) Conference, "Informatics: Investment for the Future," will be held Sunday, August 30-Thursday, September 3 in Atlanta, GA. The list of pre- and post-conference tutorials is now available online here.

On Thursday, September 17 at 10 a.m. (Eastern), Ms. Molly Eggleston, deputy executive director of the National Board of Public Health Examiners (NBPHE), will present on experiences with the Certified in Public Health (CPH) exam and share testimonials from public health employers, faculty and CPH professionals.  She will also take questions on the upcoming exam (August 2010).

From September 21-22, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Public Health and Disasters is convening a two-day workshop, titled "National After Action Workshop on a Federal Public Health Emergency: The Novel Influenza A H1N1 Epidemic of Spring 2009," to review the key actions taken as this epidemic unfolded, seeking to identify those strategies that were effective and those that could have been handled differently.

The World Health Care Congress fourth Annual Obesity Congress will be held September 30-October 2 in Alexandria, VA, and will gather a diverse set of leaders from the private and public sectors to discuss both the implications of the obesity epidemic and solutions to help employers and providers to improve the health, productivity and life style of individuals.

AcademyHealth’s annual Health Policy Orientation offers an in-depth understanding of formal and informal policymaking processes and the players who shape health policy. With a one-to-one ratio of faculty to participants, the orientation features rxpert presentations, group discussions, hands-on tutorials and a congressional site visit. The seminar will take place October 26-29 at the Barbara Jordan Conference Center in Washington, DC.

The clinical pre-meeting course, "The Highly Prevalent Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs): Update on Clinical Aspects and Novel Approaches to Control," precedes the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 58^th Annual Meeting, to be held November 18-22 at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC. The course will be held November 17-18 at the Marriott Wardman Park.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Division of Blood Disorders, in partnership with the Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the American Society of Hematology will host the National Conference on Blood Disorders in Public Health from March 9-11, 2010 at the Crowne Plaza Ravinia in Atlanta, GA.

Community-Campus Partnerships for Health (CCPH) will host its 11^th conference, "Creating the Future We Want to Be: Transformation through Partnerships" from May 12-15, 2010 in Portland, OR. The conference call for proposals will be released shortly. Please visit the CCPH homepage at www.ccph.info for the latest conference details.

Dr. Alexander Garza, a 2003 graduate of Saint Louis University School of Public Health, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to the position of Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs and Chief Medical Officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. In this position, Dr. Garza would lead the country as it faces public health threats ranging from disease epidemics to biological, radiological and environmental hazards. Dr. Garza could also play a key role in the nation's preparations for possible swine flu outbreaks this fall, pending timely confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

In Friday Letter #1575, we posted an event announcement (see here) for "Words of Albert Schweitzer and the Music of Bach," which will be held on Saturday, August 29. The event time was listed as 7:30 p.m. (Eastern); however, the correct time is 7:30 p.m. (Central). Additionally, the event will no longer be a benefit for Hope through Healing Hands (as originally stated). The link for more information in the original article is no longer valid. The updated link is www.tennesseeplayers.org/sbproduction.html.

New!
Volume 124
Issue 4
July/August 2009

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! Click here to advertise in the Journal.

New!
Volume 124
Supplement 1

The first Supplement issue of Public Health Reports (PHR) for 2009 is titled "Occupational Interventions." PHR provides important research and key discussions on the major issues confronting the public health community. Subscribe Today! Click here to advertise in the Journal.

Please mark your calendars for the upcoming "Meet the Author!" web cast sponsored by Public Health Reports (PHR), which will take place on Tuesday, September 15 at 2:30 p.m. (Eastern). Dr. Kevin Sullivan, associate professor in the department of epidemiology and global health at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, will discuss his recently published research in PHR, "Multivitamin Use in Pregnant and Nonpregnant Women."