Bruce Weir, professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington School of Public Health, was recently named to the Biology/DNA committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Public Health Rises to Top of Civic Agenda

Reducing obesity among children. Investing in early childhood programs. Devising strategies to reduce gun violence.

These three efforts illustrate how public health has risen to the top of the civic agenda in the Pacific Northwest. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray have all announced initiatives "putting public health at the center of their priorities," says Howard Frumkin, dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health.

For her capstone project, Marina Furtado (eMPH grad, 2014) set up an immunization program at a remote orphanage in the foothills of the Himalayas in northeast India. Many of the Jhamtse Gatsal school's 90 children were unimmunized.

Furtado had to travel far and wide to find vaccines, and went door-to-door in nearby towns to find a refrigerator to keep them cold. An emergency room physician, she also provided medical care – one day resuscitating an 8-year-old boy who nearly died from eating poison berries.

Doctors prescribed antibiotics to children with respiratory tract infections at nearly twice the expected rate, researchers from the University of Washington Schools of Medicine and Public Health and Seattle Children's Research Institute have found. That amounts to more than 11 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions a year.

The governing council of the American Public Health Association passed a policy resolution statement on Nov. 18 that was written by Associate Professor Amy Hagopian and her students at the University of Washington School of Public Health. Hagopian, associate professor of Global Health and Health Services, teaches MPH students in the two-year Community-Oriented Public Health Practice program.

A University of Washington School of Public Health center has launched a five-year project to reduce the exposure of children in agricultural settings to substances that trigger asthma.

The "Home Air in Agriculture, Pediatric Intervention Trial" is funded by a $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The principal investigator is Catherine Karr, associate professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and Pediatrics.

African-Americans who inherit the sickle cell gene have an increased risk for chronic kidney disease, according to a study co-led by Alexander Reiner, research professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health.

Dean Howard Frumkin has announced two new $1,000 annual awards made possible by a private gift to the School.  SPH staff, faculty, and students (including recent graduates) are eligible for both awards.  

The Training System Monitoring and Reporting Tool (TrainSMART), a web-based training data collection system designed by the International Training and Education Center for Health (I-TECH), was recently tapped by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Ebola Emergency Operations Center. I-TECH is a center within the University of Washington's Department of Global Health.

Mystery Shopping for Health Insurance Information

It is hard to know where life will take you, and this was especially true for Walter Remak. In 1936, as a young man from Berlin, Walter fled Nazi Germany for the safe haven of South Africa. After arriving, Walter returned to the fray, fighting against the Nazis in the South African Army. His experience with the South African people, including their warmth and willingness to accept him, gave him a lifelong gratitude toward the country.

Dehydration. Heat stroke. Asthma. Broken bones. Chronic pain.

These are a few of the issues faced by Latino farmworkers in Washington state who risk their health – and occasionally their lives – to ensure our shelves are stocked with the fresh produce that keeps us healthy. Some farm workers are especially vulnerable because they don't speak English and don't commonly know how to protect themselves in the workplace.

Children receive about 14 percent of their calories from fast-food restaurants, with burger joints leading the way, according to a recent study by the University of Washington School of Public Health.

Jack Thompson, principal lecturer emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health, was elected president of the Washington State Public Health Association. "I look forward to serving as president for the next year," Thompson said. "Our board is diverse, dedicated and energetic and we just concluded a wonderful annual conference in Wenatchee, WA."

The Health Promotion Research Center, located in the Health Services Department at the University of Washington School of Public Health, has received funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for six one- to five-year projects that support health promotion in a variety of areas.

The funded projects:

A roundup of events and news about the Ebola outbreak featuring UW School of Public Health researchers, with links to resources.

SPH in the News about Ebola

A nurse's desperate plea: Show me the Ebola money -- Karin Huster (MPH, Global Health '13)

The Strategic Analysis, Research & Training Program (START), which started as a faculty- and student-led effort to provide strategic analysis to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011, is expanding to become a Center in the Department of Global Health and will begin offering analysis to other organizations this fall. START has supported over two-dozen graduate students in Epidemiology, Global Health, Sociology, Business, Public Health and Nursing to provide analysis and the program has already completed over 75 different projects with the Gates Foundation.

A University of Washington (UW) evaluation team led by Douglas Conrad, Professor of Health Services and Oral Health Sciences, and colleagues David Grembowski, Susan Hernandez, Bernard Lau and Miriam Marcus-Smith, recently found four key lessons in implementing value-based health payment reform. Their study was based on research in six states and seven projects over 30 months and appeared in the September 2014 issue of the Milbank Quarterly.

The risks of taking prescription opioids for chronic non-cancer pain such as headaches and low back pain outweigh the benefits, according to a new position statement from the American Academy of Neurology authored by Gary Franklin, research professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health.

The Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Section of the American Public Health Association has honored Colleen Huebner, professor of health services at the University of Washington School of Public Health, and other members of the MCH Navigator Working Group with the 2014 "Effective Practice Award."