News

Colleen McBride received the APHA Genomics Forum 2021 Outstanding Research Award, presented by: The Genomics Forum of the American Public Health Association.

Commentary by Alex Wagenaar and Dave D. Anderson was published in the New England Journal of Medicine's Weekend Briefing, May 22, 2021 in the "Perspective" section. It's entitled: The "Legal Epidemiology" of Pandemic Control. Read the full commentary here.

Hannah Cooper has been quoted in Georgia Health News in an article entitled: ‘Perfect storm’: An opioid menace like never before. In the article, Hannah discusses the opioid crisis in Georgia, and the necessity of wider access to the drug Naloxone and drug treatment services in our communities.

The Spring 2021 edition of Rollins Magazine featured a number of BSHES faculty and students.  An article entitled Health for All: Rollins researchers work toward treatment for the disease of discrimination, featured the work of Kimberly Jacob Arriola, Briana Woods-Jaeger, Kelli Komro and Hannah Cooper. Additionally, Not a moment but a movement featured BSHES doctoral alumna Dana Williamson and MPH student Saundra Latimer.  And finally, An anti-racist agenda featured a description of Briana Woods-Jaeger's new class, "Addressing Racism as a Public Health Issue to Promote Health Equity." Click here to read the magazine.

Liz Walker, PhD, was recently quoted in a CNN Health article, where she discussed the role mental health plays in longevity.

Briana Woods-Jaeger, PhD, was recently featured in a USA Today article discussing the impact of COVID-19 on Black communities.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR CANCER PREVENTION, February 23, 2021
Cam Escoffery, PhD, MPH, CHES, professor and vice chair of research at Rollins’ Department of Behavioral, Social, and Health Education Sciences shares why community engagement is vital to cancer prevention research. Read more here.

Congratulations to Briana Woods-Jaeger, PhD, who received the 2021 Emory Provost's Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education!  The Rollins School of Public Health created a video presentation to describe Dr. Woods-Jaeger’s nomination and award. Click here to watch the video.

Melissa (Moose) Alperin recently received the 2021 ASPPH Academic Practice Excellence Award.

Cam Escoffery has been selected as a finalist for the Woodruff Leadership Academy Class of 2021.

Jessica Sales was featured in the fall 2020 edition of Rollins Emory News. The piece highlights Jessica's research, along with Anandi Sheth, which focuses on the misconception that PrEP is only for men. Most of the women interviewed for the study indicated they either did not know about PrEP, or they think it is only for men. Jessica is working with Sister Love, where they are developing a grassroots community awareness campaign. Read more here.

The National Institute for Health (NIH) highlighted Kelli Komro's new project with the Cherokee Nation. Kelli is collaborating with social worker Juli Skinner, senior director of behavioral health at Cherokee Nation Behavioral Health. Their research is one of nine NIH-funded studies, and that along with a coordinating center, form a consortium to develop and test nine different strategies to prevent opioid misuse and OUD among older adolescents and young adults in 10 states.  Read more here.

Cam Escoffery has been named the University of Alabama's National Public Health Scholar Award, where she gave a lecture entitled: Perspectives on Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion. Cam has also been selected as a finalist for the WLA (Woodruff Leadership Academy) Class of 2021. Congratulations Cam! 

Yue Guan was awarded the Winship Invest$ Winter 2020 Pilot Award: "Examining multilevel barriers and facilitators to implementation of genomic risk-stratified breast cancer screening guidelines." Winship Invest$ is a peer-reviewed program designed to fund novel, innovative cancer research projects at Winship Cancer Institute.

Hannah Cooper and Lance Walker are leading a new NIDA T32 Pre-doctoral Training Grant called the "Training in Advanced Data Analytics to End Drug-Related Harms" (TADA) training program. BSHES doctoral student Carla Jones-Harrell will be the first training fellow enrolled in the program this fall. The goal of TADA is to prepare a diverse cadre of 21st century social and behavioral science (SBS) researchers to apply advanced data analytics and computational methods and to develop transformative approaches to end the substance use disorder (SUD) crisis. Methods include but are not limited to: geospatial methods, social network analyses, gene/environment interactions, machine learning, and tools to integrate and analyze multiple large administrative datasets.

In February, the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University announced the appointment of Colleen McBride as the new associate director for community outreach and engagement. McBride will provide vision and oversight for Winship’s community-facing activities. These include efforts in cancer health disparities, recruitment of underserved populations to clinical trials, cancer risk mitigation, cancer prevention, and cancer control interventions.

Michael Windle's study entitled: "Do Young Adults Really 'Age Out' of Heavy Drinking?" was recently featured in Health Day. Read the full study here.

Kimberly Jacob Arriola has been profiled in The Emory Report for her work chairing the Emory Impact Committee, which helps to foster collaboration across the university.

In January, a publication by BSHES investigators Kelli Komro, Melvin Livington and Leslie Salas- Hernández has generated media coverage in The Washington Post, NPR, US News & World Report, Newsweek, MSN, and more.  Kaufman JA, Salas-Hernández LK, Komro KA, Livingston, MD. Effects of increased minimum wages by unemployment rate on suicide in the USA. Read the full article here.

BSHES faculty member Hannah Cooper collaborated with Mindy Fullilove on a new book entitled From Enforcers to Guardians: A Public Health Primer on Ending Police Violence. The book was released in January 2020.  Aimed at public health students, researchers, health departments, and anyone seeking to understand the causes and distributions of excessive police violence, the book examines police violence and its disproportionate targeting of Black communities through a public health lens.

BSHES PhD student David Cloud served as editor of the January supplemental issue of the American Journal of Public Health entitled Documenting and and Addressing Health Impacts of Carceral Systems with Lauren Brinkley-Rubenstein from UNC.

Michelle Kegler served as guest editor with SOPHE on the Health Education and Behavior (HEB) Supplement entitled: Collaborating for Equity and Justice.

Colleen McBride, Dawn Comeau, Hannah Cooper, and Ashley Mastin published an AJPH commentary entitled "A Public Health of Consequence: Shifting the Cultural Narrative from Churning Giants to a Scholarship of Consequence". Read the full commentary here.

Whitney Rice was awarded the 2019 Outstanding Young Professional Award by the Sexual and Reproductive Health Section of American Public Health Association.

Cam Escoffery was named president-elect of the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE).  She will serve a three-year term, rotating through the roles of President-Elect, President, and Past President. 

Hannah Cooper has been quoted on WABE-NPR in a story about the national opioid crisis. Hannah spoke about the effectiveness of needle exchange programs, which have just become legal in Georgia. She also lamented that Medicaid expansion has been undermined in recent years, separating citizens from a range of services.

Robin McGee's work with the Carter Center Mental Health Program has been featured in the Spring 2019 edition of Emory Public Health Magazine:  Reducing the Stigma of Mental Illness Through a Journalism Fellowship.

In March, Aaron Siegler was quoted in The Washington Post, in an article about the difficulties of bringing PrEP use to scale in the southern US.

In April, Jessica Sales published an op-ed in Politico which questions the Trump Administration's plans to cut Title X funding from family planning clinics, in light of its stated goal to end the HIV epidemic in the US By 2030.

Michelle Kegler and colleagues at the Emory Prevention Research Center were pleased to learn that their intervention, Smoke-Free Homes: Some Things are Better Outside, is now officially posted on the National Cancer Institute's Research-Tested Intervention Programs (RTIPs).  

BSHES Faulty and Trainees have published two reviews on Qualitative Research Practices in Health Education Behavior:

Study Design and Use of Inquiry Frameworks in Qualitative Research Published in Health Education and Behavior:  Michelle C. Kegler, Ilana G. Raskind, Dawn L. Comeau, Derek M. Griffith, Hannah L. F. Cooper, Rachel C. Shelton
Health Educ Behav
Sep 18, 2018 | OnlineFirst

A Review of Qualitative Data Analysis Practices in Health Education and Health Behavior Research:  Ilana G. Raskind, Rachel C. Shelton, Dawn L. Comeau, Hannah L. F. Cooper, Derek M. Griffith, Michelle C. Kegler
Health Educ Behav
Sep 18, 2018 | OnlineFirst

Fight for Black Mothers' Health, 2018

BSHE Doctoral Fellow Akilah Wise's essay is published in Emory Health Digest.

It is one of the most grave public health statistics in the country: Black mothers die at three to four times the rate of white mothers, one of the widest of all racial disparities in women’s health.

Chronic stress is seen as the primary factor in racial disparities in maternal death. It also can lead to poor sleep quality, heart disease, and accelerated biological aging.

Such factors as poverty, polluted neighborhoods, discrimination, abuse, and exploitation undermine the health of black women and members of other marginalized communities. Read more...

Stopping Traffic: How Emory faculty, students, and advocates are confronting the complicated crisis of human trafficking, Spring 2017
BSHE PhD student, Leslie Munoz Johnson, was quoted in the Spring 2017 edition of Emory Magazine. The article touched on campus-wide efforts to study and combat human trafficking in Atlanta; Leslie spoke about her role as EGHI case competition chair and lead writer in researching the public health needs of victims. For access to article, please click here.

Some Melanoma Survivors Are Still Getting Too Much Sun Exposure, March 2017
Grace Crum Rollins Chair of Behavioral Sciences, Colleen McBride, Ph.D., was featured in a NPR article that notes some Melanoma survivors are still getting too much sun exposure. McBride explians, "There's an assumption that a cancer diagnosis provides a teachable moment when people are more willing to make positive changes, but whether it represents a true window of opportunity isn't well studied." For access to article, please click here.

Study finds effective interventions to prevent alcohol use among American Indian and rural youth, March 2017
Professor Kelli Komro was featured in a National Institutes of Helath (NIH) news release that focused on community-based and individual-level prevention strategies as effective ways to reduce alcohol use among American Indian and other youth living in rural communities. “Community organizing has been used effectively in multiple other health intervention trials and appeared to be an optimal strategy to engage diverse citizens in these multicultural communities,” explained Dr. Komro. For access to article, please click here.

How Monday resolutions can help you beat the odds, January 2017
Grace Crum Rollins Chair of Behavioral Sciences, Colleen McBride, Ph.D., was featured in an article highlighting the benefits of setting goals on Mondays. Research studies show Monday is the one day of the week people are most likely to set a new goal, like quitting smoking. "We should be saying, 'Hey, Monday is a new day.’ Try to do things differently this week. Try to make it that narrow. That may make it much more achievable.” For access to article, please click here.

Lifting depression among those with epilepsy, Fall 2016
Professor Nancy Thompson's Project Uplift (Using Practice and Learning to Increase Favorable Thoughts) was featured on the Rollins News website. The program is a groundbreaking distance-delivery intervention for people living with depression and seizures. Please click here to view article.

Virginia S. DeHaan Lecture on Health Promotion and Education, October 2016
The 2016 DeHaan Lecture featured Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States and Founding Director of the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine. The title of his talk was, "The Journey from Health Disparity to Health Equity." For access to a recording of the lecture, please click here.

The Guardian and The Trace, October 2016
Research Professor, Alex Wagenaar, was recently quoted in The Guardian and The Trace discrediting the effectiveness of Scared Straight programs that aim to teach children about the harmful effects of gun violence.

Congratulations Students!

Leslie Munoz Johnson

was selected for a Fogarty Global Health Fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health.

As a part of her fellowship, Johnson will spend the better part of a year in India working on the mental health aspects of diabetes.

Kathleen Krause

recently received an F-31 NRSA grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 2016-2018 for her project, "Understanding the Disclosure of Sexual Violence (SV) among College Women."

Dana Williamson

Dana Williamson was selected as part of the inaugural cohort of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars.

Reuters | Researchers publish U.S. data on police-related injuries, July 2016
Professor Hannah Cooper, who recently addressed police violence as a public health issue, told Reuters Health it's important to "expand the national dialogue beyond death. Non-fatal injuries are also vital to the conversation and are much more common,” she said. “Better surveillance of police-related injuries is needed,” she added.

Nancy Thompson Wins 2016 Scholar/Teacher Award, May 2016
Called the "founding mother" of the Rollins School of Public Health, professor Nancy Thompson is honored for almost four decades of service to Emory. As a scholar, Thompson’s expertise ranges from asthma to organ donation to end-of-life care and beyond. She has produced more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, 10 book chapters, and a coauthored book titled “Demonstrating Your Program’s Worth: A Primer on Evaluation for Programs to Prevent Unintentional Injury,” which received a CDC Communications Roundtable Award. For more information please click here.

The Epilepsy Foundation of Colorado | Taryn's Story, April 2016
The Epilepsy Foundation of Colorado produced a video on a patient participating in Project UPLIFT, a distance-delivered depression management intervention developed by BSHE professor Nancy Thompson.

CNN | Public Health Experts: Decriminalize minor drug offenses, March 2016
Professor Hannah Cooper has been quoted about drug reform on CNN.com. Study finds that high incarceration rates and aggressive policing have increased risk of HIV, HCV and opioid overdose. Experts recommend many drug policy changes, including decriminalizing minor drug offenses.

JAMA Pediatrics | Long-Acting Reversible Contraception and Condom Use Among Female US High School Students; Implications for Sexually Transmitted Infection Prevention, March 2016
In collaboration with CDC colleagues, Riley Steiner, Jessica Sales and Andrea Swartzendruber, have published a study in JAMA Pediatrics that has been featured on 50 media outlets,: HealthDay, CNN, NBC News, Reuters Health, etc. Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) methods, namely IUDs and implants, offer a promising strategy for reducing unintended pregnancies among adolescents. However, these methods do not protect against sexually transmitted infections. Among this nationally representative sample of sexually active female high school students, LARC users were nearly 60 percent less likely to use condoms compared to students using oral contraceptives.

The Conversation | Bethany Caruso discuses the need to empower women through access to water, March 2016
In recognition of World Water Day (March 22) BSHE doctoral alum, Bethany Caruso, wrote an article for The Conversation addressing the need to empower women through access to water. Bethany conducted research in India, Bolivia, and Kenya on the water and sanitation challenges that women and girls confront and how these experiences influence their lives.

NPR | Carla Berg discuss connection between tobacco-related policy and how lawmakers view tobacco, January 2016
Carla Berg talks about the Rollins School of Public Health's studies delving into the connection between tobacco-related policy and how lawmakers view tobacco.

AJC Op-Ed, December 2015
Andrea Swartzendruber, a postdoctoral fellow in the Behavioral Sciences and Health Education Department at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, takes on sex education in Georgia with an op-ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Sex ed is a course that ought to be health based, but often is influenced by politics and ideology.

Social Determinants of Health "Meet the Funder" Series, December 2015
Dr. Alonzo Plough, VP of Research-Evaluation-Learning and Chief Science Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation was featured as part of the Social Determinants of Health "Meet the Funder" Series. Dr. Plough discussed RWJF’s Culture of Health Initiative.

James W. Curran Lecture on the Social Determinants of Health, November 2015
Dr. Ana V. Diez Roux, Distinguished University Professor of Epidemiology and Dean of the Drexel University School of Public Health, presented on "Reflections on the social determinants of health: opportunities and challenges for public health research and action".

Virginia DeHaan Lecture Series, October 2015
The 2015 DeHaan Lecture featured Dr. Nancy Krieger, professor of Social Epidemiology at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Krieger discussed health inequities in their current and historical contexts, and drew on the eco social theory of disease distribution.

NPR | Sarah Piper speaks about Diabetes prevention, October 2015
Sarah Piper is the director of a lifestyle training program focusing on diabetes prevention at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Piper explained the statistics, how people can prevent diabetes, how to manage the disease and more during an interview on “Closer Look."

NPR | Carla Berg speaks about Teens using E-Cigarettes to Vape Marijuana, September 2015
A new study in the medical journal Pediatrics contains some eye-opening statistics about how teenagers are using e-cigarettes.

BSHE PhD Grad wins top Emory honor, May 2015
Through research and community service, Amanda Garcia-Williams has reached out to help others improve their physical and mental health, including extensive work on suicide prevention.

NPR | Ralph DiClemente speaks about sex ed on NPR, May 2015
At schools that offer comprehensive sex education, students tend to get the biology and the basics — but some public health researchers and educators are saying that's not enough. They're making the case that sex ed should include discussion about relationships, gender and power dynamics.

Carla Berg featured in Emory Public Health Magazine, Spring 2015
Carla Berg is trying to think like a tobacco executive. The associate professor in behavioral sciences and health education wants to borrow the sophisticated market segmentation techniques the tobacco industry has used so successfully for decades to lure smokers. Berg, however, plans to use them to identify young tobacco users and convince them to quit.

Colleen McBride featured in Emory Public Health Magazine, Spring 2015
When a research colleague asked Colleen McBride if she’d like to join him on a sailing trip along the Turkish coast, she accepted immediately. No matter that she did not know the other four people who were taking the trip. Or that she didn’t know how to sail. Or that she is prone to seasickness.

Colleen McBride’s Grand Rounds Lecture - Prospects for breakthroughs in Behavioral Science: Is there a role for Genomics? October 2014

Michelle Kegler’s Grand Rounds Lecture – Community-Based Participatory Approaches to Cancer Prevention in Southwest Georgia, September 2013