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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The USF College of Public Health (COPH) Activist Lab recently received an American Public Health Association (APHA) Student Champions Climate Justice Award.

The APHA’s Center for Climate, Health and Equity presents the Student Champions for Climate Justice Awards each year to student groups across the country. Students receiving the award are tasked with creating an academic community experience on their campuses to raise awareness about climate justice.

According to Rolando Trejos, a COPH PhD student who also serves as the project lead for the grant, climate justice recognizes the unfair, unequal and disproportionate effects of changes in the climate among communities of color, older adults, children and people with lower incomes and encourages the input of the uplifting community when attempting to tackle its effects.

“As an international student from Panamá, I have observed firsthand the catastrophic role of human-made emissions and contamination in accelerating the rate of climate change in the region I am originally from, called Azuero,” Trejos said. “In this region, pesticide exposure and atrazine contamination of one of the main rivers are hypothesized to play a role in the steep increase in the number of new cancer cases, with little to no attention to this issue. It is hoped that programs such as ours will enhance advocacy.”

The months-long project has been performed in several stages.

In September, Activist Lab members visited Liberty Middle School in Tampa and provided an interactive presentation on climate justice for 22 students.

In October, they released a podcast on climate justice and Latino health that featured COPH professors and Salud Latina members Drs. Arlene Calvo and Ricardo Izurieta and Dr. Joseph Grzywacz, associate dean for research and faculty, from San Jose State University. The third and main event was a climate justice workshop for undergraduate and graduate students held at the COPH at the end of October.

The final events, said Trejos, will be an oral presentation given at the APHA 2023 Annual Meeting and Expo within the APHA Emerging Scholars program and an “Instagram takeover” of the official Instagram of the American Public Health Association.

“Bringing awareness to the importance of climate justice and promoting health equity among Latinos has been exciting,” Trejos said. “On a personal note, as a Latino public health professional and cancer researcher, I aspire to continue to work toward envisioning equity in cancer among Latinos, which will necessitate an understanding of the roles of both the social and built environments.”

Trejos said he and the other Activist Lab members feel “honored” to have received the APHA award.

“It is an honor to collaborate with our Activist Lab director and principal investigator of the grant Dr. Karen Liller and student advisory board members Jenny Ho, Amadeo Brandon, Hannah Harburg and Farshid Faizee in the planning and implementation of this project,” Trejos noted.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Fifteen teams of rising public health and community leaders from around the country have been selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of the Public Health Regenerative Leadership Synergy (PHEARLESS) initiative.

Supported by an investment of more than $8.5 million from The Kresge Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the de Beaumont Foundation, the PHEARLESS initiative integrates regenerative leadership education and experiential learning with innovative collaborative tools that will help public health and community leaders build the skills they need to co-create sustainable solutions that advance health equity and well-being for all.

As a holistic, strengths-based and adaptive approach to leadership, regenerative leadership focuses on creating positive change and restoring balance in complex living systems. By creating positive relationships and nurturing the interconnected elements within a system, regenerative leaders aim to generate outcomes that benefit everyone.

“PHEARLESS leaders know how to forge partnerships that result in community-led public health efforts on the ground,” said Monica Valdes Lupi, managing director of Kresge’s Health Program. “Authentic community engagement can improve the public’s health for generations to come.”

Each four-person team includes two rising public health leaders and two rising community leaders. Together, the cohort will form a network that will learn from one another and help create new models for community-led efforts to improve equitable health outcomes community-wide.

“Strong partnerships between government and community are necessary to achieve meaningful change and improve health outcomes. Through the PHEARLESS program, we look forward to facilitating and strengthening such partnerships in communities across the country, and I am excited to welcome our inaugural cohort,” said Brian C. Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation.

Through the 12-month PHEARLESS experience, comprising four learning modules and a culminating capstone activity, participants will develop the mindset and skills to transform systems, structures and policies, in partnership with community, toward a just and equitable future. Each four-person team will receive a $100,000 grant to support their activities.

The cohort includes teams from the following communities:

• Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Buffalo, New York
• Colorado City, Arizona
• Columbia, South Carolina
• Hillsborough, Florida
• Jackson County, Missouri
• Lee County, Mississippi
• Long Beach, California
• Minneapolis, Minnesota
• Mobile, Alabama
• New Orleans, Louisiana
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Saint Johnsbury, Vermont
• San Francisco, California
• Seattle, Washington

The University of South Florida (USF) College of Public Health (COPH) and Muma College of Business (MCOB) co-lead the design and implementation of the training and technical assistance. The COPH also partners with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the Big Cities Health Coalition, and the National Association of County and City Officials as an interdisciplinary support network.

“Today’s complex community health issues require learning and acting together. PHEARLESS leaders will not only develop themselves as leaders but also work respectfully in partnership to inclusively engage the public, build civic muscle and create the conditions in which all can thrive,” said Dr. Marissa Levine, director of the COPH’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.

Questions? Contact COPH-CLPHP@usf.edu

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The Federal Open Enrollment Period (OEP) to sign up for or change health insurance plans runs from Nov. 1, 2023, through Jan. 15, 2024. Navigators from Florida Covering Kids & Families (FL-CKF), housed within the USF College of Public Health, along with their community partners are poised to help consumers find health insurance plans that are right for them.

Florida Covering Kids & Families works collaboratively with Florida agencies and stakeholders to advocate and conduct outreach to ensure all Floridians have access to affordable healthcare coverage. It has seven contracted partners that serve all 67 counties in Florida and is funded by a multimillion-dollar, multi-year grant from the U.S. Health and Human Service Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

While the FL-CKF has no large-scale, in-person sign-up events scheduled in the community this year, Nikia Gates, program manager for the FL-CKF Navigator Project, said Navigators—specially trained individuals who help a consumer “navigate” the health insurance marketplace—are just a phone call away to answer questions and schedule in-person or virtual appointments.

“Florida Covering Kids & Families will provide education and support, offer referrals when applicable, and schedule appointments with a Navigator partner in the consumer’s area if needed,” Gates said. “We will also be providing technical support to the Affordable Care Act consortium of partners. Additionally, we will be contacting consumers via mail through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Marketplace Assistance Community (MAC) database.”

Navigators will also be out and about in the community.

Family Healthcare Foundation, a Tampa-based nonprofit that partners with FL-CKF and provides outreach and application assistance in publicly funded health care programs such as Florida KidCare, the Health Insurance Marketplace and local county health care programs, will have Navigators meeting with consumers on the phone and virtually. Tampa Bay Navigators will be at locations such as Tampa General, BayCare Health Systems hospitals, the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County Family Resource Centers and Feeding Tampa Bay’s Empowerment Centers.  

“Offering multiple options to meet with a Navigator at a variety of community and clinical settings truly ‘meets’ people where they are to help them navigate a complicated system of understanding what their health insurance options are,” Katie Roders Turner, executive director of Family Healthcare Foundation, said. “We assist anyone and encourage everyone to reach out to speak with us if they are looking for health insurance information. Navigators are always free and always confidential.”

Anyone exploring new health insurance options or needing to change an existing plan is urged to utilize the OEP.

“The OEP is open to everyone. Appointments are available virtually, over the phone, and in person,” Gates said. “Anyone needing assistance getting health coverage through the Marketplace can call Covering Florida at (877) 813-9115 or visit coveringflorida.org to book an appointment with a Navigator in their area. Consumers can also visit healthcare.gov to explore resources that will help make enrollment faster and easier. Resources are available to help consumers determine if they qualify for savings, making health care even more affordable.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Two USF College of Public Health (COPH) staff members took on new leadership positions with the Florida Public Health Association (FPHA), the professional organization for public health workers in Florida.

The leaderships changes took effect during the FPHA’s annual meeting, held in Orlando in July.

Allison Rapp, MPH, moved to first vice president of the group while Parnia Roghani Shareef, who received her MPH from the college, moved to second vice president. Both Rapp and Roghani Shareef are program planner analysts with the COPH’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.

COPH DrPH student Kelli Agrawal currently serves as the FPHA’s student engagement committee co-chair.

The FPHA membership elects the second vice president, who serves a one-year term. Every year the officers move up—from second vice president to first vice president to president and immediate past president. All in all, officers serve for four years.

“When I moved to Florida in 2014, I knew I needed to network and one of the first things I did was find the FPHA,” Rapp said. “In fact, I moved at the end of June that year and the conference was in July. I’ve taken on numerous roles throughout the years with FPHA including member-at-large and treasurer. In an effort to continue to develop as a leader, I wanted to take on FPHA leadership roles and here I am—vice president.”

Rapp said two of her major responsibilities will be planning the annual conference and expanding the reach of the FPHA.

“I like to think that there is not a single issue we are faced with, across all areas, that is not connected to public health,” Rapp said. “Give me an issue you think is not a public health issue and I will explain to you why it is. That said, I want to bring other sectors—from business to education and more—to understand that they should be interested in public health, join the FPHA and come to our amazing conference.”

Roghani Shareef said strengthening connections with those inside and outside public health will be her focus as well.

“I hope to accomplish a successful mentorship program, which I helped launch last year,” she said. “I also hope to continue to collaborate across different sectors. As Allison mentioned, what isn’t public health? Having those connections and networks will really enhance our efforts in public health.”

Roghani Shareef was also recognized with the FPHA’s Meritorious Service Award, which is given annually to an FPHA member who has a record of making outstanding contributions to the FPHA in the field of public health.

“I feel honored not only to be nominated and receive this award from one of my role models [Venise White, FPHA’s immediate past president], but to know that the work I am doing is making an impact,” Roghani Shareef said. “It feels amazing and brings me one step closer to changing the world!”

Also recognized by the FPHA at their annual meeting was alum Nicole Sutton, who received the Robert D. May M.D. Award. The award is given to a public health worker and FPHA member who has demonstrated significant accomplishments advancing public health at local or state levels.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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In an effort to strengthen the U.S. public health system, three national philanthropic nonprofits have awarded the University of South Florida more than $8.5 million in grants to train the nation’s public health leaders in collaboration and leadership skills.

The grant is in response to a badly depleted, post-pandemic public health care workforce where workers are understaffed, overworked and in dire need of strong leadership.

That is where USF is stepping in.

“Our public health leaders and managers need to foster a community where there is open and honest, true collaboration amongst its members,” said Dr. Triparna de Vreede, an expert in collaboration science and organizational psychology at the USF Muma College of Business and one of the co-investigators of the project.

“Regenerative leadership emphasizes holistic, sustainable and long-term thinking where the leader is a facilitator and a voice of the community rather than the hero leading the charge. We need to build regenerative leaders in the public health space to utilize all the assets in the community,” de Vreede said, who serves as an associate director in the School of Information Systems and Management. 

Led by Dr. Marissa Levine, a USF College of Public Health (COPH) professor of public health practice and the principal investigator, the grant will establish the national program office for the Public Health Regenerative Leadership Synergy, dubbed PHEARLESS, within the COPH’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.

Another co-investigator on the grant is Jennifer Marshall, an associate professor at the COPH.

Through this grant, USF leaders will lead a one-year training program and distribute $100,000 grants to help organizations participating in the program.

“We’re taking an approach called regenerative leadership—which is thinking about our communities as living systems and not machines — and figuring out how to better work together in complex contexts, like what we went through with COVID, and how to get a shared vision where people all have the opportunity to thrive,” Levine said.

The USF interdisciplinary team will co-lead the design and implementation of the training.

The PHEARLESS initiative is being funded by The Kresge Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the de Beaumont Foundation in an effort to strengthen the nation’s public health system.

Nearly half of U.S. state and local healthcare workers left their jobs between 2017 and 2021, exacerbating an existing workforce shortage, according to a data analysis of the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey, conducted by the de Beaumont Foundation and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Here’s how the PHEARLESS program works:

• The one-year leadership development training is open to public health professionals from across the country. Its inaugural cohort kicks off in September. Organizers are soliciting applications now and have extended the application deadline to close at 3 p.m. July 14.
• PHEARLESS program leaders will dole out community grants to 15 selected teams. Each team consists of two public health professionals and two community leaders. Teams will participate in virtual and in-person sessions.
• Selected teams will receive a $100,000 grant to support their activities to improve the public’s health and $9,000 stipends for each of the two community leaders.

PHEARLESS is unique in that it gives public health department leaders an opportunity to reimagine their roles in creating healthy communities that are community-led and centered in equality, organizers said.

“We really need to think differently about how we approach leadership in public health and what are we going to do about assuring more equitable outcomes in health and communities,” Levine said.

The College of Public Health will also partner with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the Big Cities Health Coalition, and the National Association of County and City Officials as an interdisciplinary support network.

To learn more about the criteria and how to apply, visit the PHEARLESS initiative website. Applications are due July 14.

Story By Elizabeth L. Brown. Reposted from USF News.

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Get ready!

Applications for the 2023-24 cohort of Public Health Regenerative Leadership Synergy (PHEARLESS), a new grant and leadership enhancement opportunity based on the principles of regenerative leadership, will open next month.

PHEARLESS will support up to 15 teams, each comprising two community leaders and two governmental public health leaders from the same jurisdiction. These rising leaders will learn together to further develop their abilities to collaborate across diverse groups and develop and act in alignment toward a common vision in which all can reach their full potential and thrive. 

Now is a great time to gather your teams and prepare to apply: 

• Connect with other rising leaders in your jurisdiction to identify the team members who want to make the most of this opportunity to forge deeper, more meaningful and lasting relationships.  This is your opportunity to continue your work to enhance the health and well-being of all in your community and to do so by learning from the wisdom of living systems.    
• Lay the groundwork for support from key individuals and organizations.
• Assess the current state of your community’s efforts to promote health and start to identify the community systems you seek to better understand and redesign. 

Questions? Contact COPH-CLPHP@usf.edu 

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Four USF College of Public Health undergraduate public health majors are finishing up a new internship program with Planned Parenthood.

The students have been serving as chat/text health ambassadors, answering questions about sexual and reproductive health from adults and adolescents who text or instant message the organization.

“Planned Parenthood reached out to us to partner on this internship,” said Dr. Alison Oberne, director of the college’s BSPH program and an Instructor III. “It’s a perfect fit for our students and for public health.”

This remote internship spans two semesters and is open only to those students majoring in public health. The students receive a $1,500 stipend for each semester of the internship.

“Planned Parenthood serves a vital purpose in our society, and I wanted to be a part of it because I have always felt strongly about reproductive rights and the importance of sexual health education,” commented Emily Rodhouse, a second-semester senior who said she found out about the internship through the USF Public Health Announcements and Opportunities page on Canvas. “Access to care and access to information are extremely important in order to make informed decisions about one’s health.”

“I missed my birth control pill. What should I do?”

As chat/text health ambassadors, the students went through five days of training with Planned Parenthood staff learning about sexual health topics and practicing mock chats.

“One of the training exercises focused on adolescent brain development and how it can impact our younger clients,” Rodhouse noted. “My coworker who ran the training themed the whole presentation around the Netflix show ‘Wednesday’ because it was popular at the time. It made the training really fun and helped solidify the concepts that we discussed by relating them to the show.”

With training complete, the students took on real questions from real-life clients. Most questions, they said, centered around birth control, emergency contraception, abortion, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), pregnancy testing and other reproductive health concerns.

“An example of a question could be ‘I missed my birth control pill. What should I do now?’ ” added Sophie Doffegnies, who’s also in her final semester at USF.

“We were taught to be nonbiased and open-minded,” explained Cheyenne Charles, another senior graduating this spring. “Our job has been to help people no matter where they are in the world and what situation they’re in. Yes, we’ve been trained on how to educate people on birth control, contraception, pregnancy, abortion, etc., but it’s our job to make the chatter [the person who asks the question] feel calm in a judgment-free environment.”

Hundreds of chats, thousands of questions answered

The students say it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how many questions they’ve answered, as each chat can involve several questions. But they do estimate that they’ve each taken part in hundreds, if not thousands, of chats.

“One highlight I had was when a chatter thanked me graciously for all the help I had given her,” said Charles. “It makes me happy knowing that the chatters appreciate what I and the other ambassadors are doing. It makes me feel like I am making an impact in someone’s life, even though we aren’t face to face.”

Impacting change

The students say they didn’t just impart knowledge—they gained some, too.

“This internship has helped me tremendously,” said Doffegnies, who hopes to work in a research capacity for a government, nonprofit or nongovernmental public health agency after graduation. “I got to work, for the first time, in a national 501(c) organization and I’ve developed so many professional skills from doing so. It’s taught me a lot about how advocacy and spreading the right information can impact someone’s life, and I plan to utilize that in my future career.”

Charles says the internship has shown her the importance of health literacy.

“Some people are confused about their own health and what they can do to protect themselves,” she said. “I want to create change and help inform people about public health practices they can use in their daily life. If we can educate people on topics such as safer sex, STI testing, emergency contraception, etc., they can keep that information for the future or inform their friends/family.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Following the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, many communities in Florida were faced with the daunting task of rebuilding after the second deadliest hurricane on record slammed into the state.

The USF SafetyFlorida Consultation Program, housed in the USF College of Public Health, initiated outreach efforts to these devastated regions under the direction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Region IV.

They sent a total of nine consultants—four of whom were bilingual—to support recovery efforts. The goal was to eliminate serious hazards, prevent injuries and reduce loss of life among contracting crews and the public.

The USF SafetyFlorida’s strategy involved a weekly rotation/deployment of two field consultants to the Ft. Myers, Sanibel, Punta Gorda, Port Charlotte and Pine Island areas of Florida. After 100-plus safety and health interventions and training events, the team has returned.

“Anyone with a pickup truck and a ladder seemed to have materialized into a roofing, demolition or utility contractor,” said Dr. Brian Warrick, program director for the USF SafetyFlorida.  “We conferred with roofers, laborers, tree cutters, demolition crews and utility workers who were currently performing work in the area to determine if they were familiar with the hazards they might encounter.”

Some of those hazards, Warrick said, included heat stress, falls from a roof, insect bites, being struck by heavy equipment and handling debris.

“If they were not familiar with the hazards, USF SafetyFlorida provided training to ensure the appropriate controls were used,” he said.  “A perfect example was halting work during a roofing operation where the employees were not tied-off, which posed a significant risk for falling, until adequate controls—for example, a scaffold, scissor lift, boom lift, tie offs, ladders, guardrails and barricades—were in place.”

During the eight weeks that the team was deployed, more than 100 interventions and training events were conducted addressing the hazards for some 1,214 workers/contractors involved with debris collection and removal, demolition, roof repair, tree cutting and utility/power restoration. More than 1,000 (90 percent) of the contractors/workers had limited English proficiency.

While crews were initially apprehensive, Warrick said, they were receptive to the interventions.

“This type of safety outreach is vital not only to the recovery efforts, but to public health as well,” he said. “When we remove workers from these types of hazards, we help employers avoid huge OSHA penalties and fines, but, more importantly, we also help minimize the likelihood of a potential injury or fatality.”

Story by Thalia Barber, USF SafetyFlorida

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The USF College of Public Health’s Dr. Joe Bohn received an outstanding honor in public health education and community engagement from the Pinellas Community Health Action Team (CHAT).

The Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County created the CHAT in 2012 to serve as a steering committee for local health improvement planning. They examine data and feedback gathered from Pinellas County residents to identify how the community can work together to improve health, especially in areas related to access to care, behavioral health, health promotion and disease prevention.

Bohn was recognized at the November 2022 CHAT meeting for his community engagement efforts from Dec. 2021 to present day. Some of those efforts include his commitment to the CHAT meetings and supporting the Pinellas Behavioral Health System of Care, Pinellas Zero Suicide Partnership and collaboratively jump starting the Growing Hope Initiative, a program focused on suicide prevention outreach for the LGBTQIA+, Veterans and youth populations in Pinellas County, with community partners.

As an assistant professor and director of community engagement for the COPH, Bohn has assisted CHAT since early 2019 with bringing in community partners to the committee.

“Having these partners gives us an opportunity to look at issues that cover all the social determinants of health topics from a public health, health equity and social/racial justice perspective.  It gives our county health department a more comprehensive view of all the things that are happening and impacting our communities across the county,” he said. “Over the last year and a half we have focused on in-person and virtual town halls for youth and LGBTQIA+ suicide prevention outreach and started a series of Veterans coffee socials all in partnership with various community partners based on their interests and priorities.”

“It’s an honor to receive the award. We have lots of awards internally in our college and the university, but as the director of community engagement for the college, honors like this are especially meaningful,” he said. “Helping the communities we serve and building bridges to strengthen equity and justice initiatives in the community are key priorities.”

One of Bohn’s favorite moments with the CHAT team was teaching some volunteers a few dance steps during the meeting at the request of Dr. Nosa Idehen, human services program specialist and CHA/CHIP program manager for the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County.

“It just changed the mood in the meeting, and it got a few people up,” he said. “I would encourage people to think about the small things they can do to help others and don’t be afraid to step outside your box. That’s what I’ve had to do in life.”

Bohn has also been excited to share the CHAT initiative with his students and encourages more to attend the meetings when they are able to.

“I try to increase their awareness of what is happening in the community. At one CHAT meeting last year, one of my former MPH students was present who had gotten hired by one of the community partners, which was great to see,” he said. “There are fantastic learning opportunities for students to see and participate in. There are breakout discussions in each CHAT meeting depending on the stage of the process where community partners work on prioritizing and identifying the most important health issues that they are dealing with or strategizing on activities and measures for tracking progress on those health issues.”

Bohn also had a few final words he wanted to share with COPH students.

“Find something that you’re passionate about and get involved in it in the community. I think that is part of the heart and the mission of public health. When I first started at the COPH in 2016, Dr. Kay Perrin, former associate professor and assistant dean of undergraduate studies, took me out into the neighborhoods for a tour. I asked about where my office would be and to paraphrase, she said, ‘Your office isn’t in our college, it’s out here throughout these communities and all the neighborhoods that we serve.’ That gave me my ‘true north’ and set my direction for where to be in helping our communities in addressing social determinants of health, equity and justice priorities over the last six years of my career,” Bohn said.

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

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