SPH News July 2008
SPH News is a school-wide electronic newsletter distributed to SPH faculty and staff every other week during the school year. Please send news items to SPHNews@umn.edu.
From the Dean
I’m writing to you with the sort of news I never tire of learning about or sharing.
SPH professor Michael Osterholm has been named to the AHC Academy for Excellence in Health Research. The academy is intended to serve as the highest recognition of excellence in AHC faculty. As you know, Mike is an internationally known expert in the field of infectious disease. He carries out this work by leading the influential Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), as well as the other large-scale projects like the Minnesota Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (MCEIRS). Mike joins SPH colleagues Aaron Folsom, Robert Kane, and Mary Story as AHC academy members.
These awards, of course, reflect the outstanding work of individual faculty members, but more importantly they highlight the mentoring culture that exists among our faculty as a whole. In the past year, SPH faculty have won a dozen or so major awards. Those awards went to faculty in all stages of their careers—from senior members to mid-career faculty to those just starting out as assistant professors. This is in great part due to our school’s collective culture of nurturing colleagues in all aspects of academic work. And as faculty, we can’t do our outstanding work without the contributions of our staff and students.
Congratulations to Mike on this well-deserved and most prestigious honor and to all our award winners this year. And thanks to all of you for taking the time to mentor and support your colleagues. It takes a school to raise academic champions!
—John R. Finnegan, Jr., Ph.D.
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Media News
June 2008 media coverage featured the following SPH faculty, staff, and students:
Kristin Anderson
Paul Allwood
Kathleen Call
Jon Christianson
Mike Davern
Aaron Folsom
Craig Hedberg
David Jacobs
Julia Johnsen
Robert Kane
Joseph Konstan
Charlie Lakin
Jeffrey Mandel
Dianne Neumark-Sztainer
Michael Oakes
Michael Osterholm
Misti Paudel
Simon Rosser
Coverage was featured in local media as well as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, Science News, the Orlando Sentinel, MedicalNewsToday.com, CNN.com, U.S. News and World Report, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters UK, and the Canadian Press.Visit www.sph.umn.edu/news/ to read more about SPH faculty in the news.
Subscribe to Public Health Scene to get regular e-mail updates on SPH in the news.
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Research News
Primary Investigator |
Project Title |
Award Amount |
Funding Agency |
Kathleen Thiede Call |
Oklahoma Survey and Small Area Analysis of Uninsurance |
$600,000 |
Oklahoma Health Care Authority |
Bryan Dowd |
NRSA Training Grant in Health Services Research |
$307,688 |
DHHS Agency for Healthcare Res and Quality |
Susan Duval |
Correcting for Publication Bias in the Presence of Covariates |
$34,728 |
DHHS Agency for Healthcare Res and Quality |
Lisa Harnack |
Study to Evaluate Efficacy of Pancreatic Endocrine Replacement Therapy Drug |
$129,478 |
Johnson and Johnson |
|
|
|
|
Robert Kane |
Treatment of Intertrochanteric / Subtrochanteric and Subcapital Fractures of the Hip Work |
$258,103 |
DHHS Agency for Healthcare Res and Quality |
Robert Kane |
Developing Criteria to Assess Quality and Standards to Report the Epidemiologic Studies |
$167,125 |
DHHS Agency for Healthcare Res and Quality |
Pinar Karaca Mandic |
Analysis of Graduate Driver Licensing: Lower Risk Exposure of Better Driving |
$73,311 |
NIH Natl Inst of Health |
Nancy Nachreiner |
Work Concerns During and After Cancer Treatment |
$25,000 |
Minnesota Medical Foundation Faculty Research Grant |
William Riley |
Developing and Implementing a Call for Proposals (CFP) for Evaluating Quality Improvement Projects in Local Health Departments and Providing Assistance to Successful Grants |
$600,000 |
Robert Wood Johnson FDN |
Matt Simcik |
Impaired Waters and Stormwater Program |
$359,168 |
MN Pollution Control Agency |
Mary Story |
Food Systems and Public Health: Linkages to Achieve Healthier Diets and Healthier Communities |
$125,000 |
W K Kellogg FDN |
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Faculty News
The 2008-2009 edition of faculty guidebooks are available for distribution to students in SPH courses this summer and fall. The guidebooks outline the research expertise of each SPH faculty member. Those interested in getting copies to distribute please contact Heidi Menzel at 4-6708 or at Menze029@umn.edu.
Lynn Blewett and Michael Davern made a presentation to 40 faculty, staff, and other visitors on June 18 from the Mayo Clinic Center for Health Policy. The presentation was on developing a research data center at the University of Minnesota.
Jeff McCullough’s publication, “The Effect of Medicaid Family Planning Expansions on Unplanned Births,” was awarded the Charles E. Gibbs Leadership prize for excellence in women’s health care policy issues. The article was co-authored with Richard Lindrooth of the Medical University of South Carolina. It was published in Women’s Health Issues, Volume 17, Issue 2 March/April 2007. The Gibbs prize is awarded annually for the best paper in Women’s Health Issues.
Robert Town was recently a plenary speaker on health care at the North American Meeting of the Econometrics Society. His topic was “Policy Analysis of Healthcare Markets: Recent Applications of Structural Approaches.”The conference was held at Carnegie-Mellon University.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced the launch of SHADAC’s State Health Access Profile, which is an interactive, electronic chart that compares health access indicators across states. SHADAC is a center in the SPH.
• View the Access Profile
Calling SPH Women Faculty Authors. The University’s Office for Equity and Diversity is compiling a list of female faculty authors who have published a book in the last two years (2006-2008) for an ad they will run in an upcoming issue of Minnesota Women’s Press. Please send this information to Diana Harvey at dharvey@umn.edu.
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School News
The June issue of research brief comes from SPH assistant professor of biostatistics Saonli Basu.She writes aboutlinkage analysis, a statistical method for estimating the location of a hypothesized gene in the genome that influences the susceptibility to the disease under study. Research Brief is a monthly electronic publication that profiles the work of SPH faculty members.
• Read the brief
David Jacobs, Simon Rosser, Craig Hedberg, and Dianne Neumark-Sztainer were featured in Public Health Moment last month. Public Health Moment is a weekly SPH podcast that is also picked up by several outstate Minnesota radio stations.
• Go to Public Health Moment
SPH students are blogging about their summer field experiences. Read their posts, view their photos, and read comments from friends and family.
• Go to the Field Experience blog
• Go to the U.S. Field Experience blog
Join the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC). The University of Minnesota Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) was formed in 2004 as part of a comprehensive effort to prepare for health emergencies on campus and in the community.MRC members are needed from all disciplines, backgrounds, and skill sets (clinical and non-clinical). If you are not currently registered with the U of M MRC, please consider doing so. Contact MRC Coordinator, Kathy Berlin, at 6-4722 or medicalreserve@umn.edu
• More information/register online
Walk-in Preventive Health Screenings at Boynton Health Service are available on the second Wednesday of every month for UPlan members through December. The screening tests available include: cholesterol (total, HDL, LDL); blood glucose (nonfasting); body mass index and body composition, and blood pressure. Offered first-come, first-served at no cost. For more information, see Health.
• More information at Boynton website
Maia Seitz, a 2005 graduate of the MPH Nutrition program and 2006 graduate of the UMN Master’s in Health Journalism program, was recently published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. She conducted her research for the article with Mary Story and the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) is seeking feedback as it begins its process of developing national accreditation standards for government health. On Aug. 1, the PHAB will issue preliminary domains, standards, and measures for its voluntary national accreditation program. The proposed standards will be available to the public health community for review on PHAB’s Web site,www.phaboard.org. Applicants for accreditation — including state, territorial, city or county, and tribal health departments — are invited to provide feedback by Oct. 31 via a survey on the Web site, a written questionnaire or discussion groups. The organization will review all responses by December, with the goal of finalizing accreditation standards by January 2009.
• More information online
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SPH Events & Courses
“Hierarchical model for spatially-referenced longitudinal data with applications to crop growth,” is the topic of Haowen Cai’s Plan B presentation to be held at 9:30 a.m. on Friday July 11 in room A301 Mayo. Refreshments will be served prior to the presentation.
The Minnesota State Fair is fast approaching. Visit the SPH booth in the Crossroads building on Wednesday, Aug. 27. The booth will be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and feature demonstrations on DNA, State Fair food, and other public health topics. Visitors will have an opportunity to express their opinions about public health in an SPH vodcast (video blogging). The video footage from the vodcast will be edited and made available on the SPH website. SPH trinkets will be given away. For questions, contact the Dean’s Office at 4-6669 or sphmayo@umn.edu. See you at the fair.
CPHEO Announcements
2008 National Maternal Nutrition Intensive Course
June 30 to Aug. 1. This continuing education program focuses on the improvement of maternal and infant health through the delivery of risk-appropriate high-quality nutrition services.
• Read more and register
The 2008 Public Health Institute - North Dakota
July 28-Aug. 7. These three courses are designed to improve the capacity of frontline public health workers and other health and human service professionals responding to public health threats. Content emphasizes theory to practice with opportunities for intensive, interactive classroom sessions, discussion and case studies. Courses are presented in a convenient two-day workshop format and faculty are nationally-recognized experts.
• Read more and register
UPCOMING CPHEO COURSES
8-Hour Emergency Response Refresher
Tuesday, Aug. 12
Tuesday, Oct. 7
Thursday, Dec. 4
• View course description
2008 National Maternal Nutrition Intensive Course
June 30 to Aug. 1
• Read more and register
Homeland Security
September 3-4
• View course description
8-Hour Site Worker Refresher
September 9
• View course description
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Events on the AHC Web Site
Events on the SPH Web Site
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Last modified on Monday Jul 07, 2008