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

The post Fighting malaria a major research focus at the USF College of Public Health appeared first on College of Public Health News.

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

It was the evening of May 2.  There was a slight chill in the air as fans gathered in Traditions Hall anxiously awaiting the event of the century.

No, not the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao fight.  The other event ….

The USF College of Public Health’s Inaugural Alumni Awards Ceremony.

More than 180 supporters of the college traveled from as far as Indonesia to celebrate 28 Bulls with significant impact in public health.  From research to practice to policy to teaching, the awardees have done it all and are doing it exceedingly well.

COPH 2015 alumni awardees

The celebration began with a cocktail reception at 6 p.m., followed by dinner and the ceremony.  The dynamic Dr. Joette Giovinco served as mistress of ceremony for the evening.  She’s the first physician to complete the COPH’s occupational medicine residency program, but is probably best known as Dr. Joe, the medical reporter for Fox News in Tampa.

Dr. Joe shared stories and relics from her days as a graduate student in 1988.  She even dusted off some vintage overhead sheets and her carousel replete with slides!

“We were so fortunate 30 years ago that visionary leaders like Sam Bell and Dr. Robert Hamlin believed that Florida deserved to have a school of public health and created the foundation for the first one in the state at the University of South Florida,” said Dr. Donna J. Petersen, COPH dean and senior associate vice president of USF Health.

“It is only fitting on the occasion of our 30^th anniversary that we recognize some of those alumni who, through their commitment to their profession, improve the health of communities around the world and reflect back so positively on our College of Public Health.”

Nominations were accepted through January.  A selection committee comprised of retired and current faculty, staff, alumni, students and community partners in public health had the arduous task of reviewing dozens of nomination packets.

Each alumni awardee received a stunning silver bull engraved with his or her name.

After dinner, Peggy Defay shared her experiences as a public health graduate student.

“As a first generation immigrant from Haiti,” she said, “higher education in any capacity is a priority for me.”

“I discovered my passion for public health through my experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Namibia.  Through this experience, I gained a better understanding of health issues at the grassroots level.  Being a volunteer in the Peace Corps helped me understand some of my weaknesses and the need to continue training in this field.”

“The past seven years have taken me to various corners of the world where I have been privileged to meet, live and be empowered by many people.  The last two years at the University of South Florida are no exception to that.  And, I can now say that I have once again lived and worked among amazing people!”

Then, it was time for the main event—presentation of the COPH Class of 2015 alumni awardees.  Each alumni award recipient was recognized during the ceremony, and all are listed here.  A few of their stories are included for those who weren’t present to hear them all on May 2.

Tabia Henry Akintobi, PhD, MPH
Director, Prevention Research Center
Director, Evaluation and Institutional Assessment
Associate Professor, Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine
Associate Dean, Community Health
Morehouse School of Medicine
Atlanta, Ga.

“As a graduate student, I had the opportunity not just to learn how to conduct research, but how to lead it in partnership with experts who cared,” Dr. Tabia Akintobi said.  “They recognized the importance of students as significant contributors to their research as reflected in the number of co-authored papers and abstracts I had under my belt prior to graduation.”

“Among the wonderful colleagues, mentors and leaders I met during my tenure was the love of my life, professional confidante and partner in good Dr. Adebayo Akindele Akintobi [former student and husband].”

Abdel A. Alli, PhD, MPH
Assistant Professor
Department of Physiology
Emory University School of Medicine
Atlanta, Ga.

Philip T. Amuso, PhD, MS
Consultant
Clinical Laboratory Medicine and Public Health Preparedness

Retired Director
Bureau of Laboratories
Florida Department of Health
Tampa, Fla.

Roy W. Beck, MD, PhD
Executive Director
Jaeb Center for Health Research
Tampa, Fla.

Sherri Berger, MSPH
Chief Operating Officer
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Ga.

“My undergraduate degree was in political science, and I didn’t know exactly what to do with it after graduation,” Sherri Berger said.

Sherri Berger and son Jacob.

“Listening to my mother’s advice to ‘get more education,’ I did what other college kids do, and I followed my boyfriend to Tampa, where he had a job offer.  I was hoping to get a master’s degree in hospital administration.  However, in my first semester at the COPH, I fell in love with epidemiology.”

Arlene Calvo, PhD, MPH
Research Assistant Professor
Depts. of Community and Family Health & Global Health
USF College of Public Health
City of Knowledge, Panama

James R. Chastain, Jr., PhD, PE, MPH
President
Chastain-Skillman, Inc.
Tampa, Fla.

“Having an undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, I found public health a perfect complement to that training,” Dr. James Chastain said.  “While engineering is much more design and nuts-and-bolts execution-oriented, public health was more about the personal impacts and generally a systems-oriented and advocacy approach.  There certainly was a great overlap, but even the way that I had to study was different.  Public health provided fresh perspectives to design problems, and I enjoyed expanding my horizons with my studies.  In a word, public health tended to address the “why” questions, and engineering focused on the “how” questions.  I’ve found that very helpful in my practice.”

The Chastain Family celebrated James accomplishments. James is pictured far left.

“The COPH also was quite progressive at the time in terms of scheduling courses that allowed working professionals to take the courses while working at the same time.”

Chastain managed a company and family with three children while earning his degree.

“The time pressures were intense,” he said, “and would not have been possible without a very understanding and supportive wife.”

Stephen R. Cole, PhD, MPH
Professor of Epidemiology
Gillings School of Global Public Health
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, N.C.

Martha L. Daviglus, MD, PhD
Associate Vice Chancellor for Research
Professor of Medicine
Director of the Institute for Minority Health Research
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, Ill.

Hanifa M. Denny, PhD, MPH, BSPH
Dean
College of Public Health
Diponegoro University
Semarang, Indonesia

“One day, we were brought to new [medical] student orientation session.  After touring a hospital ward, I was not able to eat or sleep for some days due to seeing a diabetic patient with a severe wound,” Dr. Hanifa Denny recalled.

“I asked one professor if there is a program within the college of medicine without a requirement to visit patients in a hospital ward.  I also said that I wanted to help people to live in a healthy lifestyle without necessarily suffering from sickness.  I wanted to make people healthy and able to work without a fear of being sick.  The professor explained public health and how the science would meet my expectation.  After my second year of college, I fell in love with occupational and environmental health.”

Scott Dotson, PhD, MSC, CIH
Lead Health Scientist – Senior Team Coordinator
Education and Information Division
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Cincinnati, Ohio

Anthony Escobio, MPH, FHFMA, CHAM
Vice President
Patient Financial Services
Tampa General Hospital
Tampa, Fla.

“I wanted to be an MD.  I took a few of the pre-med “weed out” courses as an undergraduate and did not do very well,” Anthony Escobio recalled. “I had an entry-level job at St. Joseph’s Hospital in 1990, and this is where I learned that there were many more opportunities in health care that did not involve practicing medicine.”

The Escobios couldn’t be more proud of Anthony (back row, second from right).

One of the more “interesting” events from Escobio’s COPH days involves a class with Dr. Alan Sear.

“I left a management position at University Community Hospital to be a senior analyst at Tampa General Hospital,” Escobio said.  “TGH was having a host of financial challenges at the time, and the leadership was being ridiculed in the press on a weekly basis.  One of my professors, Alan Sear, spent an entire lecture discussing the poor decisions that leadership at TGH was making.  I sat slouched in my chair knowing that I had just taken a job to be an analyst for these very leaders.  All I could think to myself was ‘what have I done?’  Little did I know that I would be at the center of one of the biggest hospital turnarounds in the country for this period of time.”

Ligia María Cruz Espinoza, MD, PhD, MPH
Associate Research Scientist
International Vaccine Institute
Leon, Nicaragua

Kathryn J. Gillette, MHA, FACHE
Market President and Chief Operating Officer
Bayfront Health-St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg, Fla.

Jan J. Gorrie, JD, MPH
Managing Partner
Ballard Partners
Tampa, Fla.

Richard T. Hartman, PhD, MS, CSP, CIH
Chief Health Strategist
PSI Inc.
Alexandria, Va.

Xiomara Zulay Hewitt, MPH
Director
Infection Prevention and Control
Adventist Health System
Altamonte Springs, Fla.

Winifred M. Holland, MPH, MA, LMHC
Administrator-Health Officer
Florida Department of Health in Clay County
Green Cove Springs, Fla.

Carol Ann Jenkins, MPH, FACHE
Director, Accreditation and Survey Readiness
All Children’s Hospital Inc.
St. Petersburg, Fla.

Claudia X. Aguado Loi, PhD, MPH, CHES
Research Assistant Professor
Department of Community and Family Health
USF College of Public Health
Tampa, Fla.

Christine McGuire-Wolfe, PhD, MPH, CPH
Firefighter/Paramedic and Infection Control Officer
Pasco County Fire Rescue

Adjunct Faculty
Department of Global Health
USF College of Public Health
Tampa, Fla.

Maj. (Dr.) James McKnight
Force Health Protection Officer
U.S. Central Command
Serving in Jordan

Maj. James McKnight’s children accepted his award since he is serving in Jordan.

Rachel Nuzum, MPH
Vice President
Federal and State Health Policy
The Commonwealth Fund
Washington, D.C.

Claudine M. Samanic, PhD, MSPH
Commander
U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Environmental Health Scientist
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Research Region 5
Division of Community Health Investigations
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Chicago, Ill.

“Since 1999, when I graduated, I’ve been impressed with the expansion and creation of new institutes and centers, the college’s increasing role in global health, and announcements of various faculty accomplishments and impact,” said Dr. Claudine Samanic.  “It was humbling to be in the room with so many accomplished fellow COPH alumni.”

Angelia Sanders, MPH
Associate Director
Trachoma Control Program
The Carter Center
Atlanta, Ga.

Natalia Vargas, MPH
Public Health Analyst
Health Resources and Services Administration
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Rockville, Md.

Angelica C. Williams, MPH
Disease Intervention Specialist
Florida Department of Health in Broward County
Pembroke Pines, Fla.

Lauren B. Zapata, PhD, MSPH
Commander
U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps

Senior Research Scientist
Division of Reproductive Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, Ga.

COPH Deans, from left: Drs. Peter Levin, Donna Petersen (current) and Charles Mahan.

Without question, the night was all about the alumni awardees, but there were a few other show-stoppers in the room. Namely, COPH Deans Drs. Peter Levin, Donna Petersen, and Charles Mahan (above) and COPH alumnus and USF Board Trustee Scott Hopes (below left).

USF Trustee Scott Hopes (on left) with Lesley and Rick Bateman.  Lesley was the college’s first public affairs and development officer.

Founded in July 1984, the USF College of Public Health is wrapping up a yearlong celebration of educating and training public health professionals.  Some of the 30^th anniversary year highlights include

• regional events in Orlando, New Orleans, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
• the Dean’s Lecture Series featuring alumni like Drs. Richard Hartman, Charlan Kroelinger and Hana Osman.
• community building activities like a tailgate and USF football game, fall networking social during homecoming, Super Bowl party and spring BBQ.
• Team #USFCOPHRocks with more than 50 public health Bulls participating in the Gasparilla Distance Classic.
• raising almost $70,000 in new commitments to student scholarships in the college.

“We are proud of the work we have done building on a solid foundation and creating an outstanding school of public health—one that just recently jumped in national rankings from 21 to 16,” Petersen said.  “In addition to our great champions and the consistent high performance of our faculty and staff, the reputation we have earned is due in no small measure to the incredible contributions of our alumni.”

The alumni awards ceremony was made possible with support from the COPH, as well as corporate sponsors USF Health and Bayfront Health-St. Petersburg, and individual sponsors Drs. Jay Wolfson and Phillip and Jean Amuso.

It takes a village to raise a family AND host an amazing alumni awards ceremony.  Salute!

Alumni awardee Dr. Abdel A. Alli (second from right) enjoyed the festivities with his family, as well as nominator and faculty mentor Dr. Donna Haiduven (center) and her husband, Michael Gronquist (far right).

Alumni awardee Dr. Arlene Calvo shares a special moment with fellow alumnus Dr. Clement Gwede.

Go, Bulls!

“I applaud the College of Public Health for recognizing alumni who not only have tremendous accomplishments, but who have made a difference in the lives of so many,” said Bill McCausland, executive director of the USF Alumni Association.

Story by Natalie D. Preston, College of Public Health.  Photos by Ashley Grant and Humberto Lopez Castillo.

Related media:
Alumni Awards photo gallery on Facebook

The post Our past is our future: College recognizes distinguished alumni appeared first on College of Public Health News.

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

Jodi Ray is a bundle of energy when she talks about the project that has become her life’s work, Florida Covering Kids and Families, which is a part of the Lawton and Rhea Chiles Center for Healthy Mothers and Babies.

The founding program director was Mary Figg, a state representative for Hillsborough County.  After a year or two of preliminary maneuvers, the initiative began formally in 1999.  Figg had enlisted Ray, who has a master’s degree in mass communications, the year before to be program coordinator and handle all things media, including assisting her with crafting the successful request for that all-important initial grant.

“My job was to manage a multimedia campaign.  I’ve done a lot of mass communications on this job,” she said.  “In fact, I’d say I do more of that than anything else.”

The project was funded its first seven years by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to do outreach enrollment of children eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid.  During that time, a staff of two more than doubled to five by 2006, then, when that funding ended, was cut all too literally in half, reduced to a project director, a coordinator and a half-time assistant: essentially, a staff of 2-1/2.  Fortunately, they had a dedicated network behind them.

Jodi Ray

“We have a state coalition,” Ray said, “a large collaboration of partners from around the state and local coalitions in almost every community in the state.  We came together and said, ‘Our mission is to get uninsured into coverage.’”

The coalition was initially mandated by the RWJF grant, Ray said.  It remains active today and includes some of its original members.  No question, it answered a critical need in 2006, when half the staff was asked to keep up with an exponential work-load increase created three years earlier.

Crying on the phone

“In 2003,” she explained, “the state ended all outreach efforts for CHIP.  So they literally boxed everything up and sent it to me.  They gave me their contact lists and all of their partnerships and said, ‘Could you please take this on?’  Now granted, there were no financial resources with that at the time.”

“The state also closed enrollment for CHIP in Florida for 18 months.  As a result of that, we lost over 300,000 kids in the Florida KidCare program.  In one month alone, we lost 40,000 kids.

“There was no statewide outreach initiative except us,” she said, “me and my other 1-1/2 people.  The number of calls I got was unbelievable.  People were calling and crying.  It was terrible.”

That situation started Ray on an 18-month crusade, talking to newspaper editorial boards, legislators, community leaders, almost anyone who would listen.

Committed to moving forward, she and the coalition began implementing a plan that was as innovative as it was aggressive:  Sign up as many kids as possible to a waiting list.  When the list reached 120,000, the New York Times took notice and gave the state a boatload of blistering press.  Not long after, the governor issued an executive order to enroll all the kids on the list, and open enrollment returned permanently four months later.

In 2007, a new governor, Charlie Crist, declared the uninsured rate among children appalling.  He brought the state agencies together, Ray said, and told them to figure out how to make it better, and fast.

“One of the things they did was decide to give us some resources,” Ray said.

A state contract and marketing materials soon followed, along with help from state agency staffs on routine but time-consuming matters like mailing.  Growth was back, and with it, ramped-up after-school activities and more engagement with local businesses.

The results since have ranged from impressive to remarkable.  Since the first open enrollment period began on Oct. 1, 2013, the project has gained national media coverage for enrolling about 2.5 million previously uninsured Floridians, twice the expectation.

“We expanded to focus on all the newly eligible uninsured to help them get into whatever coverage options are available,” Ray said, “whether under the Affordable Care Act in the marketplace or Medicaid or CHIP.  One way or another, we were going to help people who didn’t have coverage get health insurance so they could get access to health care services.

“Health care services are important, and having preventive care, all those things.  We talk about all those things being necessary, but you’re not getting in the door unless you have health insurance.  So that’s what we focus on: the first step, getting people in the door.”

That may be the focus, but there’s plenty more to do.

“We also do one-on-one application,” she said.  “We have consumers that actually sit down with us and do enrollment.  We do everything that involves connecting people to health coverage.

“We even do some health literacy.  How do you use health insurance?  How do you make an appointment to see a doctor?  For many of the uninsured, these are not obvious.”

“We work with all the agencies on both the state and federal levels that are involved in implementing health coverage, and we get out there and shake the bushes.”

Media and more

As much effort as is spent on finding the uninsured, many do find FCKF first, Ray said.

“We get cold calls for everything,” she said.  “I used to wonder sometimes how people find us, but I don’t wonder that anymore.  All you have to do is help somebody.  Then that person gives your number to somebody else.  We get a lot of calls by word of mouth.  We helped someone at some point, and even years later, we get a call from that person’s family member or friend who needs help.”

“The things that consumers come in here and tell you are unbelievable, sometimes heartbreaking.  That’s the other thing that’s really tough,” she said.  “I’ve gotten calls that have made me literally get up and walk around the building a few times because the stories are terrible: the family living in a car; the kid who’s got some kind of horrible heart condition; the mother who had CHIP coverage, but something went wrong with her renewal, it got dropped, it’s Christmastime and she has no money because the asthma medication she had to pick up for her son cost $400.”

While grants provide the funding, the University of South Florida and College of Public Health make it work, Ray said.

“Our work has been very well supported by both the College of Public Health and the University.  I say this out loud every day:  I don’t think anybody doing this work could be in a better place.  I don’t think there’s any way Dr. Petersen could support our work any more than she does.  We get so much support from one end of this university to the other, and we worked with everybody through open enrollment.”

Student Health Services, the libraries, the Morsani College of Medicine and the Marshall Center were regular haunts, as were the St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses.

From the beginning, Ray, who became director upon Figg’s retirement in 2003, has been the media go-to person from the beginning, and that responsibility has grown as exponentially as the project itself.

“We do four press conferences a year.  I spend a ridiculous amount of time talking to reporters.  Just in the first open enrollment period alone, I probably did 80 or 90 interviews with reporters from one end of the country to the other.”

The result was major articles in The New Yorker, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, to name a few, as well as pieces widely disseminated by the Associated Press and Reuters, as well as personal visits from two national health secretaries.

Ray on Capitol Hill in a nationally televised discussion.

“During the first open enrollment period, we had the second-largest grant in the country,” Ray said.  “That, in itself, drew attention, and [U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius] came here, herself, and awarded the grant.  She came to the college, and that’s how I found out we’d gotten the grant.”

It’s little wonder, then, that what began with two people 17 years ago keeps a dozen in the USF office busy with training, policy work, education, outreach, grant-writing, communications, etc.  It’s an office full of multi-taskers, Ray said.

“We all do all of it,” she said.

Given the complexities of health insurance laws and regulations, not to mention a new set of rules for navigators, just keeping up is a task unto itself.

“We do have to make it a point to stay informed.  We’re constantly on webinars and trainings, reading policies and reading new rules.  We have our hands in a lot of different elements of public health, just because we have to.”

The toughest part of the job, she said, is not being able to help everyone.

“We still have a gap of folks who are not going to qualify for coverage they can afford because the state has not expanded Medicaid coverage,” she said.  “I’d like to see us be able to enroll everyone who has no access to health coverage.  I’d like to see that in less than five years, quite frankly.  I would hate for that to be a five-year goal.”

Ray makes it obvious that what she and her colleagues do at Florida Covering Kids and Families is what keeps her pumped with energy.

“It’s all very exciting,” she said.  “We’re right there at the front end of this, and that, in and of itself, is exhilarating.  I feel good about what we’ve been able to accomplish, so it’s all been worth the time and effort – and the stress and the exhaustion – because it’s paid off.  We’re actually having an impact, and people see it.”

Every flight needs a navigator

The federal navigator initiative aimed at getting people into the new health insurance marketplace has been a major focus of their work the past two years, as well as a major hallmark of their success.

“The navigators are tied specifically to the federal marketplace.” Ray explained, “Some states are not participating in the federal marketplace, but Florida happens to be one of those states that is.”

The federal program provides outreach enrollment funds.  The first funding opportunities began in 2013, Ray said, and her office applied for USF to get an award that would cover the state.  She and her team did all the grant writing.

“We had already been doing this work on the ground across the state to enroll kids in CHIP and Medicaid,” Ray said, “and many of the partners around the state had come to a consensus that it made perfect sense for us to be the applicant for this grant and take the lead.  So, what we did was look at the model that was already working and find a way to expand on that.”

The result was a $4.2-million award in 2013 to cover 64 of the state’s 67 counties, the exceptions being Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe, which submitted their own applications separately.

“The second year,” Ray said, “we went back to those partners again and asked them if they would like to join us for the 2014 application.  They said yes the second time around, so the second time around, we covered all 67 counties in Florida.”

The second award was worth $5.3-million.  Ray’s group had secured million-dollar grants for their Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollments, but those, which  had been their largest to date, are easily dwarfed by the Navigator grants.

Most of the funds are vested in the people who get the job done, Ray said.

“A lot of people.  I’m a big believer that priority number one should be the human resource.  The folks on the ground.  The folks who are out there doing the education, the communication, the one-on-one application assistants, the people who know the processes.  We know from our history of doing this and tons of research that these are the folks who keep people from getting lost along the way through the process.”

In one regard, Ray said, the Navigator’s work has only begun with the enrollment stage.

“They help people navigate the enrollment process and get to the point where they can be enrolled and covered, and they’re also key to helping people appropriately use health insurance,” she said.  “We want folks not just to get in, but we want them to keep their coverage and to use their coverage properly.

“When you’re connecting people to health care coverage for the first time, these are not innately understood concepts.  Insurance is actually a pretty complicated idea, and if you’ve never used it, you really can get overwhelmed.  If you have it and you’re not using it, then the tendency to understand its value can be diminished.  The Navigators and the Florida KidCare application assisters on the ground are essential for that piece of it.  It’s not just about filling out the forms.”

The numbers tell just how busy those people on the ground have been.

“The first year, the projected enrollment for the federal health insurance marketplaces in Florida was around 450,000, give or take,” Ray said.  “We ended up enrolling – with all partners across the state, not just the USF partners – almost a million.  We doubled the projections, basically.

“The second year, the last number I saw was about 1.6 million, but that didn’t include the last month, the limited special enrollment period for people who got hit with the tax penalties.”

As impressive as those figures are, their national rank may be more so, especially given California’s stand as by far the most populous state of the union.

“The first year, every month, we came in second in the country to California,” Ray said.  “This year, our enrollment here in Florida was higher than enrollment in any other state in the country.  It’s a pretty successful initiative in Florida.”

That seems understated, especially considering that it was the work of about 90 Navigators the first enrollment period and around 150 the second round.  Ray was quick to note, however, that Navigators weren’t the only people involved.

“There are more resources that go into managing this than just the enrollment folks,” she said.  “We have IT people involved, we have human resource people involved, we have grant administrators involved.  It’s an undertaking, for sure.  It’s all a team effort.”

A niche in the state’s public health

The stakes, along with the numbers, will be higher for the third round, since the funding will be for three years.  Ray is undaunted by the change and, in fact, favors it.  For one thing, it will provide greater continuity in enrollment services, she said.

“We won’t have the start-up delays that come with a grant ending,” she explained, “and then waiting for another grant to come in.”

Given the early success but also knowing the nature of the funding world, Ray is cautiously optimistic about future Navigator grants.

“We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” she said.  “I feel like we’ve done a good job.  I think our outcomes have been really high.  Our partners at the federal level seem very pleased with the work that we’re doing.

“Florida certainly has been a shining star all the way through this.  Not because I was optimistic, but because I believed we were doing the right thing and that we knew what we were doing, I’m not surprised.  Because we didn’t go into this making up a plan of action.  We went into it with a sense of how it can be done, what the best practices were.  We had learned our lessons along the way.  We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel to do this.  All our collaborative partners made a big difference, too.

“I feel pretty good going into years three through five.  It’s going to be harder going into these years, because we’ve enrolled so many of the low-hanging fruit, so we really have to hone in on who we’re missing and whatever we need to do to make sure we’re not leaving people behind.

“This is our niche for the state of Florida in public health.  Whether it’s obesity or diabetes or getting cancer screenings, it’s very difficult for people to do anything about those things we talk about in public health if they don’t have health insurance.  So, I think we’re doing something valuable in contributing that first step to addressing some of these important public health issues that are so important.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.  Graphics courtesy of Florida Covering Kids and Families, CSPAN and Jodi Ray.

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University of South Florida Distinguished University Professor Russell S. Kirby, serves on the symposium planning committee. He notes, “This is our fifth national conference. The symposium program will be developed, in large part, from abstracts submitted by the community through this call.”

The Committee welcomes the submission of individual papers, complete sessions and panel discussions on a variety of GIS-related topics. Specifically, the committee seeks abstracts related to the following topics:

• Connecting health with spatial relationships (and data) – thinking about health in a more spatial format
• Tools for policy-makers, planners, researchers.
• Role of GIS in communicating health information/issues
• Health impact assessments
• Metrics/measuring health outcomes through GIS
• Creating synergy between the public health realm and urban and regional entities carrying out planning, research and policy.
• Focused policy session – cross-sector session addressing the Surgeon General’s National Prevention Strategy “Health in All Policies” approach
• Access to healthcare / health facilities and services
• Agriculture and food systems (access to healthy foods, food safety)
• Active living, recreation, and physical activity from transportation; obesity strategies and interventions
• Health equity (include income considerations, minority groups, aging, persons with disabilities, etc.)
• Urban ecology/urban health – natural and human systems (social ecology; humans and environment)
• Climate change/resiliency – effects on natural and human health/systems
• Emergency preparedness and response
• Health and hazards
• Crime, violence, personal safety/health
• Injuries, disabilities, risk
• Built environment – land use, transportation, resource management systems, Complete Streets, infrastructure, “Healthy Communities” (Applying GIS to Build a Healthy Community); also livability; active communities (transportation and recreation)
• Epidemiology; disease vectors; spread of infectious diseases – emerging technologies and health issues (Ebola response, Zika virus, PAHO)
• Exposures (air quality, water quality, lead, etc.)
• Chronic diseases and the environment, including cancers, diabetes and obesity
• Mobile field data collection mobile field data collection (examples: homeless point in time counts, food safety/restaurant inspections, facility inspections that includes things like hospitals, nursing homes, foster care sites, etc.)
• Community mapping; crowd-sourcing health-related data
• Data privacy, confidentiality
• Other related topics

Additional details about the symposium and submission process can be found at http://www.urisa.org/URISAHealth. Specific questions may be directed to Dr. Russell S. Kirby at rkirby@health.usf.edu.

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This is the case for USF’s Fast 56 nominees for 2016.  Sponsored by the USF Alumni Association, the program recognizes the 56 fastest-growing businesses owned or operated by USF alumni.

Last year’s nominees included College of Public Health alumna Catherine Burney, MPH. She’s president of Scar Heal Inc., an advanced skin therapy company based in Largo.

From left: Dr. Judy Genshaft, USF system president, Catherine Burney and Monty Weigel, chair of the USF Alumni Board of Directors.

The nomination criteria include:

• Business must have been in operation for a minimum of 36 months

• Business must have verifiable revenues of at least $250,000 for the most recent 12-month period

• Business must be owned or operated by a former USF student who meets one of the following:

-A former USF student or group of former students must have owned 50% or more of the company through the eligible period; OR

-A former USF student must have served as the company’s chief executive (for example chairman, CEO, president, or managing partner) through the eligible period; OR

-A former USF student must have founded the company and been active as a member of the most senior management team during the eligible period.

The deadline for 2016 nominations is Jan. 29.  An official ranking of the 56 companies will be announced at a dinner and reception on April 29.

For more information on the nomination process or to nominate a Bull-owned business, visit www.USFfast56.com.

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The Southeastern Regional Chapter of the Society of Toxicology will host their annual conference at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, Oct. 15-16.

The event will bring together toxicologists from around the region, students and faculty to provide a forum for sharing the latest in toxicology research.

Toxicology is the study of adverse effects of foreign chemical substances on a living system. Dr. Marie Bourgeois, alumna of the COPH, research assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and conference manager, urges anyone with an interest in toxicology to attend, as well as anyone interested in learning more about it.

Marie Bourgeois, PhD, MPH

“Toxicology is a borrowing science, it pulls together a lot of aspects from other sciences,” Bourgeois said.

The event is expect draw more than 80 attendees and is open to the entire campus. Students and alumni are highly encouraged to submit abstracts to present their research.

“I would really like to see students submit abstracts, because not only is it a low stress way to get into presenting your own research, but you can win prizes and you get feedback on what you’re doing,” Bourgeois said. “You can get some very friendly direction on whether or not you’re headed the right way or whether your project should be tinkered with slightly to give it more impact.”

This is the first time this conference is being hosted outside of Georgia since its implementation. The keynote speakers are both USF COPH alumni, Scott Dotson, of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and Kelly Hall, with Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals. Topics to be discussed include making chemotherapy less damaging, lactational transfer of pesticides, the chemistry behind sunscreen, and occupational safety.

“Toxicology is at its heart, a public health science. You’re looking at the potential toxicity of things and how it affects a population or an ecosystem or your community. We’re trying to make neighborhoods, jobs and communities safer,” Bourgeois said.

Platform abstracts are due Oct. 1 and poster abstracts are due Oct. 7. To submit an abstract, or to register for the event, visit the conference website.

Story by Anna Mayor and photo by Natalie D. Preston, College of Public Health

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The undergraduate public health program at the University of South Florida ranks No. 1 in College Factual’s  “Top 10 Veteran-Friendly Public Health Schools” list, which was featured in a Military Times article in June.

However, insiders know that this isn’t the only reason why the USF College of Public Health rocks. From unique courses taught by passionate instructors to summer programs for high school students, this undergraduates come face-to-face with all of the core disciplines in public health.

Save lives with the military, save lives with us

College Factual generated the rankings from a variety of factors when determining the top colleges for veterans pursuing a bachelor’s degree in public health, from veteran-friendly policies to affordability to overall college quality.

USF’s COPH offers the first bachelor’s degree program in public health at an accredited college in Florida’s State University System. The degree in public health provides student-centered courses required for entry-level public health jobs found in government agencies, health corporations, community non-profit organizations and health care facilities.

“When the student veterans become familiar with the College of Public Health, they immediately see the link between what they did in the military and how it is applied to public health courses,” said Kay Perrin, PhD, assistant dean of undergraduate studies at USF’s COPH.

For example, Perrin said, when a student veteran who worked on enhancing clean water and sanitation in a village takes a course in global or environmental health, the student can instantly see the connection between the work they were doing and improved quality of life.

The USF COPH’s support for veterans extends beyond the classroom.  The college’s Undergraduate Studies office also organizes events to help student veterans get acquainted with each other outside of the classroom and feel more at home in a university environment.

COPH student veteran Joe Close strikes a bullish pose with USF System President Dr. Judy Genshaft. They were in Tallahassee for the 2015 USF Day.

Thanh Le, an academic advisor at the COPH who organizes these meetings, says that these opportunities allow students to connect names to faces, build relationships, express their concerns and difficulties as veterans returning to school and suggest ideas to further improve and support their experience.

The office also provides flexible advising appointment times and coordinates a one-on-one meeting with the associate dean which allows student veterans to connect on a personal level, gain personal assistance, and address any issues or concerns they may have.

More information on the College Factual rankings for veteran-friendly undergraduate public health programs can be found online here.

Undergraduates learn the power of communication

Spring 2015 was Alison Oberne’s first semester teaching Public Health Seminar: Communications in the Digital Age, and to say that it’s not your typical public health course would be an understatement.

In the course, students explored a variety of related skills and developed communication strategies on topics of their choosing, with the proviso that the topics are public health-related.

“The topics they chose really run the gamut, from maternal and child health to mental health to drug use and abuse to nutrition,” said Oberne, who is an instructor in the Department of Undergraduate Studies at the USF COPH.

“My experience in Communications in the Digital Age this semester has been one filled with more creative freedom than I have ever had the opportunity to use in all of my time as a public health major,” said senior Laurie Brutus.  “All of our assignments allowed us to focus on developing a communication skill and to demonstrate that skill through different communication media.”

Infographic by graduating senior Laurie Brutus.

Their methods of presentation were as varied as the subject matter, Oberne said. Students posted speeches to YouTube, tweeted about their topics, and wrote letters to the editor. One student even got her letter to the editor published.

Oberne said that her favorite part of the class was the last assignment, though, where students had to design their own infographic, which is a display that combines graphics, texts and images to convey information easily.

“For example, this infographic is talking about MRSA,” she said while holding up an impressive-looking page.  “I’ve talked to the student who created this and encouraged her to talk to residence life to try to promote how to get the message out to the larger student community.  I want them to take these skills and see the broader impact.”

Infographic by junior Kaitlyn Davis.

“They’re used to writing research papers, so this really put them outside of their comfort zone,” Oberne said.  “But they learned so much in the process.”

“The best part about creating an infographic,” Brutus said, “is that you can tap into a different side of yourself and use skills that you may not have been able to find use for in a field full of data and research like public health.  I didn’t realize there was a way to blend my love for design and imagery with skills in public health research and writing.  Creating this infographic has opened my eyes to a whole new way of disseminating information, changing minds and impacting social change.”

Workforce development course teaches hands-on skills training

“It’s really cool to see students get jobs,” said Laura Rusnak, faculty instructor of Public Health Seminar: Workforce Development.

The fine art of shaking hands is demonstrated by undergraduate instructor Laura Rusnak, MPH, CHES.

What makes this class unique is that it focuses solely on developing skills to get students hired. Its syllabus covers topics like resumé-making, interview-skills and networking – things that students have to do, but that they may have never been formally taught.

“It’s all relevant,” she said.

The course entered the rotation a few years ago, but Rusnak modified the material and brought it back for the summer.

“I had to make a lot of changes,” Rusnak said. “I cut away all the fluff, so it’s just stuff. It’s just the things they need to know to do what they need to do.”

Rusnak says that the most important topic the course covered was resumé writing. The students were able to submit a resumé and then receive feedback so they could revise it, sometimes two and three times.

“That was one of the coolest things, to see the progression and how improved they were,” she said. “It’s not just about the resumé, it’s about the skills that they learn: to ask for help and get feedback.”

Another topic covered in the course is how to shake hands. While it seems simple, Rusnak explains that there’s much more to it, and that how you present yourself non-verbally can make an impression before you even open your mouth.

Undergraduates Kenia Aguilar and Brittany Piver prepare to shake hands.

It’s skills like these that are crucial to students getting hired.

“Speaking directly to job acquisition skills is highly needed, and students love it,” Rusnak said.

Typically, the career center offers optional classes or workshops for these types of skills, but before this course there was nothing specific for public health. This course is one of several public health seminars that students are required to take, but technically students could complete their degrees without ever taking the course.

While it might not be strictly required, Rusnak thinks it will be brought back into full rotation.

“We plan to make it available during the spring semester, as well as in the summer semester,” she said. And students agree.

In an anonymous survey of the class, many students voice the opinion that the class should be required.

One anonymous commenter said that the class is one that should be taken for any degree.

“The best class to prepare you for graduating and finding a job,” they said. “This class gives you the tools to succeed.”

Undergraduates demonstrate what to do…

Undergraduate Ricardo Rosario cleans up before participating in the hand shaking demonstration.

And, what not to do …

Kenia Aguilar and Laura Rusnak demonstrate the side hand shake.

Laura Rusnak gives Guerthie Geffrard the two hand shake.

Facebook photo gallery of the full hand shaking exercise

Bridging the gap for high school students

Along with making class time as enriching as possible, the USF COPH recognizes the importance of reaching out to the community to help get future students engaged in the field of public health.

And just like the previous two years, this year’s Public Health Summer Institute at the USF COPH did just that.

Dr. Rene Salazar, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, directs the program, which began in 2013. The program is open to students across Hillsborough County, and this year many high schools were represented.

“This is an opportunity for them to explore this discipline and the educational and career options available in public health,” Salazar said.

Dr. Salazar leads a discussion in the COPH’s industrial hygiene lab.

Salazar models some of the protective equipment that industrial hygienists wear when investigating environmental hazards.

Because public health as an undergraduate major is relatively new, the Institute provides many students with first-time exposure to the field of public health.

“I know a lot of us didn’t know what public health was to begin with,” admitted rising Strawberry Crest High School junior Amruta Potdar.

The program is free to students, who are selected from an application process based on good academic standing and a possible interest in health disciplines or public health.

The weeklong program is just in its third year, but it has quickly gained popularity. The first time it ran, there was only one session of 12 students. Since then, the program has more than doubled, from one session with 12 students to two sessions a summer with 14 students. The program runs 9:00 a.m. to roughly 4:00 p.m. Monday through Friday.

In addition, students gain exposure to all the different concentrations within public health as well as an introduction to college life.

“We get up and do things,” Salazar said. “We visit campus safety; we go and visit the medical center; we go and visit the wellness center for students and faculty and staff on campus; we take a tour of main campus.”

Participants examine the bacteria that grew from their personal items in a 24-hour period.

Yuk!

Salazar says the culminating event is when the group uses the public transportation system, The Hartline, to travel downtown to the Hillsborough County Health Department. While they’re there, students get a firsthand look at public health in action.

For one of the participants, rising senior Shreya Shivan from King High School, the experience has been eye-opening.

“Public health to me is interesting – where it comes from and where it’s going,” Shivan said. “It’s about how do we keep everybody healthy instead of treating the people that are already sick.”

Shivan said that the disaster presentation was particularly interesting, especially learning about EMTs and the things they do for the community.

Students use a paper diagram and squeezable ambulance to learn basic CPR.

After an in-class demonstration by professionals, students practice CPR in unison.

“I actually went home and looked into it,” she said. “I might do that in the future.”

Salazar recognizes that not every student will find their home in public health, but the Summer Institute allows them to test the waters.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for high school students, usually rising juniors and rising seniors, to take a look at a discipline that might serve as a very good undergraduate major,” Salazar said. “Even if it’s to show them that public health is not what they want, then I think that we’ve done a service to the community.”

***

Outside of the classroom, the undergraduate curriculum also features multiple opportunities for student research and study abroad.  More importantly, all students are expected to practice their passion in the field and begin honing their public health skills as an undergraduate.

This spring, 171 students graduated with public health bachelor’s degrees, bringing the total to 1,038 who have earned their four-year degrees since the undergraduate public health major was established at USF in 2011.

At the graduate level, USF’s public health college offers several master’s degrees as well as a PhD and a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH).  Earlier this year, USF’s COPH was ranked 16 in U.S. News and World Report’s list of “America’s Best Graduate Schools.”

Related story:
USF Nursing and Public Health graduate programs ranked among nation’s best

Story by David Brothers and Annamarie Koehler-Shepley, video by Zack Murray, College of Public Health. Photos courtesy of multiple sources.

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“When you see the kids who have nothing, it changes you,” said Dr. Ben Jacob, “and when you see the ones who are blind on top of it, it changes you even more.  You come back to your American life here, you cruise around town, go to McDonald’s, whatever, but you can’t help thinking about them.”

Jacob, a research assistant professor in the USF College of Public Health’s Department of Global Health, recently returned from working “towards eradication,” he is careful to say, of onchocerciasis, or river blindness, in Uganda and Burkina Faso, the third-poorest nation on the African continent and one of the poorest on the planet.  He is part of an initiative that is making rapid headway there, and he is excited to be part of the reason.

“Onchocerciasis is a disease caused by Simulium Damnosum s.l., a species of fly that habitats along rivers – along the river edges, to be exact,” Jacob explained.  “It’s commonly seen in Africa.  It used to be in South America, but the incidence is getting less and less in the western hemisphere.  Unfortunately, in Africa, it’s still very predominant.  The problem is that it causes blindness, especially in children, and the tragedy behind it is that it’s preventable if we focus on the habitat instead of post-treatment clinical strategies solely.”

The tragedy also goes well beyond the blinded child, he said.  In northern Africa’s nations wracked by civil war and abject poverty, there are no schools for the blind, and in an agro-economic society, every child lost to blindness represents a missing workforce and “a very big disadvantage,” he said, to a family already practically defined by disadvantage.

Jacob, who has been working to fight disease in Africa for five years, is part of a global initiative backed by The Carter Center, the World Health Organization and the Gates Foundation to halt transmission of the disease.  Since it’s spread by black flies, eliminating the flies has become the focus.

Brought into the effort by Global Health’s chair, Dr. Tom Unnasch, Jacob has applied his specialties – geographic information systems and spatial modeling – to the effort.  So far, it’s proving to be a dramatic step in the right direction after decades of failed efforts to control the disease.

“In the ’70s, what they were doing was treating the rivers with insecticide,” Jacob said.  “It was non-targeted, very global.  It was just sprayed along the rivers to inhibit the larval production of the habitat.”

Among the major drawbacks of that approach, Jacob said, was the expense, since the only practical way to spray such vast areas was by helicopter.

“Rivers can go on forever, especially African rivers,” he said.  “They have multiple tributaries, so even though you may treat one location, it may not affect the whole area.  So, it was not a cost-effective methodology, nor was it good for prevention.”

Unnasch thought Jacob’s work with global information systems to identify mosquito habitats to combat malaria could just as easily be applied to the war on black flies.

The enemy, Simulium Damnosum s.l., the tiny black fly that spreads onchocerciasis, commonly known as river blindness.

“I was brought in as a mathematician/modeler to determine where the high-prevalence canopied S. Damnosum s.l. habitats were using newer state-of-the-art cartographic- and informatic-based technology,” Jacob said.  “I started using GIS, and I was able to get a spectral imprint – i.e., target reflectance biosignature – off one habitat.  Every object,” he explained, “has a unique spectral signature that is reflected off its surface – you, a car, a tree, anything.”

Jacob took a spectral signature off a particular habitat along a river and withdrew the wavelengths by color to determine the percentage of each in the signature.  The rest is every bit as technical as it is fascinating.

“I was able to spectrally extract and decompose a pixel that represented the percentage of red, green, blue and all the other canopy colors of that habitat,” he said, “and then, within the GIS, utilize that percentage contribution of each wavelength and find every single other one inside of a scene.  Initially, I ran an algorithm inside of GIS using a large riverine scene of an area in western Africa to determine a signature that I originally withdrew from a capture point habitat, and then found all the other ones that were similar.”

Jacob had first tested his idea two years ago in Togo, he said.

“I found one signature,” he said, “and I took that one spectral signature and displaced the percentage components of the wavelengths on a whole image, and the GIS found me all the georeferenceable sites of the canopied habitats – a predictive geo-spectrotemporal model, in other words.”

The results of that test in Togo were nothing less than startling: Human follow-up investigations on the ground – known as “ground-truthing” – put the predictive method’s accuracy at 100 percent.  Excited by his findings, Jacob returned to COPH to share the news with Global Health colleagues, especially Unnasch and Dr. Robert Novak, a professor of medical entomology.  The message was a simple revelation with profound implications:  They could find all the habitats without having to move field teams, a particularly cost-prohibitive exercise in Africa.

The response from COPH’s renowned vector-borne disease experts was to give it a double-blind study:  Apply the methodology to another region – specifically, northern Uganda, on the other side of Africa – and we’ll see how good it is.

“In other words, they would show me a country, but they wouldn’t tell me where the disease was,” Jacob said.  “I would show them where it was.  They obviously knew.”

The result of that second test was almost as encouraging as the first.

“When I took the percentage signature and then ran it in a scene from northern Uganda,” Jacob said, “I found all the habitats predicted in my model using GIS.  The second phase of it was to ground-truth it.  We found 92.8 percent, which was remarkable.  We were using a signal that was extrapolated in west Africa, and we interpolated habitats in east Africa.  So now, what that’s really telling us is, we have the capability, today, to find all the habitats.”

The next step, he said, was going to be the harder part.

“Yes, our model performance was extremely adequate.  The problem is, now what do we do for prevention?  We found it scientifically.  We have a great model, but what about controlling the disease?”

Jacob’s answer is a campaign he calls “Slash and Clear.”

“The idea is, once we’ve found these canopied trailing vegetation, based on the predictive model, we will seek and train individuals at the village level to remove them, using machetes, and that’s exactly what we did in our last project,” he said.  “And then we conducted clinical trials.  We put up some fly traps in the initial stage.  We saw reductions well over 60 percent in some of our targeted villages within a week.

“Once we are able to control the adult emergence of the disease – the flies – obviously, we would have fewer flies biting, and logically we would have less disease transmission.  So, we’re just using common sense,” he said.  “Destroy the location where the immatures are being produced, you have less emergence of adults, you have less transmission of disease.  Very simple concept.”

Jacob in northern Uganda during his most recent trip there to fight river blindness.

Jacob is pumped with enthusiasm to see the project through to a successful conclusion, and the closer he gets to making that reality, the more pumped he gets.

“We are able now not only to find the habitats very cost-effectively and in very quick time,” he said pointedly, “but we are actually able to go ahead and remove the significant habitats.  I think the next year of our project will be to remove all habitats around these village complexes, to eliminate and to eventually eradicate the disease.”

And sometimes, in science or anything else, the best defense is a good offense.

“We’re focusing on the habitat,” Jacob said.  “Instead of playing defense – putting up bed nets, for example – we’re playing offense.  That’s actually the campaign we’re running in Uganda:  ‘Slash and Clear.’”

Jacob said he’s confident of the method’s universal applicability and is already expanding its use.

“Now we’re using that same signal in Angola, we’re moving towards Nigeria, and we’re also using it in Togo.  If you gave me a scene in Zimbabwe, I could find you all the oncho habitats by the end of the day,” he said emphatically, “by the end of the day!”

“I’ve taken it personally, honestly,” he continued, “because I know we’re close to coming to a conclusion, and I feel, as a scientist, that this is the closest I’ve ever come.  I’m really excited about being a part of this team.  I think, in this type of environment, the only thing we as scientists can do is be more vigilant about how we can pursue eradication tools, and I think what we have right now – and obviously, I’m being biased – but I think we have one of the best capabilities.  I don’t think we’ve come this close on any other disease that I’ve ever worked on – none, and I’ve worked on a lot.  That’s why I feel very excited about this project.  I really think we can make this disease go away.”

Story by David Brothers, photos courtesy of Dr. Ben Jacbob, College of Public Health.

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