Fall 2025
50 Years of Research at Rollins
By Kelly Jordan
On This Page
A look at the school’s impact amid a pivotal moment for public health
50 Years of Research at Rollins
It’s been half a century since the Rollins School of Public Health’s origin story began. What started as a Master of Community Health program with a handful of students in 1975, has developed into a globally recognized name, and a top-ranked school of public health in the United States. Rollins is the only school Emory has founded in the past 100 years. Now, more than 13,000 Rollins alumni live and work around the world, and the school’s physical footprint (previously limited to a small clapboard house) spans 500,000 square feet.
During its tenure as a leading school of public health, Rollins has made its mark on public health innovations, interventions, collaborations, and monitoring methods that have helped keep people safer and healthier in the United States and beyond.
“Our purpose as a school is to move public health forward. It’s something we’ve been doing since the beginning, and is something we will always do at Rollins,” says M. Daniele Fallin, PhD, James W. Curran Dean of the Rollins School of Public Health.
Gathered here is a small sampling of the ways Emory researchers have made a tangible difference in public health over the past five decades, where support is needed the most, and what we can do collectively to protect the health of people everywhere.
A Powerhouse For HIV/AIDS Research
James W. Curran, MD, dean emeritus, joined the school as its second dean in 1995, following a 25-year tenure at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where he led the task force responsible for investigating AIDS. Through his 27-year leadership role as dean, he helped establish the school’s reputation as an epicenter for HIV/AIDS research and build the school’s robust research portfolio.
“Even before the virus was discovered, doctors at Emory were caring for people with AIDS,” says Curran.
Since 1998, Emory has been home to a Center for AIDS Research (Emory CFAR) and is one of 19 such National Institutes of Health-funded centers in the country. Schools and units across the university are represented in the center—including Rollins. In the early 1990s, Emory researchers Ray Schinazi, Dennis Liotta, and Woo-Baeg Choi pioneered some of the earliest drugs for HIV, which have been used by more than 90% of people with HIV globally.
Despite decades of research contributing to AIDS prevention, it remains a severe chronic condition for millions of Americans, with the largest burden falling on the Southern United States. HIV/AIDS research remains a strong area of focus for Rollins, with researchers working across the implementation science, prevention research, and disease surveillance spaces, particularly as it relates to populations identifying as LGBTQ+.
how Rollins researchers are working in HIV/AIDS
Areas of investigation include topics like the role of neighborhood pharmacies in combatting stigma and reaching high-risk populations; pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake among men who have sex with men and the promise of injectable PrEP; the potential of artificial intelligence in HIV interventions; racial disparities in PrEP uptake; and more. Recently, Aaron Siegler, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology, spearheaded the development of Emory CFAR’s HIV Research Document Library, a free resource for early-career researchers seeking guidance on how to secure funding.
“We have the tools we need to end the HIV epidemic right now for people who are living with HIV,” says Patrick Sullivan, PhD, professor of epidemiology. “But to pull back on the throttle right now would be to waste the effort, the dedication, the progress that we’ve made over decades. We are so close. We’re winning battles year by year. We’re knocking down the obstacles. There’s no option to step back, to pause, to throttle back.”
more from Sullivan on investing in health research
Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene
Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) research at Rollins has also set the school apart among peer institutions, with Rollins serving as a long-standing leader in WASH research and training. Started in 2004 by the late Eugene Gangarosa, MD, a public health luminary, the Center for Global Safe WASH at Emory has spearheaded global WASH research ranging from enteric illnesses in children to menstrual hygiene in women. It is also home to the first WASH certificate program in a school of public health in the country.
While access to clean water and sanitation is something many in the U.S. may take as a given, it’s not the reality for a huge proportion of the world’s population. The World Health Organization estimates that more than 1.3 million people die every year due to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene. As climate change and shifts to environmental regulation and monitoring continue, water quality and quantity may decline, leading to limitations in clean drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene and greater risk of illness—even in places like the United States.
“I really see WASH as one of the central public health pillars,” says Christine Moe, PhD, Eugene J. Gangarosa Chair in Safe Water and Sanitation. “If we want to maintain civilization, both urban civilization where we’re living on top of each other as well as healthy rural communities, we really have to invest in WASH research, in WASH training, and evaluating what works and what doesn’t work.”
Moe and members of the Center for Global Safe WASH have been doing their part in this work with research projects all over the world, primarily focused in low- and middle-income countries where access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene —and related morbidity and mortality—are the worst. At a local level, researchers affiliated with the center have monitored water and wastewater in the Atlanta area, including, most recently, testing the water quality at four sites along the Peavine and Lullwater creeks in the Druid Hills neighborhood.
Center faculty and students were also instrumental in testing Emory’s award-winning WaterHub, a wastewater treatment facility on Emory’s campus. In its 10 years of operation, the facility has recycled more than 425 million gallons of water.
As climate change and population growth increase, Moe warns that water scarcity is a very real issue that affects a high proportion of the global population, including in the U.S. This reality may be closer than what we may think. According to a United Nations report released last spring, major cities like Mexico City and Johannesburg are already running out of water. Mercy Corps released a report earlier this year urging immediate action for Kabul, Afghanistan, citing, “without urgent, coordinated investment, Kabul risks becoming the first modern capital to run dry.” According to Moe, innovative solutions, like WaterHub, are critical for ensuring sustainable water supplies now and for the future.
In a broader sense, Moe worries about protecting water resources, and environmental health more generally, due to recent weakening of the Clean Water Act and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA).
“I have read statements by the new USEPA director about how cuts and policy changes are saving money for the American people, but their job is to be protecting the environment. I worry that these budget and personnel cuts are really cutting into their mission of protecting the environment, which includes sources of drinking water. We think that we’re safe in a high-income country, but much of our water and sanitation infrastructure is old and requires maintenance and upgrading. If those funds are not there, then we are at risk of more waterborne disease outbreaks that could have a lot of consequences.”
The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, is a prime example of that. The center is training the next generation of water, sanitation, and hygiene public health professionals to help prevent and control disasters like that in the U.S. and abroad.
Advancing Disease Prevention
For the last 21 years, the Emory Prevention Research Center (EPRC) has been leading health prevention efforts for people across the country, particularly in the areas of family nutrition and smoking prevention.
Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death for Americans, and it’s not just among smokers. Secondhand smoke causes 50,000 deaths a year and costs the nation $6.6 billion annually in productivity.
Informed by this knowledge, the EPRC developed Smoke Free Homes, which partnered with United Way 2-1-1 phone lines to provide callers with educational materials. The effectiveness of this program earned it a spot on the National Cancer Institute’s evidence-based list of cancer control programs.
With the shuttering of the Office on Smoking and Health earlier this year, and the possibility that the Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion could be eliminated in the future, these types of projects are more vital than ever. Yet, changes to funding can make operationalizing efforts like these difficult.
According to Susan O’Brien, director of state communications at Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, Georgia received $2.1 million in tobacco prevention funding from CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health in fiscal year 2024.
“CDC’s funds are critical to Georgia’s tobacco prevention and cessation efforts and account for roughly 50% of total funding for these efforts,” she says.
Another area currently in progress for EPRC is investigating the nutritional quality of foods in food pantries at schools. This is especially relevant for children whose families face food insecurity—a problem that may be exacerbated by recent changes to food assistance programs and Medicaid.
“I think people don’t fully appreciate being healthy until their partners or kids get sick, or their parents age and things start to go wrong,” says Michelle Kegler, DrPH, director of the EPRC.
“Public health prevention creates environments in which people can be healthy and engage in all the health behaviors that we know are directly related to health. If we can help build communities that offer access to healthy foods, offer places to be physically active, have strong smoke-free legislation and norms for not using tobacco, that’s going to help people stay healthy and engage in healthy behaviors.”
Many of the top preventable causes of death can develop into other chronic conditions that can lead to death, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes—all research areas at Rollins.
Heart Disease
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States and has been a major area of focus at Rollins for decades, with projects that include studies of heart disease in twins, PTSD and veterans, heart disease and lupus in Black women, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and the role of stress on heart health in women.
The school’s insights and expertise have been included in recommendations put out by the American Heart Association and garnered the attention of former first lady Jill Biden, who invited researcher Tené T. Lewis, PhD, to present during a roundtable discussion as part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.
The school’s METRIC T32 training grant provides mentorship and support—in partnership with Emory School of Medicine and Morehouse School of Medicine—to doctoral students working to advance cardiovascular research.
Diabetes
While significant progress has been made toward diabetes research and prevention strategies, the global estimate of cases (as of 2022) is 828 million—an increase of 630 million from 1990. It is one of the top 10 leading causes of death for Americans and claims approximately 100,000 lives a year.
The Emory Global Diabetes Research Center has been an active player in this space since 2008 and has built collaborations with partners across India, a country carrying substantial disease burden. Among EGDRC’s major contributions to our understanding of the disease are its role as a partner and lead of the Center for Cardiometabolic Risk Reduction in South Asia study (which has followed the health of 22,000 people for 15 years). Work with this cohort has broadened the ways researchers think about diabetes—instead of delegating it to just two types, researchers have started to see diabetes occurring on a spectrum.
Recent key developments for the center include forming a Pancreatic Biobank to help advance type 2 diabetes research, conducting research about “type 3” diabetes, launching the Diabetes Translational Accelerator program, and contributing to the Copenhagen Declaration (a global framework for tackling diabetes).
Insights from Emory experts on tackling diabetes in rural Georgia
Creating Data Collection Tools and Monitoring Systems
Emory has served an integral role in tracking cancer data for the state since 1976, which is when it was selected as Georgia’s collection site for the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Registry (SEER). Originally founded under the name, Georgia Center for Cancer Statistics, and now known as the Georgia Cancer Registry, the registry works to maintain cancer-related reporting data for Georgia that is used for a variety of purposes, including informing research projects and health policy, both locally and nationally.
Rollins researchers have led to our broader understanding of cancer prevention through their leadership with Winship Cancer Institute’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program—currently co-led by Ilana Graetz, PhD, associate professor of health policy and management, and including 49 Rollins faculty. The school’s faculty have contributed to research in a range of cancer areas, including the epidemiology of cancer recurrence, environmental factors and cancer, racial disparities and breast cancer diagnoses, factors impacting the survival rates of Black women with ovarian cancer, utilizing technology to improve cancer treatment uptake, and more.
Rollins-led infectious disease modeling efforts and tracking innovations have been implemented at a national scale. Major projects include Wastewater SCAN, a project that runs out of Stanford in partnership with Rollins. Co-led by Marlene Wolfe, PhD, this wastewater surveillance system was the first to monitor wastewater for the mpox virus. It has proven an effective tool at providing a more accurate picture of the true numbers of an infectious disease in a community.
WastewaterSCAN currently collects and tests samples from almost 150 sites nationwide and tests for 13 different pathogens, including measles, flu, RSV, COVID-19, mpox, and rotavirus. Rollins researchers have also used wastewater testing to detect COVID-19 numbers in Emory’s dorms and in Fulton County jails.
In the sexually transmitted infection space, Sullivan led the development of AIDSVu, PrEPVu, and HepVu, which utilize mapping and data systems to help users access medical providers and treatments related to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.
For decades, the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) served to collect the prenatal and birthing experiences for pregnant people across the nation. PRAMS data flowed into state health departments and informed interventions that improved birth outcomes for pregnant people and their babies.
Carol Hogue, PhD, professor emerita of epidemiology, led the development of PRAMS when she was working as a branch chief at CDC. In later years, Lauren Christiansen-Lindquist, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology, was also able to contribute to the system, used at a national level and managed by the CDC, to include a question about stillbirths.
“There are so many factors that influence health. As we think about vulnerable times in life or populations that tend to be vulnerable, pregnancy and infancy certainly fall into these categories,” says Christiansen-Lindquist. “It’s important that we have access to good data that allow us to understand when pregnant people are at risk, so we can intervene and improve maternal health.”
Read more from Christiansen-Lindquist on the importance of PRAMS
When PRAMS was first implemented, 10 out of every 1,000 infants died before their first birthday. These days, infant mortality is nearly half that, with 5.5 deaths out of every 1,000 babies in 2022. This success was driven, in part, by data obtained from PRAMS and other systems that provide a national snapshot of the true circumstances pregnant people experience before, during, and after birth. These data have been used to inform prevention efforts and research that has fueled the field of maternal health, a major focus area at Rollins. Earlier this year, data collection was paused and the office responsible for maintaining it was largely eliminated.
Environmental Health
Rollins is home to the nation’s first exposome research center, HERCULES Exposome Research Center (founded 12 years ago), and has been working to increase our understanding of how environmental exposures impact human health. The first book on exposomics was written by HERCULES’ former director, Gary Miller, PhD, and researchers affiliated with the group have become go-to spokespeople for the media on hot-button issues in the exposure science space.
HERCULES has helped build evidence about the ways in which various environmental factors like air pollution, chemical exposures, and climate change are impacting our health. Their work has helped build the evidence base about the possible links between air pollution (including ambient traffic pollution in cities like Atlanta) and Alzheimer’s; investigated correlations between environmental exposures and infertility and birth outcomes; and researched levels of PFAS in communities and long-term health effects on people. A new NIH-funded project led by Douglas Walker, PhD, associate professor of environmental health, and Fallin is investigating the role of the exposome on autism.
“A lot of what drives me is the hope that what we're doing will eventually lead to policy changes that can help people,” says Carmen Marsit, PhD, director of HERCULES.
“That's where some of the molecular-focused work several of us do within HERCULES can be helpful. The idea there is, if we can understand at the molecular level what some of these chemicals do, can we move more quickly on proving that they're problematic instead of having to wait until we have cancer outcomes 30 years from now? We have a whole generation of kids who have been exposed. Health inequities and issues related to access are at play.”
Where Does This Leave Us?
Public health has always been about protecting and improving the lives of all people, regardless of the obstacles in the way. The Rollins story is testament to this.
As investigators continue digging deeper into the public health challenges mentioned above or pave the way forward for other priority research areas like reproductive health, mental health, or environmental health, the school’s mission serves as a guiding light.
It always has. It always will.
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Rollins Magazine is published twice a year by the Rollins School of Public Health, a component of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center of Emory University, for alumni and friends of the school.