On Monday, December 3, Public Health Reports will sponsor a special web cast on uranium mining and its scientific, political and socially judicial implications for the Navajo people. Dr. Richard Hornung, director of the Biostatistics and Data Management Core and the Children's Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, will present "Uranium Mining: The Intersection of Science, Politics and Social Justice." He will provide an overview of the science behind our knowledge of adverse health effects from exposure to radon as a result of uranium mining, including the experience of the Navajo miners in the US, as well as the intersection of politics and science as they relate to compensation.

On Thursday, November 15, Dean Barry R. Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health, announced that he will be stepping down from his position as the School's leader at the end of the current academic year. Dean Bloom became dean of HSPH on January 1, 1999. He has led initiatives to keep HSPH at the frontier of scientific discovery and interdisciplinary innovation and to extend its leadership in improving the health of populations around the world. Dean Bloom also serves as the treasurer of ASPH and is a member of the ASPH Executive Committee. ASPH would like to thank him for his years of dedicated service.

Delta Omega, the Honorary Society in Public Health, announced the winners of the 2007 Delta Omega Award for Innovative Public Health Curriculum at the annual business meeting on Monday, November 5. This year, two nominees were selected to receive the award. Dean Donna Petersen (USF), national president of Delta Omega, presented the awards to Dr. Anita Farel, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, for "MCH 712: Program Assessment in Maternal and Child Health;" and Dr. Angela DeJulius, Dr. Julie Aultman, Dr. Lucinda Deason, Mr. Neil Casey and Dr. Amy Lee, all from the Consortium of Eastern Ohio Master of Public Health Program, for "Public Health Practice and Issues."

The NIH Director's Pioneer Award Program is meant to complement NIH's traditional, investigator-initiated grant programs by supporting individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering and possibly transformative approaches to major contemporary challenges that have the potential to produce a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research.

Secretary’s Forecast Summary CDC-RFA-DP08-001 Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Procurement and Grants Office has published a program announcement entitled "Vision Health: Developing an Integrative Approach for Promotion and Protection." The purpose of the program is to fund research that will develop an effective comprehensive public health approach to address eye health promotion and vision loss prevention. Approximately $1 million will be available in fiscal year 2008 to fund approximately one award.

This program is intended to fund scientists engaged in basic, clinical or translational research on drug abuse and HIV/AIDS. The term avant-garde is used to describe highly innovative approaches that have the potential to produce an unusually high impact

In order to give international students and others who are away from home a chance to connect with family and friends this Thanksgiving holiday, MOBIVOX, an international calling service, is offering all students with a ".edu" E-mail address free MOBIVOX calling to anywhere in the world from November 22–24.

Two researchers at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health (HSC-SRPH) are spearheading a novel approach to patient education on diabetes – a touch-screen computer system that teaches patients about diabetes and how to manage the disease. The pilot project of touch-screen computers initiated by Dr. Jane Bolin, associate professor, and Dr. Marcia Ory, professor, will go "live" at five sites around the Brazos Valley the week of November 12-16.

The HSC-SRPH is one of a few schools in the country to be designated as a Prevention Research Center (PRC) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The Center for Community Health Development (CCHD) is the PRC for the HSC-SRPH and each PRC has a core project. The CCHD is addressing diabetes, among other chronic diseases.

In determining health issues to address, many rural physicians stated they do not have adequate time, staff or funds to teach their patients about diabetes, how to live with it and how to manage the disease.

"I’m pleased that Dr. Bolin, a national expert in chronic disease management, is leading this innovative project to combat such a major public health problem as diabetes," said Dean Ciro Sumaya of the HSC-SRPH.

The community health centers in Madison, Grimes and Burleson counties, the Family Practice Residency in Bryan, and the Brazos Valley Community Health Center in Bryan will each have a kiosk installed. Nursing and clinic staff will encourage any patient with a diabetes diagnosis to utilize the kiosk for education and additional information, such as setting goals for self-management and care.

Drs. Bolin and Ory and their team developed a curriculum of patient self-education into an interactive multimedia computer program. A mini-grant from Dell is providing some of the computer kiosks.

HSC-SRPH graduate students Mr. John Prochaska, Ms. Daphne Fulton, Mr. Steve Griesenbeck, Ms. Katy Robertson and Mr. Louis Martinez-Barron assisted in curriculum development. Once the curriculum was developed, computer programmers Mr. Jeremy Tarpley and Mr. Ben Liles transformed the educational information into a multimedia experience, with text, audio and video.

When a patient approaches the kiosk, he or she will be provided with an informed consent request, allowing permission to be given for a secure account to be created for the patient and for tracking education and goal-setting over time. One component allows a patient to set goals for the management and care of his or her diabetes. The goals can be printed out for the patient to take home and work on between visits, as well as allowing clinic staff to place a copy in the individual’s chart. Other components teach patients about measuring their blood sugar, inspecting their feet for signs of poor circulation, making health food choices and more.

The feasibility-testing phase will last six months. During that time, participants will be asked to evaluate their experience, such as ease of use, recommended changes, and kiosk likes and dislikes.

Dr. Bolin and her team then will be able to retrieve data from each kiosk that shows how many clients made repeat visits, how many set goals, and the most popular or most viewed educational components. Patient names are removed from these reports to protect patient confidentiality. After the evaluation, Dr. Bolin’s team will make any recommended changes and begin exploring support for disseminating the kiosks more widely throughout the region.

"These kiosks are serving as a model, as the CDC and many other community health centers are eagerly awaiting a final product so that they may use them on a broad scale throughout Texas, as well as the country as a whole," Dr. Ory said.

Three master’s degree candidates in the University of North Carolina's (UNC) Department of Health Policy and Administration were awarded second place in the 2007 Everett V. Fox Student Case Competition held in Dallas, TX last month. Ms. Jasmine Ballard, Ms. Jennifer Bonds and Ms. Saumya Sehgal each received a $3,000 scholarship for their efforts in the event, which is sponsored annually by the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE).

The case competition is designed to give first- and second-year graduate students experience in problem analysis and presentation skills. Students are asked to analyze real and diverse issues facing a health care organization and then present their analysis and recommendations to a panel of judges representing leaders in the heath care field, corporate sponsors and academia.

The event is open to minority graduate students in health administration programs.  Each program may sponsor one team of up to three students.  This year, 20 teams participated.

"We are thrilled at the team’s performance – which resulted from intense analysis, preparation and practice over a period of only a few weeks," said Dr. Bruce Fried, associate professor and director of the Residential Master’s Program in Health Policy and Administration. "It is remarkable to see how these individuals found time and energy to commit to this while successfully meeting rigorous academic and personal commitments."

All three women praised the practical value of the experience. 

"The competition showed how individual ideas are strengthened through team dynamics and forced me to think analytically in balancing the financial and non-financial goals of a healthcare organization," Ms. Sehgal said.

Ms. Bonds said the event allowed her "to apply everything I’ve learned thus far in the MHA program to a ‘real world’ experience."

"The scariest part of the competition was presenting in front of some of the top executives in health care," said Ms. Ballard. "They asked tough questions.  However, their being there showed me that they cared about educating and preparing me for the real world."

In response to the recent death of a Brooklyn student, infections of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus areus (MRSA) in high schools and the growing threat of the bacteria, Dean Max Michael (Alabama) published an article in the Birmingham News that calls for communities and agencies to map MRSA occurrences in order to predict and prevent infections.

The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) this past year celebrated 10 years of education, research and commitment to service. Within the last decade, the GW SPHHS has grown dramatically, currently boasting more than 900 students from 35 different nations. These students can study in seven areas of concentration, including Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Exercise Science, Health Policy, Global Health, Health Services Management and Leadership, Environmental and Occupational Health and Prevention and Community Health. 

GW SPHHS faculty, alumni and students have been an integral part of many significant projects within Washington, DC and across the globe, designed to advance the health of the populations of local, national and global communities. One example of its service within the local community is the SPHHS partnership with the District of Columbia and to address critical issues such as HIV/AIDS, clean drinking water and Hepatitis B prevention.

“We’ve got an incredible array of training, research and service partnerships underway in the District and surrounding region. Across our departments, we have become a recognized expert in health policy. And, we are deeply committed to improving health in our own backyard—a place with some of the most challenging public health indicators in the nation, and a tremendous need for our expertise and commitment,” said Dean Ruth Katz of the School of Public Health and Health Services.

SPHHS has grown exponentially in the last 10 years, and School leadership is enthusiastic about what is in store for the future. Some of SPHHS’ goals include continuing to attract high-caliber, dedicated students; expanding our world-class faculty; and increasing our research budget. “SPHHS is bubbling with optimism and vitality as our programs grow. This is only the beginning. As we expand our relationships and add to our experience, we will be taking a leadership role as both public health educators and public health practitioners. We have built an institution that is increasingly a model of excellence among the nation’s public health schools,” noted Dean Katz.

The GW SPHHS commemorated its anniversary by hosting a packed reception for faculty, alumni, staff and friends, including notable public health officials, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, in Washington, DC on November 5. Participating in the celebration were founding dean Dr. Richard Riegelman, former dean Dr. Richard Southby, current Dean Katz, new GW President Steven Knapp and GW Provost and Vice President for Health Affairs Dr. John F. Williams.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) School of Public Health’s Center for Infant and Young Child Feeding and Care has been accepted for membership in the United States Breastfeeding Committee (USBC). Based in the School’s Department of Maternal and Child Health, the center is the first USBC member to be selected from a school of public health. Dr. Miriam Labbok, director of the Center, was among the founders of USBC in the mid-1990s. 

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for a Livable Future (CLF) has awarded predoctoral fellowships to eight students for 2007-2008. The awards in amounts up to $50,000 are given to Johns Hopkins University predoctoral students who are committed to the discovery and application of knowledge about the environmental, economic, social and health impacts of industrial animal production and practices in the United States or abroad.

Dr. Richard F. Mollica, director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is hosting a public internet-based think tank aimed at understanding, dismantling and creating alternatives to violence. Author of Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World, Dr. Mollica has posted a "Declaration of Healing" and invited comments and discussion around the roles of medical and health professionals, global citizens and patients/consumers of health care services in coping with and reducing violence.

Dr. Héctor Balcázar, regional dean of the El Paso campus of the University of Texas School of Public Health, received a 2007 Cheerios Angel de mi Corazón award for his work to combat heart disease among Hispanics.

On Tuesday, November 13, the George Washington University (GW) School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) announced that Mr. Tom Perez has joined the Department of Health Policy as the Geiger Gibson Research Professor. Mr. Perez will lecture in health policy and civil rights and focus his research on health professions diversity.

"We are delighted that Tom Perez has chosen to become part of the Department," said Ms. Sara Rosenbaum, Hirsh Professor of Health Policy and Department chair. "Tom’s brilliance and accomplishments will add enormously to our Department and the Geiger Gibson Program."

Mr. Perez, who serves as Maryland’s Secretary of Labor, a position to which he was appointed in January 2007, will pursue his academic activities on a part-time basis.

Mr. Perez has dedicated his entire career to public service. He was the first Latino elected to the Montgomery County Council, where he served from 2002 to 2006, retiring that year. Secretary Perez was also a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland School of Law from 2001 to 2007, where he focused on the intersection of health and civil rights, and increasing access to healthcare for underserved communities. A former federal prosecutor and senior official in the Clinton administration, Perez served in the Justice Department Office of Civil Rights. During the final two years of the Clinton administration, Perez directed the Office for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Health and Human Services, where he was involved in the Clinton administration’s initiative to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in population health. Mr. Perez has also served as special counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, where he helped lead the effort to secure passage of landmark civil rights legislation.

Mr. Perez received an AB in International Relations and Political Science from Brown University, graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and has a Master’s degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government also at Harvard. He has served as a consultant on workforce diversity and cultural competence issues for a number of organizations, including the California Endowment, The Kellogg Foundation and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). As Commissioner on the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Mr. Perez also consults regularly on such matters as eliminating ethnic and racial disparities in health status, expanding access to healthcare for vulnerable communities and expanding diversity in the health professions.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) maintains a list of model substance abuse prevention programs suitable for public education settings. Dr. Dennis Gorman, professor at Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health (HSC-SRPH), examined the research behind these model programs and found the list of "model" programs really may not be a model.

Specifically, Dr. Gorman and colleague Ms. Eugenia Conde examined the relationship between program developers and program distributors, as well as how many program evaluations published in peer-reviewed journals have been conducted by developers. The majority of the programs examined showed a relationship between the program developer and program distributor, and very rarely was a program evaluated by someone completely independent of either the program’s developers or distributors.

"These relationships create a real or apparent conflict of interest," Dr. Gorman said. "The data presented indicate that there are relatively few published evaluations of these programs that do not involve program developers, and there are few instances in which there is a complete separation between the program developer and program distributor."

Dr. Gorman added, "The study did not examine if the conflicts of interest biased any program evaluations, although other researchers in the field have raised questions about the way in which data are analyzed and findings are reported. The SAMHSA list of model programs is currently being re-evaluated and revised."

The findings appear in the November issue of the journal Evaluation and Program Planning.

Research was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

The Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) is soliciting submissions of proposals for the 2008 Leaders Conference. The Leaders Conference is designed to bring together leaders from practice and academe in a unique exchange of information and ideas discussing the latest developments in educating future healthcare leaders.  

By hosting the 2^nd Annual Health Care Conference, Coahoma Community College in Mississippi is reaching out to surrounding communities to inform and educate individuals about the dangers of being obese and ways for healthier living.  The Health Care Conference Committee seeks presenters for concurrent sessions and poster sessions.  The focus of the conference is obesity, however, other related presentations are welcomed.

The Scientific Program Committee for the 2008 U.S. Public Health Service Scientific & Training Symposium is accepting abstract submissions for the symposium, which will be held June 9-12, 2008 at the Tucson Convention Center in Arizona. The symposium, organized by the PHS Commissioned Officers Foundation, attracts more than 1,000 federal, tribal, state and local public health officials each year.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and AcademyHealth are seeking applications for their 2008 Health Policy Fellowship. The aim of the fellowship is to foster collaboration between NCHS staff and visiting scholars on a wide range of topics of mutual concern.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Research and Education Foundation is requesting proposals for a team of researchers to conduct a systematic evidence review of the value of pharmacist-provided patient care services in the United States. The selected team will receive a $65,000 grant to conduct the evidence review.

Increasing attention is being given to the use of law to support public health interventions.  The program "Cutting-Edge Legal Preparedness for Chronic Disease Prevention" will explore this legal movement in the broadcast series Public Health Grand Rounds, which will be broadcast on Thursday, November 29 from 2-3 p.m. (ET).

The Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research and Medicine (Institute of Medicine) will be hosting a workshop titled "Environmental Health, Energy, and Transportation: Bringing Health to the Fuel Mixture" on November 29-30 at the National Academies Auditorium in Washington, DC.

The University of Maryland, College Park School of Public Health is hosting a Graduate Programs Open House on Friday, November 30 from 2-5:15 p.m. at the Health and Human Performance Building on the College Park campus.

The Florida Department of Health is sponsoring a free, interactive satellite broadcast entitled "Health by Design—Climate Change, Obesity and the Built Environment" on Wednesday, December 12 from 2-4 p.m. (ET).

General registration for the 13^th Annual Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Epidemiology Conference has been extended to Monday, November 19. This year’s conference, to be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel Atlanta-Ravinia in Atlanta, GA, will allow MCH professionals to share experiences, enhance knowledge and generate new ideas for improved MCH data use and informed policymaking.

Registration and a preliminary agenda for the 2008 National Health Policy Conference, sponsored by AcademyHealth, are now available. The 2008 Conference, to be held February 4-5 at the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC, will examine health care policy from the White House to Capitol Hill and from state capitals to city halls.

The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) is hosting Forces of Change: New Strategies for the Evolving Healthcare Marketplace. The Executive Education program will take place April 15-18, 2008 in Boston, MA. A Virtual Seminar Series and Intensive Seminar for New and Emerging Leaders will also be offered.

The 16^th Annual Washington Health Policy Institute in conjunction with the Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics at George Mason University will take place June 3-6, 2008 outside Washington, DC.  The Washington Health Policy Institute explores all facets of the health policymaking process and provides participants with the knowledge needed to make a difference in the U.S. health care system.