This story originally published on April 21, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Three Distinguished USF Health Professors in the Department of Global Health at the USF College of Public Health – Drs. Tom Unnasch, John Adams and Dennis Kyle – are ranked among the university’s best externally-funded investigators in terms of research dollars, and two are in the top five. A major focus of their research is malaria.

A fourth Global Health professor, Dr. Michael White, published a groundbreaking study just last month that may revolutionize the global fight against malaria.

Unnasch, the department chair, said much of Global Health’s research funding comes from external grants from the National Institutes of Health, primarily the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has come through with what he called “a substantial portfolio of funding”: a $4.5-million grant to Adams this year for developing new drugs and researching new genetic targets for malaria.

Kyle and Adams also have established collaborations with the Draper Laboratory to conduct research with artificial livers to study malaria in livers, which also is funded by the Gates Foundation, Unnasch said.

The combination of expertise and generous funding has helped put the department on the global cutting edge and in the thick of international connections that will help keep it there.

“The department is becoming quite well-known now as a research institution for malaria and other vector-borne diseases,” Unnasch said. “We have lots of good collaborations with people in Thailand at Mahidol University, and a lot of collaborations with people in Africa. There’s also quite a bit of contact between our department and people in the mosquito control field here in the state of Florida.”

Unnasch said those include regular work with the Florida Mosquito Control Association (of which Unnasch is on the board of directors), the Department of Health Laboratories, the Florida Department of Health, and various research projects with mosquito control in Hillsborough, Pasco, Manatee, Volusia and St. Johns counties, as well as with the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District in Monroe County.

For mosquito researchers, Unnasch said, the reason is obvious. For everyone else, it might be alarming.

“Florida’s the best place in the country if you want to do research on mosquito-transmitted diseases,” he said. “There are four arthropod-borne viruses, or arbovirus, infections that occur in the United States, and three out of the four are endemic to Florida. That’s why Florida spends $75-100 million a year on mosquito control. Only California spends more.”

Last month, the College of Public Health made headlines as Dr. Michael White, a professor in the College of Public Health’s Department of Global Health and the Morsani College of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Medicine, led a team of researchers that became the first to uncover part of the mysterious process by which malaria-related parasites spread at explosive and deadly rates inside humans and other animals.

As drug-resistant malaria threatens to become a major public health crisis, the findings could potentially lead to a powerful new treatment for malaria-caused illnesses that kill more than 600,000 people a year.

In a study published online March 3 in the high-impact journal PLOS Biology, the USF researchers and their colleagues at the University of Georgia discovered how these ancient parasites manage to replicate their chromosomes up to thousands of times before spinning off into daughter cells with perfect similitude – all the while avoiding cell death.

Malaria caused about 207 million cases and 627,000 deaths in 2012, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  About 3.2 billion people, or nearly half the world’s population, are at risk of malaria, according to the World Health Organization.

White said that this study, which he called the first for a USF Health laboratory in publishing original research in PLOS Biology, will help get more potential treatments in the pipeline.

“The more we understand their vulnerability,” he said of the parasites, “the better chance we can keep that pipeline full.”

With the collective efforts and expertise of Drs. Adams, Kyle, Unnasch and White, the USF College of Public Health will remain on the front lines of the fight against one of the world’s most daunting health threats.

Related stories:
USF-led study sheds light on how malaria parasites grow exponentially
New antimalarial drug with novel mechanism of action
Dr. Dennis Kyle receives NIH award to understand extreme drug resistance in malaria
Dr. John Adams leads workshop for Gates Foundation scientists conducting malaria research

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First published on July 13, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Founded in 1997 by a training grant supported by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Sunshine Education and Research Center at the USF College of Public Health stemmed from an industrial hygiene training program grant in the late 1980s.

“NIOSH has several charters,” explained Dr. Thomas Bernard, chair and professor in Environmental and Occupational Health and SERC (pronounced SIR-see) program director since 2008.  “One of them is to support and encourage the development of professionals in the field of occupational safety and health.  A mechanism for doing that is through training grants.”

After Bernard’s arrival in 1989, additional training program grants followed in occupational medicine and occupational health nursing.  Then the department began work on an occupational safety program.  Eight years later, the fledgling operation had grown enough to warrant centralization.

“In the mid-’90s,” Bernard said, “we decided that we would combine those training activities with a grant and ask for an education center.  The application required that it have training in at least three programs, and we had four: safety, industrial hygiene, medicine and nursing.  The application was accepted and funded under the leadership of Stuart M. Brooks and Yehia Hammad.”

Being headquartered at a university the size of USF naturally leads any interdisciplinary entity into an expansion cornucopia that Bernard is happy to enumerate, along with the USF colleges involved.

“Because they are multidiscipline programs, part of their value is the interdisciplinary training,” he said.  “We added, about seven years ago, occupational health psychology, so that’s now a funded program in Arts and Sciences.  We’ve expanded the safety program to include a degree out of engineering.  Obviously, we’re involved with the [Morsani] College of Medicine:  The clinical rotations and residency certificates come out of medicine, and then the academic training comes out of public health.

“With nursing,” he said, “we have three options.  One is a straight occupational health nursing degree, a second one is a dual degree in nursing and public health, and then we also have a third degree that’s strictly public health.”

Thomas Bernard, PhD

Another requirement under the grant from NIOSH, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a continuing education component,  which also has been added.  Additional expansion has stemmed from outreach activities, student recruitment and a pilot project in research training for doctoral students and junior faculty.

“We support these throughout the region,” Bernard qualified, “so they aren’t only for USF.  We have reached way beyond ourselves in terms of the arrangements that we have, but we engage the professional community more than the community at large.”

He added that the center is “very much engaged” in state and regional professional conferences, as well as in coordination with other ERCs in the state and the region.

“By and large, we have a very good national profile,” he said.  “There are just a couple of us that reach out globally, but those are more individual efforts.  The ERC is designed to serve primarily Florida, and in a larger sense, the Southeast region.  That’s our mission and our charter from NIOSH, not to go beyond that, but I think we have expertise in a number of areas that have national recognition.”

The highly technical nature of some of those areas probably help limit recognition to professional circles, but their significance would be difficult to deny. Respiratory protection from nanoparticles is one of them, but as Bernard pointed out, it’s not exactly a topic on most people’s minds.

“Few people are asking, ‘What happens when you breathe those in?’  Some of them have characteristics that are not unlike asbestos.  Others are easily transported across the air-blood barriers, so they move through the lungs into the blood and get transported elsewhere in the body.  So protecting individuals from nanoparticles is important,” he said.

And the list goes on.

“We have a major presence in the area of heat stress – how to evaluate heat stress, how to manage it, and especially, the effects of protective clothing.  We have fairly good recognition in Europe in the area of ergonomics,” he continued,  “and occupational health psychology clearly is one of our well-recognized programs.”

Workplace stress, safety climate and work-family balance are others, he said.

“And then,” he concluded with a nod that said he’d saved the best for last, “we turn out good students, and we’re recognized through the product of the quality of our students.”

SERC hosts a six-day Summer Institute for Occupational Health and Safety for students interested in exploring graduate studies.

Looking ahead is easy for Bernard, and he likes what he sees for his organization.

“I think that everything we do in public health, and everything we do within the SERC, is prevention – preventing people from being injured or having their health impaired,” he said.  “But I think our opportunity here at USF lies in translating research to practice and also expanding on the fact that a healthy workforce is healthy not only from controlling exposures to hazards in the workplace, but also from encouraging healthy activities outside the workplace.

“So, bringing these work and home lives together is an opportunity for us,” Bernard concluded, “and that’s where I see our future.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.

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First published on June 1, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Dr. Carol Bryant was on the ground floor of the USF College of Public Health’s social marketing program when the social marketing field was in its infancy.  She credits Dr. Stan Graven, chair of the Department of Community and Family Health at the time, for the idea of a social marketing conference.

“He asked me to start a conference,” Bryant said.  “He said, ‘I think the field of social marketing has enough popularity and potential.  We need a conference on it.’”

Dr. Carol Bryant

Bryant, now USF Distinguished Health Professor in Community and Family Health, believes Graven’s own conference had convinced him of the viability of conferences in general, and specifically their ability to facilitate broad networking among stakeholders in any given field.

“It’s had a really major impact on his field,” Bryant said of what has become known as the Gravens conference, “so he could see that a conference in social marketing might be able to do the same thing.  He realized that a national conference could bring people together, disseminate the ideas, make a significant contribution to the public health community, and probably be good for branding USF.”

Bryant assented despite never having done anything of the kind or having any real idea of how to go about it.

She enlisted the help of Judy Sommers, who was at that time in charge of organizing COPH events.  She traveled to the nation’s capital to consult with two people at CDC who were well known in social marketing to ask whom to invite to speak.  She even began to think that putting a conference together might not be so difficult, after all.

“We had a really dynamic lineup of all the really active social marketers in the United States,” she said.  “We paid them all for their travel and a pretty good honorarium to come.  We promoted the conference, and we had 71 people.”

So far, so good.  There was just one problem.

“Forty or 50 of them were speakers,” she recalled, “so we lost a bundle of money.”

Bryant concluded then that the inaugural social marketing conference would also be the last, but she had a believer in Graven.

“Stan had the vision and courage to say, ‘Nope, we’re going to do it again.  Only this time, we’re not going to lose money, so let’s see how we can cut back on the budget and do better promotion.’”

Flanked by a cadre of congratulatory colleagues, Bryant (center) received a special recognition they presented her at the 2014 Social Marketing Conference.

The result was a second conference that turned the tide.  Smaller honoraria and fewer speakers fixed the early financial faux pas, along with the discovery within a few years that the honoraria could be dropped altogether.  There was enough interest in social marketing and enough respect for the conference that speakers would pay their own way to take part, and holding it at a beachfront resort didn’t hurt.

“Stan was absolutely right,” Bryant said.  “The conference would take the approach of social marketing and disseminate it in a way we couldn’t just through publications and my flying around and talking about it.”

Still, she said, social marketing’s early days at USF were lean at best.

“The early days were real tough financially,” she said.  “I was pretty terrified, actually, about how to do something like this.  Fortunately, we had good people – first Judy Sommers and then Ginger Phillips, and now Bobbi Rose – to do all the conference planning, but I didn’t realize I could just sit back and let them do that.  In the first years, I felt like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I have to learn how to do this.’”

In those early years, the Social Marketing Conference, the first of its kind anywhere, was pretty much the extent of social marketing, said Bryant, who also co-directs the Florida Prevention Research Center, a CDC-funded entity that develops and evaluates a community-based approach to social marketing.

“We did not have what we came to call the training academy yet, or the field school,” she said.  “I think I was teaching an Introduction to Social Marketing course at that time.”

Persistence pays

Bryant’s long-time social marketing partner is also her long-time partner in the bigger sense, her husband, James Lindenberger, director and faculty administrator of the Social Marketing Group.  When social marketing was launched at COPH, Lindenberger was not yet at USF, but was nonetheless a major catalyst in the start of social marketing at the university.  Together, he and Bryant founded Best Start Social Marketing, a nonprofit marketing agency with an innately symbiotic relationship with social marketing at USF.  Lindenberger was its executive director for its first 15 years.  He also is founder and former publisher of Social Marketing Quarterly, the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to social marketing.

James Lindenberger

“Much of the work that we did, whether at our agency or at USF, was really done collaboratively between the two,” Lindenberger recalled.  While agreeing that the Social Marketing Conference drove at least the USF entry into the field, and probably more, he shared Bryant’s recollection of a shaky start.

“It was the first conference we’d ever put on,” he said.  “We didn’t know what we were doing, exactly, but we did have a lot of people who were instrumental in the field of social marketing, which was still a very young discipline.  We had a lot of what we thought were the important folks in the field do the presentations.”

One of those people, Lindenberger said, was Alan Andreasen, now a marketing professor at Georgetown University and executive director of the Social Marketing Institute.

“We asked him to be the closing speaker and add an exclamation point to the conference,” Lindenberger said.  “So, after a day-and-a-half of presentations, Alan got up and said, ‘Well, I want to tell you all that none of you know what social marketing is.  You’re completely wrong.’  He then proceeded to spend about 35 or 40 minutes telling us how much we had messed up.”

Lindenberger and Bryant at the recent COPH Alumni Awards

Bryant and Lindenberger laughed heartily as they recalled the incident, but said they were far from finding it amusing at the time.

“We were furious.  You left the room,” Lindenberger said, nodding to Bryant, who agreed.

“I got up,” she said, “and was just pacing in the hallway thinking, ‘I can’t take this.’”

“We were really furious,” Lindenberger continued, “because this is a guy who was really important, and a lot of people looked to him, and we wanted him to come in and say, ‘Bless you.  Thank you for doing this.  Nobody else has done it before.  We appreciate it.’  Instead, he got up and basically said, ‘You idiots.’

“After a few weeks of us getting through this, it dawned on us that he was right.  His concern was that we had had almost all communications presentations.  Almost everything we talked about was promotion.  He said, ‘That’s not what we’re about.  We aren’t advertisers, we’re marketers, and marketers do a complete and holistic look at solving problems and apply those different variables to the solutions.’”

What resulted, Lindenberger said, was a dramatic redesign of the conference for the following year.

Holding a conference at a seaside resort is a good thing, as the faces of Social Marketing Conference attendees show.

“It’s been interesting,” Bryant noted.  “That mistake was made by almost everyone we invited.  They showed off all their promotional materials and were very proud to do so, and we still have trouble with trying to make sure people don’t do that, and that our audience understands that it isn’t just advertising.

“It’s very humbling that people can sit there for two days having us tell them that maybe 20 times and still try to hire us to do TV ads.  I think it’s because most people think marketing is advertising.  It’s a hard misunderstanding to correct.”

In fact, both said the term “social marketing” has long been problematic.  Technology, it might seem, is doing all it can to keep it that way.

“It’s interesting,” Bryant said.  “It’s changed from ‘Don’t call it that, because marketing is evil’ or ‘Don’t call it social marketing, because that’s social engineering.’  Now, it’s a different debate.”

“A lot of the debate,” Lindenberger said, “seems to be rooted in younger folks coming into the field who do want to be social marketers, but when they present themselves as social marketers to their peers, their bosses or their clients, those people misinterpret that to mean social media and social media marketing.  Their concern is that it’s diminishing their ability to have an impact and also diminishing their ability to have a successful career.”

“For many of us who are kind of the old guard on this,” he continued, “our belief is there’s just so much brand equity built into it.  There’s a huge array of publications and organizations and conferences that are built around social marketing.  We would have another 30 years of building the brand up.”

“But we already have lost a lot of brand equity,” Bryant countered.  “If you Google ‘social marketing,’ you’ll get social media, even social media marketing conferences.  It is a real problem.

“In the U.S. public health system, and certainly within anthropology, it was seen as advertising and manipulation,” added Bryant, an anthropologist by training.  “I had anthropology friends who just thought I had gone totally to the dark side, but public health had a real misunderstanding about it, too, until people like Marsha Walker in Texas got it right and funded a really successful program.  That program was so successful that soon, the other agencies were asking us to do projects for them.  So, as they saw it work in this country, people in public health went, ‘Wait a minute.  Whatever it’s called, this might work for us.”

“I think what happened here at USF is a very significant part of why the discipline grew as rapidly and as successfully as it did,” Lindenberger said.  “A national program that we did out of USF and Best Start was the national breastfeeding promotion campaign for the Department of Agriculture.  That became their national brand.  It’s been used in every state in the country, is still being used, and that really brought social marketing to the foreground in Washington in a way domestically that it had never been before.”

Throw me a line

That early show of strength by the program also was a very early sign of things to come for the field, “upstream” social marketing, an approach that wouldn’t have a name for many years.

“Downstream is basically going to the individual or small group to influence their behaviors to be more positive in a particular issue, health issue or whatever it may be,” Lindenberger explained.  “Upstream is trying to look at the environment, decision-makers and the other factors that actually create a situation in which people can make change more effectively and more usefully.”

“All these people are drowning in the river downstream,” Bryant offered by way of the prevailing example in the field.  “So, you throw them educational pamphlets on how to swim or pull them out one at a time.  But upstream says, ‘No, let’s find out where they’re coming from.  Is there a bridge that’s broken?  Is something giving way?  Let’s go up there and keep them getting into the river in the beginning, instead of one by one educating them on how to survive.’  It’s a powerful metaphor, and it is catching on.”

Lindenberger noted that early applications of upstream social marketing significantly predate the metaphor.  While the national breastfeeding campaign was being developed in 1989, he said, Bryant and a pair of colleagues went to Capitol Hill and lobbied Congress for funding.

Social marketing at work at the Social Marketing Conference

“It had never been done before,” Lindenberger said, “and after that lobbying effort, $8-million was set aside specifically for breastfeeding promotion and management to be dispersed throughout the country in the WIC program.  That was upstream.  The very first project we ever did was as upstream as it gets.”

Bryant credits Andreasen for helping to widely disseminate the metaphoric term – source unknown – that has become a directional imperative for social marketing over the past decade, as well as numerous others for driving it forward.

“Many speakers at our conference, Bill Smith and Gerard Hastings from Scotland, especially, brought that metaphor alive for us and nudged us to go more upstream,” Bryant said, “and then our critics like Larry Wallach were saying the same thing,” which was that the downstream approach was blaming the victims, chiding them for not knowing how to swim well enough to save themselves.

“All those forces came together at the same time, and public health had the same realization.  We said, ‘Wait a minute.  We’d be really stupid to keep going downstream.  Let’s come up with a model that takes social marketing upstream,’ so that’s what we’ve done for the last 10 years – develop the model and test it out, and now, we’re training people in it.

“I’m hoping it will really take off.  It is more difficult to get funding, but it is more sustainable, too.”

This year, social marketing at USF COPH added to its impressive list of accolades the nation’s first MPH with a social marketing concentration.  Last year, the program celebrated the revision and re-launch of its social marketing training web site in conjunction with the Florida Prevention Research Center.  There is excitement over the field’s burgeoning relationships with other disciplines, namely engineering (humanitarian engineers) and a long-standing but still growing symbiosis with anthropology.  There also is that strengthening upstream trend.

Which way do we go?

But with all its successes, expansion, diversification and partnering, social marketing nonetheless remains a relatively new field in a time when a digital communications explosion can threaten to turn almost anything into a shape-shifter.  While few would argue that 44 successful years likely points toward anything less than a positive future, identifying potential threats can hardly be seen as unwise.

So, just where is social marketing headed?  In arguably its adolescence, what will it look like fully grown?  Who better to ask than two people who have nurtured it from infancy?

“I see a lot of dangers ahead,” Bryant said, “the big one being the brand equity diminishing because of confusion with social media marketing, and I’m not sure where I stand on the argument.  But I’m at this point kind of leaning toward maybe we do change our name, or do a qualification to it, ‘social marketing for behavior change,’ or something like that to help clarify that we’re not social media.

“Like anything, it peaks and then it falls,” she said, “and I resisted doing an MPH in social marketing, because I was afraid it was just an approach and its popularity might wane, and people with that degree – other people wouldn’t even know what they did.  I think those are some dangers that are real, but there are now so many people active in the field around the world.  We have two list serves, two journals, two conferences, and we’re thousands strong instead of just a hundred, so I think those fears are probably not warranted.”

“I agree with that,” Lindenberger offered.  “They’re not warranted.  We differ over the name issue and social media marketing.  I’m fairly comfortable with the fact that people sometimes get confused, and we can help them learn more about it if we have the chance to engage them.  And I also don’t really care.  I think we and other social marketers continue to do what we do, and if we do it well, if we produce the product successfully and deliver something to their audiences that they really need and want that will help them accomplish their own missions, then we’re fine.”

After discussing the future they anticipate for social marketing, it was time to consider the one they’d like to see.

A student poster presentation at the conference

“Something I think will happen – we’re already seeing it – that I would like more of is social marketing moving out of public health,” Bryant said.  “I think our conference taught people in public health how to apply social marketing.  Only more recently have we attracted people from other fields and changed our name from Social Marketing in Public Health to just Social Marketing Conference.

“It since then has also taken off in environmental protection.  A man named Doug McKenzie Moore, who’s a good trainer and has a wonderful web site and a list serve, has really spread it around the world for people who are working in recycling and all kinds of things.  We’re working with Qatar now to do the same thing in transportation.  Some social marketers want to see it in finance helping people to manage their finances better.

“So, what I’m hoping happens is it really does move out of just public health applications, because it could work so well in other arenas.  Healthy People 2020 has a set of objectives related to social marketing, and they want to see, by 2020, more health departments using social marketing.  I’d like to see state health departments really use it.  And the other set of objectives in Healthy People 2020 is that all schools of public health will offer at least a course in social marketing.”

“I’d like to see it be a degree program in a lot of universities around the country,” Lindenberger said.  “I think that would be a way for this to really take off – that people see it as a legitimate credential that helps them get jobs and provides them with tools to be able to influence positive change.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.

The post Pioneers of social marketing discuss its founding and its future appeared first on College of Public Health News.

First published on October 20, 2014 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Like many entities directed at the greater public good, the USF College of Public Health’s Harrell Center was the product of a private philanthropist’s gift. James Harrell and his family wanted to do something to help eliminate family violence, and they acted on that desire. The result was a 1997 endowment that set the stage for what has become an international force.

“The intent of the Harrell family was to provide a center that would focus on family violence,” affirmed Dr. Martha Coulter, the center’s founding director, “but they were particularly interested in looking at the prevention of family violence, as well as research that would be directly applicable to prevention and intervention.

“So the mission of the Harrell Center, really, is to be an intermediary between research and practice, to do research that is focused on family violence intervention and prevention across the lifespan.

“The grant was an endowment, so the funding is very limited, because it’s just the interest on the endowment. Now, most of the income is from other grants and contracts,” Coulter said, “but what the Harrell endowment did was provide the base for doing that kind of research.”

Brick sponsored by the Harrell Center in remembrance of James Harrell after his death in 2007.

One of three faculty members at the center full-time, Coulter, whose doctorate is in maternal and child health, teaches three courses: Family and Community Violence, Child Maltreatment, and Child Health, in addition to coordinating the maternal and child health academic concentration at COPH.

“In the very beginning, there was only the grant and the establishment of the center conceptually,” she said. “Over the years, we’ve developed.”

That development recently necessitated alignment into three divisions.

“The specific divisions – the redesigning of the organizational chart – has really been something that I’ve done this year,” Coulter said. “Before that, over the years, we’ve just developed these different projects and all worked together, but it looked like now we were at a place where we really needed to have a little bit more separate organization and to develop some strategic goals and objectives in each of those content areas.”

The result is a children’s services division directed by Dr. Lianne Estefan, an intimate partner violence division directed by Coulter, and an elder mistreatment division directed by Dr. Carla Vandeweerd. Dr. Karen Liller recently joined the center as a regular collaborator focusing her attention on the overlap between child maltreatment and unintentional injury, Coulter said, and “usually about 10” graduate students round out her staff. A community advisory board is among the center’s numerous external extensions.

“The children’s section has been very involved in looking at issues regarding the prevention of violence in the community,” Coulter explained, “and the center has developed a virtual research institute with one of the community agencies, Champions for Children, which is a multi-program unit, so that we can do research that is truly collaborative. We’ve worked very consistently with them over the years.”

Graphic that Harrell Center graduate assistant Natasha Hojati created for the Center’s Facebook page.

Coulter said that much of what her intimate partner violence section does involves the courts, so much so that she has become a regular consultant for the courts and has undertaken the task of evaluating the effectiveness of their intervention programs for batterers. Developing and continually improving guidelines for batterer intervention and responses to the needs of victims have been major off-shoot projects.

Among the section’s more significant research findings is that female batterers are falling through the cracks. While the county’s intervention for male batterers has been “very effective,” Coulter said, it has largely failed to successfully intervene with female batterers, who comprise about 15 percent of all convicted batterers in Hillsborough County.

“The clinical providers of these programs,” she said, “have been saying for a long time that they didn’t think the state-mandated curriculum for men was really the right curriculum to use for women.”

Among many leaders and dignitaries who have visited the Harrell Center over the years was then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who attended an elder abuse conference sponsored by the Center in 2001. The attorney general is pictured above with students Seraphine Pitt (left) and Carol Williams, and below with Dr. Coulter.

The elder mistreatment division concentrates on elders with dementia and the kinds of violence against them, which is, Coulter said, “fairly common, unfortunately, from both spousal caretakers and children taking care of elderly parents. The dynamics of this are very different from other sorts of domestic violence and really have a lot to do with people not understanding how to help people who have dementia.”

Coulter said she considers a new project in the division to be particularly tantalizing and potentially groundbreaking.

Called the Senior Surfers Project, Coulter said it looks at the rapidly expanding but little-known phenomenon of women over 50 seeking relationships online and getting responses from people who wind up physically, emotionally or financially harming them.

All previous research on Internet connections leading to violent encounters has been on adolescents, she said, so Senior Surfers is another project aiming to keep potentially overlooked victims out of the cracks – in this case, the cracks that open at the nexus of society and technology.

Dr. Coulter chats with Judge Dennis Alvarez (left) and James Harrell at a 1997 function.

With so much involvement in the local community, including working closely with the Spring and, until its recent demise thanks to funding shortfalls, the Family Justice Center, the Harrell Center’s global impact might be surprising to some, but global involvement has proven beneficial on numerous fronts.

Dr. Pnina S. Klein, a clinical and developmental psychologist and professor of education at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, recently led a Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers workshop on campus to promote cognitive functioning and attachment by improving parent-caregiver interactions with infants and young children.

Attendees included community professionals, physicians and COPH students, faculty and staff.  Dr. Robert Nelson, a joint professor in COPH and the Morsani College of Medicine, sponsored attendance by a visiting group of physicians and clinicians from Ecuador.

“It’s been used all over the world,” Coulter said of MISC. “The outcomes internationally of this program have shown that it’s very effective in strengthening attachment and reducing child maltreatment, so we brought Dr. Klein here from Israel this year to do a training for community people and staff here, as well as faculty and students.”

Dr. Martha Coulter, Harrell Center founding director (right in both photos), in Ecuador in 2007.

Elsewhere on the international front, Coulter is working with the medical school in Panama to begin collecting information and developing guidelines for Panamanian health providers to improve their responses to intimate partner violence. She’s also working in Quito, Ecuador, to develop a program that will provide fundamental intervention services for indigenous populations.

Children in a remote Himalayan village in India read books sent to them by the Harrell Center.

Coulter went to India in 2012 with a group that collected data on maternal/child health and family violence among the 26 indigenous tribes in the Himalayas as a response to one tribal leader’s interest in addressing those issues. Progress has been slow, she said, because the tribes are not formally centralized in any way, and the terrain is difficult and isolating. The center recently collected books to send to children there. A librarian navigates dirt paths on a bicycle to deliver them.

Not surprisingly, Coulter’s five-year vision for the Harrell Center is about more expansion, mostly ideological, and lots of it.

“I would like to expand our depth in looking at female offenders and the way the courts respond to them,” she said.

“We’ve applied for some grants to look with a lot more depth at issues related to fathers. This is an area that has been somewhat neglected and needs a lot of attention. What are the ways that we can help fathers from the very beginning develop the kinds of skills that will be more nurturing and less likely to produce problems?

“As far as the center itself,” she said, “I think the area that we really need to expand the most is our capacity for doing community training and education and technical assistance.”

“I’d also like to see us focus on more primary intervention in a public health direction.   A lot of what we’ve done has been secondary response intervention, but I would like to see us working with primary situations – families, parent-child relationships.”

Coulter said an example of the center’s involvement in this area is its participation in the Hillsborough County Violence Prevention Collaborative, a plan for reducing violence throughout the county.

Community events also make Coulter’s expansion list. Recent ones have included fundraisers with artists and bands, and even a biker run.

“I would like to see us expand these community events, because they have been very helpful. The center doesn’t have much funding,” she said, “and the funding that we get is almost always research funding, so if we want to do things that are outside the research arena, we have to raise the money ourselves.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health. Photos courtesy of Dr. Martha Coulter, Eric Younghans, Dr. Robert Nelson, USF Health and the Harrell Center.

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First published on May 8, 2020 in observance of the COPH’s 35^th anniversary celebration.

The Sunshine Education and Research Center (Sunshine ERC) located in the USF College of Public Health is one of 18 National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) education and research centers across the nation that provides interdisciplinary training of occupational safety and health professionals.

The Sunshine ERC, which was founded in 1997, offers programs collaboratively with the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, and Arts and Sciences and focuses on evidence-based practice and research, continuing education and outreach.

“Over the years this continuing education program evolved into a vehicle to provide low cost opportunities for professional development,” said Dr. Thomas E. Bernard, USF College of Public Health professor and Sunshine ERC center director. “The scope of the center also increased with pilot project research training and more opportunities for interdisciplinary activities.”

According to Bernard, USF COPH’s Drs. Yehia Hammad, Stuart Brooks and Pete Rentos had a vision for starting a NIOSH-supported education and research center that would be the first new center in a decade.

“As funded, the Sunshine ERC was the umbrella for industrial hygiene, occupational medicine and occupational health nursing with a nascent continuing education program. We then added occupational safety and occupational health psychology (OHP)­­—the first ERC to have an OHP program,” he said.

Bernard and Dr. Candance Burns of the College of Nursing, assumed leadership of the Sunshine ERC in 2008.

According to Bernard, with growing support from NIOSH, the Sunshine ERC affiliated with the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), expanded interdisciplinary activities and enhanced outreach into underserved populations.

“This momentum carried us into the current funding cycle with the addition of UCF to support research training directed at the hospitality industry, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a new vision of occupational safety, and programs with UPR in disaster resilience for workers. Further, we now have a supported online program in health, safety and environment,” Bernard said.

The Sunshine ERC focuses on providing training that reflects the needs of key industries in Florida and emerging issues of the nation.

“Students in the Sunshine ERC receive solid training in their chosen field,” Bernard said. “The real value-added is further experience in interdisciplinary activities to better prepare them for the practice of occupational health, safety and wellness.”

Trainees spend time with peers from across disciplines in public health, nursing, and medicine at USF, psychology at USF and UCF, hospitality at UCF, and aviation at Embry-Riddle, according to Bernard.

“Each trainee is enrolled in a degree program within their institution,” Bernard said. “It is the interdisciplinary experience that takes them beyond their specific discipline.”

For example, Bernard explained, trainees are expected to attend one ERC-wide session that provides information of interest to all.

“This varies a little and includes responsible conduct of research, general principles of occupational health, safety and wellness, and team building exercises,” he said.

Trainees are also encouraged to attend national symposiums and also contribute and participate in research projects sponsored by the ERC and its faculty.

Zach Brandes-Powell, a second year occupational exposure science student in the COPH, said the Sunshine ERC has expanded his experience level as a student. 

“The mentoring and encouragement of the professors and members of the ERC have helped to push me to do things I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of with my current level of experience,” he said.  “For example, through the ERC’s support, I was able to co-present on the benefit of internships for occupational safety and health students and professionals at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition (AIHCE). With their encouragement, I also started to offer to tutor students taking industrial hygiene related courses. These opportunities have helped me to develop skills that will be beneficial to me in life and throughout my career in occupational safety and industrial hygiene.”

Brandes-Powell said going to AIHCE 2019 has been a highlight for him.

“We were able to meet students from ERCs around the country and interact with alumni of the program. The impact that the ERC has on its students was evident as the current students instantly found common ground with the alumni when talking about our courses and projects,” he said.

Miriam Escobar, also a second-year occupational exposure science student in the COPH, said the Sunshine ERC has helped her expand her networking abilities with professionals from other disciplines.  

“Now, I am part of a diversified professional network with a common goal to improve the safety and health of others in various occupational industries,” she said.

She said the highlight of her experience so far has been the ability to participate in the Puerto Rico Resiliency focus group research.

“I was able to travel to Puerto Rico and hear first hand how the hospitality community was not only affected by hurricane Maria but also come together and prevail,” Escobar said.

Currently, the Sunshine ERC is supporting four COVID-19 research projects through its program development fund, according to Bernard, three at USF and one at UCF.

Bernard said that while the Sunshine ERC focuses on students within the ERC disciplines, they have started to also engage students and faculty interested in disaster management.

“If students have an interest they should contact me or Ms. Kelly Freedman and we will see if there is an opportunity with current projects,” he said. “We would welcome and support expenses for some students outside the ERC to participate in interdisciplinary activities.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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Three USF College of Public Health (COPH) students presented research abstracts at the Delta-Omega-sponsored Student Poster Session at the annual American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Meeting and Expo held in Atlanta in November.

Delta Omega is a national honorary society for public health students with more than 20,000 members. Each year, 29 students are selected to present their research during the Delta Omega Student Poster Session at the APHA’s annual meeting. While students do not need to be members of Delta Omega to compete, they must attend schools and programs with active chapters and be approved by the respective chapter to compete.

Doctoral student Rafaella Stein Elger presented research titled “Examining the sources, utilization and needs of support among caregivers of children with special health care needs in Florida.”

“This study showed that the main barriers to accessing services and resources are geography, families’ eligibility and the type of insurance families have,” Stein Elger said. “Our study also showed that caregivers need more support, and many times they’re navigating health care and education systems that are not collaborating. I think this study gives us an overview of what it means to be a caregiver for a child with special health care needs in Florida.”

Isabella Abbondanza, a senior BSPH student, presented her research titled “Experiences of Spanish-speaking participants in the Positive Parenting & Partnership (P3) Program.”

“Understanding if there are cultural differences between parenting styles can lead to more culturally appropriate material offered to parents who want to learn better parenting techniques,” Abbondanza explained. “Parents can have a huge impact on a child’s health outcomes in adulthood, and if we are able to understand cultural differences within parenting, we can better prepare parents of all backgrounds.”

Paula Hernandez, the third COPH Delta Omega presenter, shared her research on parental attitudes toward HPV vaccinations for adolescents.

“There are still many negative stigmas and misconceptions around sexual health that can impact health care decision-making and one’s health in general,” Hernandez, an MPH student, said. “Additionally, reproductive health is an integral part of women’s health and well-being, which makes it important to work toward creating equitable and effective care for all individuals.”

In addition to receiving a $500 monetary award, all the students said one of the most rewarding things about presenting was engaging with session participants.

“I was able to work on my public speaking skills while also being given a great platform to advocate for the HPV vaccine,” Hernandez said.

“My favorite part of presenting was engaging in meaningful conversations with people who also found this research important,” Abbondanza added. “Some people were interested because the research was related to their career field, and some people were interested because they come from different cultural backgrounds and felt like they could relate to the topic. I loved that I was able to practice my networking skills because good networking skills are valuable in any career field.” 

Story by Donna Campisano for USF College of Public Health

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USF College of Public Health (COPH) alum Marie Denis-Luque, who was born and raised in Haiti, came to the U.S. with her family just before she turned 17, settling in Tallahassee, Fla., where she resides today.

“I learned English in high school and was the first in my family to even entertain the idea of going to a university,” she recalled. “It was because of a teacher in high school who wanted me to go to college. I didn’t know what college was, but she helped me to get into a university.”

Denis-Luque visited other campuses, but felt they weren’t her place. When she got to USF’s campus,  she fell in love with it. “USF felt like home.” she said. “I felt comfortable being in the company of other Haitian students.”

Initially inclined toward medical school, Denis-Luque soon discovered her true passion was public health. Her involvement in the Haitian Club Creole on USF’s campus and learning about public health from a fellow club member played a significant role in this shift.

Denis-Luque realized that public health was aligned with her aspirations and what she wanted to achieve in her life.

“I did not have a perfect GPA, but the COPH made room for me, and in return I was able to help others through the work I’ve ultimately been able to accomplish.”

Despite facing challenges, including the responsibility of caring for her sister and the need to work multiple jobs, Denis-Luque’s enthusiasm for public health never waned.

“When I found public health, it was exciting. I think some of my classmates thought I was a total nerd because every semester I was in awe of everything I learned. I took my first course, then I took another, then I applied to the college,” she said.

Denis-Luque credited her mentors and the welcoming nature of the college as invaluable in her educational and career path.

”When I see Dean Petersen, I still say, ‘Oh, that’s my dean.’ When I see Natalie Preston, director of the Office of Engagement and Constituent Relations, I say, ‘Those are my people.’ “

Denis-Luque’s journey wasn’t confined to the classroom. Her commitment to public health extended to her homeland, Haiti.

Her perspective on Haiti was transformed during a health education trip with USF. She was challenged by her mentor to view Haiti through the eyes of a public health official, prompting her to see her home country in a new light. She said this experience fundamentally changed the way she approached her work in Haiti, making her more attuned to public health hazards and necessary interventions.

“I viewed everything through that lens,” commented Denis-Luque. “As I got off the plane, I noticed several unworking planes on the runway, some rusted. Getting off the plane was borderline dangerous for those not strong enough. As we headed to our hotel from the airport, there was garbage on almost every street corner. Of course, watching the dangers of public transportation, people hanging from bus doors, and sitting on top of vehicles drove me crazy, too.”

Now Denis-Luque said she wants to be someone who helps challenge students’ thinking, just like her mentor challenged her to think through that lens.

Denis-Luque said it was during her visit to Haiti as a graduate student when she met a little girl with HIV that led her to become the founder of the nonprofit organization Caring for Haitian Orphans with AIDS .

“The little girl was living in the hospital courtyard with no one caring for or loving her,” she said.” I decided I could do something to express love for her. Though acting on this feeling to help this child was more significant than anything I had ever done, I had no idea what I was signing up for. Engaging in this work has been more fulfilling than anything I have ever done.”

She said the work of the organization has touched the lives of nearly 70 children, providing them with opportunities and support they might not have otherwise had.

“My nonprofit assumes the role of parents for these children,” Denis-Luque said. “We provide food and shelter, cover the cost of hospital care, recreation, and education, including vocational training. At this time, close to 50% of our staff were once our residents. Since unemployment is very high in Haiti (estimates ranging from 50-80%), locating employment for our young adults is unattainable. Once they get to a certain age, we make sure they receive the education needed to work for us for them to be able to sustain themselves. Then we hire the women to play the role of mothers to the children.”

“December will be 20 years since we started,” she said. “Many lives have been impacted. Children who would otherwise not be here. Women who are positive who work for us, whose life–God knows what it would be today–if it were not for being in the program.”

Denis-Luque graduated in 2005 from the COPH with a MSPH with a concentration in epidemiology and an MPH in community and family health.

Now Denis-Luque is working on her PhD from Florida State University Askew School of Public Administration and Policy. “I’m in the dissertation phase at the moment, and I am looking at how to improve non- governmental organizations that work in Haiti,” she said.

Looking ahead, Denis-Luque envisions staying in academia and said she is hopeful to eventually return to the COPH. “That would be a dream come true. A professor. I want to put it out into the universe,” she said.

In the future, Denis-Luque aspires to work on grant-funded projects and to involve students in her work. She said she believes in challenging students to step out of their comfort zone and discover their passions.

Fast Five

What did you dream of becoming when you were young?
Working as a medical doctor in a small hospital in a little province in France where I’d be the only doctor in town and everybody would come to me.

Where would we find you on the weekend?
Probably at Costco.

What’s the last book that you read?

“Just Another Emperor? The Myth and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism,” by Michael Edwards.

What superpower would you like to have?
Invisibility.

What’s your all-time favorite movie?
“Dirty Dancing.” I love Patrick Swayze.

Story by: Liz Bannon, USF College of Public Health

The post Finding a home away from home in public health appeared first on College of Public Health News.

USF College of Public Health (COPH) master’s students concentrating in either healthcare administration or health care organizations and management recently had the opportunity to participate in an interprofessional education (IPE) event held in conjunction with the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine (MCOM).

The session was organized in November by the MCOM SELECT MD Program to teach medical students about the business of medicine. The SELECT MD Program prepares students to become physician leaders who accelerate change in health care.

After listening to remarks about the business of health care from COPH professor Dr. Zachary Pruitt, who is also an alum of the college, and Dr. Mark G. Mosely, president of USF Tampa General Physicians, attendees broke into groups to analyze a case study of a fictitious medical group considering adopting a value-based payment model for health care services. The COPH students guided the medical students on how the payment structure would impact their medical specialties and why. The case study was published by Drs. Pruitt and Moseley in the Journal of Health Administration Education.

The group-based IPE event enabled the COPH students to demonstrate the value of the health administration profession while also learning how to build collaborative relationships with health care providers.

“These discussions are relevant to the healthcare field today, and conversations are being had about applying these [payment] models in various measures,” Kathryn Sherman, a second-year Master of Health Administration (MHA) student who attended the event, said. “This event will help advance both careers in that it allows each student the opportunity to learn the priorities, goals and objectives of each profession. It also helps limit the negative light that is shed on the administrative profession as the medical community learns just how important it is to have someone there who can explain the inner workings of the organization.”

Sherman said participating in the event gave her real-world experience she can take with her in her career.

“Having participated in this event both as a first- and second-year MHA student, I can honestly say I have evolved as a leader, speaker and educator on all things related to healthcare management,” she said. “I was able to better inform my group of the advantages and disadvantages of each model while allowing them the autonomy of choosing what they believed would work best for their specialty. I would absolutely recommend this event for anyone in either program who wants to see how a health care management degree can be utilized in a real-world simulation, as this is a very real topic that is currently being discussed in the community today.”

Dr. Victor Weeden, the USF MHA Program Director, also helped to facilitate group discussions.

According to Weeden, the IPE event provides valuable experience for health administration students seeking to become healthcare leaders. More importantly, he said, interprofessional collaborations help benefit not just the participants, but health care as a whole.

“Even though the management and medical students’ educational backgrounds and goals are so different, the IPE event helps them understand that, in reality, their aim is the same—to improve health care value for patients,” Weeden said.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Food insecurity affects up to 50% of college students, with African American and Hispanic/Latino students experiencing it 1.5 times more often than their non-Hispanic White and Asian counterparts. That puts them at greater risk for not just health problems, but also depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, stress and poorer academic performance.

Researchers from the USF College of Public Health (COPH) along with colleagues from USF’s College of Education, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, Department of Anthropology and other universities and organizations, studied food insecurity among racially and ethnically diverse college students and were surprised to find differences in the factors that limit their access to food.

Their research, “Multi-Level Determinants of Food Insecurity among Racially and Ethnically Diverse College Students,” was published in the journal Nutrients in September.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the predictors of food insecurity among a racially and ethnically diverse population of college students using a multi-dimensional model,” said Rashida Jones, PharmD, a COPH doctoral student concentrating in epidemiology and one of the coauthors of the study.

While the researchers expected to find the same predictors of food insecurity among all students of color, they instead discovered differences, particularly between non-Hispanic Black students and their Hispanic and non-Hispanic White peers. Pharm

For example, the single greatest predictor of food insecurity among non-Hispanic Black students was experiencing major discrimination (for instance, being fired from a job unfairly or being stopped by law enforcement unjustly).

“The mechanism through which discrimination impacts food insecurity is intricate and closely linked to social and economic disadvantages, which are established drivers of food insecurity,” Jones said.

Conversely, things such as savings, body mass index (BMI) and food intake were the biggest predictors of food insecurity among Hispanic and non-Hispanic White students.

“Students who employ multiple saving strategies or make many attempts to cut down on their food expenses might have higher BMIs because they are consuming less healthy, cost-effective foods,” Jones explained. “Additionally, these students are more likely to experience food insecurity, as they lack access to an adequate quantity or quality of food to meet their basic nutritional needs.”

Jones said that because discrimination was the sole predictor of food insecurity among non-Hispanic Black students, a qualitative follow-up study examining more precisely the types of discrimination these students face should be conducted.

“Our findings can be used to inform the development of multi-component interventions aimed at reducing disparities in food insecurity,” Jones noted.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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All five students in the USF College of Public Health (COPH) integrated MPH/dietetics internship program recently attended the Food and Nutrition Conference Expo (FNCE) in Denver in October.

The FNCE is hosted by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, a professional organization of nutrition and dietetics practitioners headed by Dr. Lauri Wright, director of nutrition programs at the COPH and a USF alum. It is the largest meeting of food and nutrition experts and registered dietitians in the world.

The USF COPH dietetic internship program integrates an MPH degree with a concentration in nutrition and dietetics with a supervised practice element designed to help students meet the standards of education and core competencies of registered dietitians.

This is the second time Maura Fowler, one of the five interns, has attended the FNCE.

“That first FNCE motivated me to pursue my MPH over an MS (which ultimately led me to USF) because I realized how passionate I was about advocacy in the role of a dietitian and how they are an essential part of the medical and community fields of practice,” Fowler said.

Fowler said she spent her time at the conference attending lectures and networking events and volunteering as a student liaison for the organization’s Renal Practice Group (renal dietitians are experts in nutrition and diet for people with kidney diseases).

“I loved attending FNCE, and I cannot wait to attend next year in Minnesota! This is a great learning opportunity for students,” Fowler said. “Colleges promote their internships, which was very important to me last year. They also have student learning programs and offer help with resumes. Hearing the current research is also very important—it has helped me develop a deeper passion for the things I learned about in my curriculum.”

Brianna Paul, another of the interns, said she appreciated the networking opportunities the conference provided as well as the lectures shedding light on the latest advances in nutrition.

“It was eye-opening to listen to all the latest research from around the world,” she said. “I attended many different lectures on topics I was interested in, including a lecture regarding the effects of ultra-processed foods in our diets and how the research has been changing over the past few years.”

Paul said one of the highlights for her was exploring the different booths and the products they offered.

“I enjoyed the expo the most because it was interactive and many of the booths had fun little activities such as trivia, free samples, contests to win a big prize, photo ops and networking booths with some of the social media influencer dietitians,” she noted.

Paul said one of the biggest things she took away from this year’s FNCE was inspiration.

“Overall, I loved the FNCE and I’m looking forward to attending next year’s conference,” she commented. “As a soon-to-be registered dietitian, this conference exposed me to different nutrition fields. Everyone had a passion for their work, which has inspired me to want to make a difference in future years advocating for this profession.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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