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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

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The endowed Amanda Gill Memorial Fund was established to provide further research or educational opportunities to students studying public health, specifically in the area of infectious disease, which Amanda was passionate about.

USF College of Public Health alumna Amanda Gill had a heart for helping others.

A graduate of the first BSPH class in 2011, her parents said Amanda had a passion for working with people with infectious diseases and always said she wanted to work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or in Africa to help AIDS patients.

Amanda was born in September of 1988 in Clearwater, Fla. She spent the majority of her education at Northside Christian School before transferring to Clearwater Hight School, where she graduated.

While attending USF, Gill worked at Busch Gardens and was awarded the Employee of the Year award. But being a big sister was her true badge of honor. “She was a fierce protector of her younger brother, Matthew, who also ended up attending USF, and always had his back,” Amanda’s father, Jim, said.

Always on the go, her family said she was involved in many activities in her free time and was a light to others. She loved adventure, her dog, Oakley, and had a heart to help. “She wanted to help people more than anything,” her mother Denice said. “When she smiled, everybody smiled.”

After graduating the COPH, Amanda’s  career path lead her across many different cities in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. From food safety for local restaurants to the North Florida Evaluation and Treatment Center, Amanda’s parents said that each role could be linked back to her interest and experience in public health.

One role even led her right to the front lines of COVID at a drive-thru testing center.

In her most recent role, Amanda worked as an Infection Preventionist at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta.

“She wanted to do the best and go above and beyond,” said Shalom Patel, infection prevention manager of operations at Piedmont Healthcare with whom Amanda worked. “Amanda was fun and very bright, and she had an infectious smile. She was one of my most enthusiastic employees who was always very open and honest with me, which I appreciated. She was a team player and went out of her way to help other people. Acceptance overall was really important to Amanda.”

During her time at Piedmont, Patel said a big part of Amanda’s role was collaborating closely with the engineering department. She also worked with the MRSA-prevention team and infection prevention in the cardiac critical care unit areas.

Patel also noted that Amanda was a natural leader and mentor who took new employees under her wing.

“When she moved to Atlanta to work at Piedmont, she was very happy,” Patel said. “Amanda said this was the type of work she wanted the whole time. In infection prevention, she got to be the ‘boots on the ground,’ I think she was in the right place.”

In 35 years, Amanda lived a full life and was invested in helping so many others. “She was a shining light in all of our lives,” Denice Gill said.

A Celebration of Life was held Monday, Oct. 30, 2023, at Central Christian Church in St. Petersburg, Fla. Live Stream Link: https://boxcast.tv/view/amanda-gill-memorial-service-3p-vnovk1edkyfq3jnemasb

In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that you please consider donating to the Amanda Gill Memorial Fund #540045 at the University of South Florida.

Donations may be mailed to: USF Foundation, Inc., 4202 E. Fowler Ave., ALC 100, Tampa, FL 33620 (ATTN: Beth Ahmedic, USF Health); memo line: Fund #540045 Amanda Gill Memorial Fund

Story by: Liz Bannon, College of Public Health

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Sara Daniels, a USF College of Public Health MSPH student, recently completed a competitive National Institutes of Health (NIH) summer fellowship program.

Daniels, who is concentrating in both health promotion and behavior and global communicable diseases, was a Graduate Research Fellow with the NIH’s G-SOAR program. The program provides U.S. graduate students with valuable experience exploring the intersection of basic, translational and clinical research at the NIH. Daniels noted that the G-SOAR program has an acceptance rate of about 30% every year.

“I applied for the G-SOAR program because I knew I was interested in working for the NIH at some point in the future,” Daniels said. “I was looking for a summer internship and came across the NIH program, which would allow me to network with other graduate students, scientists and principal investigators working at the NIH doing cutting-edge biomedical research. Additionally, I was looking to practice and learn new lab skills.”

Daniels spent the summer working on COVID-19 research.

“My work focused on a specific enzyme that is part of the replication and transcription process known as NSP 14,” Daniels explained. “The lab where I worked studies iron-sulphur clusters and their role in biological processes. Many of these iron-sulphur clusters have been found in proteins encoded in the SARS-Cov-2 [COVID-19] genome and have been found at sites that were previously incorrectly classified as zinc-binding sites. Unfortunately, because of the time constraints of my fellowship, I could not continue with the process and identify potential iron-sulphur clusters on NSP-14. However, my lab will continue to work on further classifications.”

In addition to her lab work, Daniels attended weekly “Becoming a Resilient Scientist” discussion groups and presented at an NIH summer poster day. The latter, she said, was one of the highlights of her fellowship experience, giving her the opportunity to summarize her research into a poster format and share it with others at the NIH, including scientists and medical professionals working in NIH’s clinical center.

“As a second-year MSPH student getting into more technical courses and lab work, my training at the NIH allowed me to advance my understanding of techniques and apply those skills to cutting-edge research,” Daniels said. “The most significant impact this experience will have on my academic pursuits will be in the laboratory techniques that I learned and refined.”

Daniels’ advice to any students interested in NIH fellowships like the G-SOAR program is “to just take a shot and do it.” She also tells students to research labs early in the process. “The application process can be lengthy,” she said, “but so worth it.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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A USF College of Public Health and Center for Homeland Defense and Security Master’s alumnus has been recognized with top awards for playing a key role in the Operation Warp Speed initiative aimed at rapidly developing a COVID-19 vaccine while serving as a visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC). 

Last year, Dr. Eric Powell (Master’s Program cohort 1101/1102) was chosen to receive three awards from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in May 2021 for his work as a senior science advisor for the Operation Warp Speed Countermeasures Acceleration Group’s Security and Assurance Team at the Vaccine Operations Center. The awards include the Award for Excellence, the Joint Meritorious Unit Award, and the Armed Forces Civilian Support Medal. 

Then, as he was completing his Operation Warp Speed assignment in November 2021, Powell was tabbed for a second Award for Excellence for his work on Operation Warp Speed. 

Powell, who is currently working as a U.S. Health and Human Services senior science advisor, had previously received two Civilian of the Week awards for his work on Operation Warp Speed from the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center and the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center in December 2020. 

He said the awards “humbled” him and he said they and the opportunities he has had to work on major national initiatives would not have been possible without CHDS, which he called the “most beneficial opportunity with respect to my professional development.” 

“These awards mean a great deal to me as I get to share them with the Center for Homeland Defense and Security,” Powell said. “If I had not had the incredible opportunity to study in Monterey, I would never have been able to serve the USAWC and HHS in the manner I did. My studies at [the Naval Postgraduate School were] critical for what we faced during the pandemic.” 

Powell, who graduated from the CHDS Master’s Program in 2016, said his “experiences at the U.S. Army War College and the follow-on assignment at U.S. Health and Human Services were the most fulfilling of my career.” 

Tapped to serve as a visiting professor of National Security Studies in the Center for Strategic Leadership at the USAWC in 2014, Powell said he was expecting to serve a year and ended up there for nearly seven, exhausting the time limit for an Intergovernmental Personnel Act appointee. 

“Working with the Homeland Defense and Security Issues Group Director Prof. Bert Tussing was an amazing journey,” he said, describing Tussing, who is an active CHDS University and Agency Public Partnership Program participant, as the “nation’s go-to expert on Homeland Defense and Security.” 

“It was the best place I have ever worked,” Powell added. “It provided me with more opportunities to serve than I could have ever hoped. Having Bert Tussing as my director was an absolute treat. He is a bundle of energy and knows more about homeland defense than anyone I know.” 

UAPP Director Steve Recca described Tussing as the “preeminent homeland defense thinker” who has “helped integrate Department of Defense and National Guard missions and activities into our homeland security education framework.” 

At the USAWC, Powell said he specialized in Homeland Operations (Army Warfighter Challenge #6) and Multi-Domain Operations (also known as Multi-Domain Battle concepts), which “explore the air, sea, land, cyber, space, electromagnetic spectrum, asymmetrical warfare, and information operations domains.” 

He said he and Tussing taught elective courses for the Master of Strategic Studies program, advised thesis students, performed outreach across the nation, published, and performed subject matter expertise and controller functions for senior service institution wargames, and served as managing editor of the Homeland Defense and Civil Support Journal, among other duties. 

While at USAWC, Powell was also able to attend and graduate from the College of Naval Command and Staff at the U.S. Naval War College in 2022, and also helped publish a hybrid warfare-related integrated research project publication with students entitled, “Contested Deployment,” with Tussing as lead editor. 

In 2016, Powell was chosen to receive the Commander’s Award for Public Service from the Department of the Army for the first of two tours at the USAWC. 

Then, in May 2020, Powell was asked by Tussing and Center for Strategic Leadership Deputy Director Prof. Samuel White if he wanted to volunteer as a USAWC representative for two to three weeks with the newly formed Operation Warp Speed initiative in Washington D.C. The initiative was a joint endeavor between the federal government, Department of Defense, and the private sector to develop policy, supply chain, distribution, and administration of vaccines and therapeutics to combat COVID-19. 

He agreed and ended up working on the mission for 19 months, until just before Thanksgiving 2021. Powell said his USAWC background “helped immeasurably in the dynamic, complex pandemic and medical countermeasures development environment.” 

In the Office of the Secretary of Defense award nomination memorandum, Powell was lauded for his “exemplary performance as the Vaccine Security Planner and Scientific Advisor for Operation Warp Speed.”

“Selected by name by Army War College to serve as the subject matter expert for scientific issues related to security of vaccines in support of COVID-19 pandemic response, Dr. Powell hit the ground running when he joined OWS and never slowed down. He quickly demonstrated his expertise to all organizations within the Department of Health and Human Services, across the industry and interagency partners associated with OWS,” the memo continued. 

“Dr. Powell professionally represented the Army War College to senior leaders across the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services and personally represented the Security and Assurance team at daily vaccine and therapeutic clinical discussions. He personally developed a method to track clinical development of vaccines and therapeutics and identified key vulnerabilities in the processes to apply additional security measures. His clear and concise method of communication allowed senior leaders enhanced understanding of the complex vaccine manufacturing process. Without him, details would have been missed and opportunities would have been wasted.”

“Dr. Powell’s efforts helped to accelerate the development, manufacture, and distribution of life-saving vaccines to more than 300 million Americans and will also support the world. Americans will experience safe and effective vaccines and therapeutics to protect against the SARS-COV-2 virus. Dr. Powell’s relentless dedication and patriotic efforts to achieve this epic feat in support of the people of the United States of America set him apart. As the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, this and future generations will remember his efforts. The distinctive accomplishments of Dr. John Eric Powell reflect great credit upon himself, the United States Army, and the Department of Defense,” the memo concluded.

Hearkening back to his time at CHDS, Powell said he remembers CHDS faculty telling his cohort after graduation that they would “most likely be working in another position within a year or two.” 

“That was certainly the case for many of my classmates and me,” he said, noting that “not only did the NPS/CHDS faculty prepare us to think strategically but they also taught us to think about future complex issues (for example, emerging and disruptive technologies). The (CHDS) faculty were certainly world-class, similar to the incredible colleagues I was able to work with at the USAWC.” 

He said perhaps his most vivid memory from the CHDS classroom was being challenged by CHDS instructor Chris Bellavita, who he remembers asked the ubiquitous question, “So what?” during class dialogue.  

“I do the same with my students and colleagues now,” Powell said. 

“Just as I owe whatever professional successes I may have earned to the (CHDS) faculty, I equally owe them to my terrific friends [and] classmates from cohort 1101/1102,” he added. “They are all amazing. Being in the class with experts in emergency management, the FBI, Los Angeles Fire, Los Angeles Police, Chicago Fire, Chicago Police, Tulsa Police, Austin Fire, the Army National Guard, and so many others, helped me grow as a science and security professional. As much as I laud their intellect and professionalism, I offer that they are even better human beings.”

Reposted from Center for Homeland Defense and Security

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Social marketing uses commercial marketing principles (e.g., solving a customer’s problem with a product or service) to achieve socially beneficial ends, such as health and safety.

Building upon previous research, Dr. Claudia Parvanta, a USF College of Public Health professor who specializes in social marketing and health communication, and colleagues helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (CDC/NIOSH), interviewed company leads across the United States about their experiences and perceptions of COVID-19 testing.

Testing was promoted early in the pandemic as a critical tool to ensure workplace safety.

The study, “In Search of a Value Proposition for COVID-19 Testing in the Work Environment: A Social Marketing Analysis,” was published in September in the journal IJERPH.

“In reviewing qualitative data from the original study [which looked at barriers to COVID-19 testing among U.S. employers], I saw repeated comments about COVID-19 testing products,” Parvanta said. “There were comments about the tests and their costs, accessibility [the study was conducted in early 2021, before rapid tests were widely available] and how the testing had been communicated from state and federal agencies to employers and then their workforce. I suggested we reanalyze the data using a social marketing framework: product, price, place and promotion—the so-called four Ps of social marketing.”

What Parvanta and her colleagues found was that employers felt that PCR testing for COVID-19, which requires a reading from a lab, had a poor “value proposition.” In other words, noted Parvanta, the benefit of testing—which was being able to return to work quickly if results were negative—was negated by a variety of factors, including the time it took to get PCR test results, its uncomfortable administration, the logistical arrangements necessary for worksite use and the lingering positivity in individuals who no longer were infectious or experiencing symptoms.

“COVID-19 testing has evolved since the study was done,” Parvanta acknowledged, “and now anyone should be able to acquire a home antigen test kit. The larger issue from a workplace health perspective is using these results, which have a high false-negativity rate, to allow employees who had COVID-19 to return to work and trust that employees administering the test at home are getting accurate results. Our study suggested that communications about testing, or any mitigation tactics, could be targeted to industries based on how employees perceived their risk of exposure to air-borne diseases.”

According to Parvanta and her colleagues, this is the first study to apply a social marketing approach to employer experiences and perceptions to COVID-19 testing.

“Besides providing a detailed snapshot about this period in the pandemic, it demonstrates the use of a social marketing analysis in occupational safety and health (OSH),” Parvanta said. “The Florida Prevention Research Center used social marketing to improve citrus worker safety early in the center’s existence, but social marketing is much more widely seen in chronic and infectious disease prevention directed to the public at large. Publication with this research team in this journal could lead to more social marketing in OSH and, hence, more voluntary adoption of health and safety behaviors in the workplace.”   

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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USF College of Public Health’s Dr. Michael Edwin, professor of epidemiology and population ecology of disease transmission, says the future of COVID-19 infections can, contrary to recent debate, be forecasted using data-driven mathematical models.

He and colleagues present their findings in “Combining predictive models with future change scenarios can produce credible forecasts of COVID-19 futures,” which has been published in Plos One.

They examined how their current COVID-19 forecasting models could be combined with scenarios of plausible future behavioral changes, such as changes in uptakes of vaccinations and compliance with social mitigation measures, to estimate the likely future paths the virus may take in a setting.

According to Michael, data-driven models can provide useful predictions of the pandemic future.

“Our contribution in this paper is to show that provided the parameter space of compartmental models, such as our extended SEIR model, is not entirely depleted by the previous history of the pandemic, and timely information regarding the arrival of new variants is provided through real-time surveillance, then these models can be used together with scenarios outlining plausible future changes in public compliance with vaccination and behaviorally-based protective measures in order to estimate the likely future paths that may be taken by the pandemic in a given setting,” he said.

These findings are significant, according to Michael, who said it indicates that these types of models may have the structure and information in them to produce more credible predictions for the pandemic, making them important informational tools to be used in predictions.

Michael said that while this data-driven modelling approach has allowed him and his colleagues to “faithfully reproduce the temporal evolution of the pandemic, modelling systems, such as this which depend on the entire previous history of the pandemic have been criticized as not being able to predict the future course of a highly uncertain and complex pandemic.”

Therefore, they wanted to see if this could be resolved by ensuring that model parameters were not too “constrained or depleted by past data, data on variants are provided as they emerge, and by modelling plausible future scenarios of changing population adherences to vaccinations and social measures.”

Michael said they fit their model to data from the start of the pandemic to September 24, 2021 to see if forward predictions generated by their modelling system could match the future omicron wave that emerged during the winter of 2021/2022.

“To our pleasant surprise, the results showed that our model was able to predict this future wave provided the omicron virus emerged on November 1, 2021, had a transmissibility rate two times higher than that estimated for the delta variant, and natural immunity waned over 2.5 years,” he said. “Indeed, we also showed that because immunity is not permanent, the pandemic is unlikely to fade away but that its future will be marked by repeat waves with sizes determined by the both the levels of immunity in operation during variant emergence, its transmissibility and immune evasiveness.”

Michael says their modelling framework uses live data as it comes in to update model parameters and add new structures.

“This allows us to incorporate impacts related to changing environmental/behavioral drivers of transmission, such as community trends in compliance with social protective measures and vaccination uptake and the emergence of new variants, on important parameters such as transmission rates and development of both vaccine-induced and natural immunities,” he said.

As for the pandemic future, the key result emerging from this work is that immunity is not permanent and that we should expect to see repeat waves, according to Michael.

“The size and emergence of this wave will depend in a complex fashion on the interplay between levels of natural immunity established and operating at any given future time in the population and the transmissibility/immune evasiveness of emerging variants,” he said. “Provided immune evasiveness does not increase significantly and virulence of the new variants is similar to that observed for omicron, then it is also possible that while we may see repeat waves of rising cases, these will not lead to major hospitalizations.”

The major unknown in this scenario, he says, is whether a more immune evasive variant that can counter the protection afforded by natural immunity may emerge.

“Models can not only uncover key drivers that govern continual transmission and resurgence, but also point to experimental investigations required to resolve the contributions of these drivers more directly. Our finding that the pandemic is unlikely to fade out with waning of immunity but will most likely oscillate with repeat waves forming in the future also indicates a need to continue monitoring the pandemic and to continue to study the factors behind such persistence,” he said.

Michael says their models shows that vaccine-induced immunity is less robust and lasts less than natural immunity.

In fact, he says the pandemic will not fade away, but will instead oscillate with formation of repeat waves going forward due to waning of immunity and arrival of variants.

“This means that repeat waves in the near future will largely be driven by wanning of vaccine-induced immunity, and that it will be high levels of natural immunity, that is immunity derived from infection, that will ultimately allow control of the pandemic. Natural immunity is already around 85 percent in most U.S. communities as a result of past infection and from breakthrough infection of vaccinated individuals. This immunity is also likely more diverse than vaccine-induced immunity meaning that it will be more robustly protective against variants too,” he said.

All of this suggests, according to Michael, that we have arrived in a complex immunity landscape in which ensuring high levels of naturally acquired immunity will be more important than COVID-19 vaccination for influencing viral transmission.

“However, as natural immunity will also wane over the longer term, repeat waves can also be expected from this waning in the longer-term future. In fact, natural immunity will oscillate around herd immunity levels (but will not quite reach it sustainably) as repeat waves of infections rise and fall going forward,” he said.

This suggests that as long as we are able to protect the most vulnerable subpopulations against disease perhaps through repeat vaccinations, natural immunity while not be able to prevent repeat waves from forming (because it will fluctuate) but will act to contain the size of any forming repeat waves, according to Michael.

Both Hillsborough County and the County Department of Health (DOH) are partners in this work.

“We benefited greatly from the questions they [Hillsborough County and the DOH] raised regarding the likely future course of the pandemic. These questions helped shape some of our thinking while undertaking our research, particularly with respect to ensuring that our results also met these policy concerns,” he said.

Michael says they continue to update their model forecasts every two weeks in order to provide updated forecasts to the county and DOH officials.

“Our work helps in allowing health officers and city commissioners to not only appreciate how the pandemic may be evolving but also to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons for the continual transmission of the virus, including the complex integrated impacts of changing levels of vaccinations, social measures and natural immunity on pandemic evolution,” he said. “Further, our simulations of how best to control the pandemic by increasing either or both social measures or vaccinations allow them to inspect the relative importance of either control measure, and when they might have to consider these options.”

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health

The post Making COVID-19 infection forecasts more credible appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Tampa-based health care startup Verséa has given thousands of diagnostic COVID-19 test kits to the University of South Florida for use by students on all three campuses. This gift – valued at over $1.1 million – aligns with Verséa’s and USF’s shared commitment to supporting the development and health of the Tampa Bay community.

“Verséa is a Tampa founded and based business and we both recognize and value the important role world-class educational institutions like USF play in the future of the region,” said CEO and co-founder Sean Fetcho. “As a high-growth integrated health care company focused on innovative therapeutics and diagnostics that help improve people’s lives, we are happy to be able to support the safety and well-being of USF students, faculty and staff.”

“USF is committed to the health and well-being of our students, and we are always interested in creative ways to achieve that goal,” said Donna J. Petersen, USF’s chief health officer.  “Verséa’s generous gift of COVID-19 test kits will help us help our students take care of themselves and protect others around them.”

Petersen, who also serves as senior associate vice president of USF Health, interim associate vice provost for student health and wellness, and dean of USF’s College of Public Health, added that the university’s Student Health Services team is partnering with offices across the three campuses to get these home test kits into students’ hands to quickly determine if any symptoms they are experiencing are due to COVID-19.

“If positive, students will know immediately that they need to stay home, seek guidance from Student Health, notify their instructors and avoid social gatherings,” she said. “All of this will facilitate access to needed care and help prevent the further spread of COVID-19 on our campuses. We are grateful for this gift as it helps us keep our campuses safe.”

“These test kits will be a valuable resource, especially during cold and flu season, so our students know if they have COVID-19,” said Dr. Joseph Puccio, executive and medical director of USF Student Health Services. “With information, they can determine if they need to isolate and not infect their classmates and faculty or staff. Test kits are key to promoting community health.”

Verséa has rooted itself in the greater Tampa community and prides itself on being an innovator and leader in medical diagnostics and therapeutics. The company’s growth has been fueled by locally recruited and cultivated talent filling critical roles, along with national leaders in health care relocating to the area to work at the company’s Tampa headquarters.

Distribution of the test kits began this month and continues through numerous groups on USF’s Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee campuses. Although the focus is on student locations and programming, the kits will also be available to faculty and staff upon request.

“We are grateful to Verséa for this gift that helps keep our students, as well as our USF and Tampa communities, safer and healthier,” said USF Foundation CEO Jay Stroman.

Reposted from USF Foundation

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USF College of Public Health alum Charles Ford was recently selected as a 2022-2023 Gilman Scholarship alumni ambassador. He will serve as an official representative of the U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program.

The scholarship enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad, providing them with skills critical to our national security and economic prosperity.

As alumni ambassadors, these representatives provide testimonials about their Gilman Scholarship experiences at campus presentations and offer application tips via written articles, videos, webinars and special events.

Ford, a Tampa native, earned his BS from Florida State University in 2018 and his MPH from the COPH in 2020. In addition to receiving his graduate degree from the COPH, Ford also completed a graduate certificate in infection control.

“I chose to attend the COPH because of the preeminence and history of the public health program for educating and training world-class public health professionals,” Ford said.

During his time in the program, Ford focused his studies on the dual epidemiology and global communicable disease concentrations and is most proud of serving as treasurer for the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Student Association.

In 2019, in his second year at USF, Ford began his first public health career experience at the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) in Hillsborough County as a human services program consultant in the HIV Surveillance Program. In this role, he worked to conduct and coordinate public health surveys for people living with HIV/AIDS with the CDC Medical Monitoring Project.

“Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be difficult for graduate students and this is one obstacle I overcame while simultaneous working and studying full-time,” Ford said, “Supportive classmates and peers who are willing to grab food after stressful exams can make all the difference in graduate school. The skills and principles I gained while at the COPH were foundational in my success as a public health professional, and the connections I have made during this time have greatly influenced my career path.”

In May 2020, Ford graduated from the COPH and transferred to the epidemiology department of the FDOH where he began work as a long-term care facility co-lead in the COVID-19 pandemic response efforts.

In this role, he directly applied the skills he learned at the COPH to assist contact tracing, case investigations, outbreak management and so much more.

“The opportunity to work as an epidemiologist on an emerging disease in my home community was both exciting and nerve-racking due to the novelty and severity of the virus,” he said.

In October 2020, Ford moved to Miami and began working as an applied epidemiologist at the FDOH in Miami-Dade County and most recently started his career as an infection preventionist (IP) with HCA Florida Aventura Hospital.

There, he promotes and delivers high quality, patient-centered care by assisting with the administration of infection prevention policies, procedures and programs.

“The most exciting part of my job is the application of the knowledge and skills I learned during the infection control graduate certificate,” he said.

As an infection preventionist, he identifies, investigates, reports and monitors the incidence of nosocomial infections among patients and personnel, and implements policies and procedures to prevent cross-contamination.

In June 2020, Ford was selected as a Gilman alumni ambassador after completing a nine-week medical service internship with the NGO Humanity and Community Development Projects in Ghana. Following his service internship, he completed a follow-up service project where he spoke to first-generational college students about his experiences abroad at organizations in Tallahassee, such as the Southern Scholarship Foundation.

“I am incredibly honored and excited to be selected as a Gilman alumni ambassador and to get the word out about the Gilman Scholarship to as many eligible students as possible,” he said.

As for future plans, Ford wants to continue growing in his career as an IP by obtaining certification in infection control and becoming a certified professional in health care quality.

COPH Alumni Fast Five:

What did you dream of becoming when you were young?

As a child and young adult, I dreamt about becoming a famous saxophonist and world-renowned jazz musician.

Where would we find you on the weekend?

On a weekend you would find me lounging by the pool with an adult beverage and a good book.

What is the last book you read?

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” by Rebecca Skloot.

What superpower would you like to have?

My all-time desired superpower is elemental control (i.e., control of the elements—earth, water, fire, air).

What’s your all-time favorite movie?

All-time favorite movie is Pixar’s “Ratatouille.”

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

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Among these impressive discoveries and advancements, one researcher in USF Health has created a nationally acclaimed interactive dashboard to track COVID-19 and another is developing novel COVID-19 therapeutics. Another faculty member has received NASA funding to improve human spaceflight conditions, while her colleague is creating new defenses for wireless network security systems. And in USF Health Morsani College of Medicine a professor has made outstanding contributions relevant to Alzheimer’s disease.

These are just a few of the faculty research achievements newly recognized with USF’s Outstanding Research Achievement Awards. This year’s awards recognize 26 faculty members—the largest group to date—for their important achievements.

“The University of South Florida’s reputation as a top research university is powered by the discoveries and innovations of our faculty members,” said USF President Rhea Law. “I congratulate each of the outstanding awardees on all they have accomplished in their work of advancing knowledge, finding solutions and transforming lives.”

The largest internal recognition of its kind at USF, the annual nominations are submitted by deans, department chairs, center and institute directors, and associate deans of research. The nominations are reviewed by members of the USF Research Council. Each faculty member receives $2,000 with the award and recognition at an event later in the fall.

Here are this year’s COPH awardees:

Dinorah Martinez Tyson, PhD, MPH, MA
Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Science and Practice
College of Public Health

Recognized for exceptional contributions to the field of public health through efforts to address and reduce health disparities among ethnic minorities and underserved populations in the U.S. and Latin America.

Dr. Martinez Tyson is noted for her outstanding contributions in cross-cultural perspectives to the study of cancer health disparities. Her research focuses on identifying the best models and methods for adapting instrumentation and proven interventions to address health disparities across the cancer continuum. She led an exploratory sequential mixed method study, which employed a series of iterative and group consensus-building approaches, to translate and culturally adapt the previously validated CaSUN measure into Spanish, for Latino cancer survivors. In 2021, she was awarded a highly competitive PCORI grant to develop a culturally adapted online couples’ communication program for Latina breast cancer patients, and brought together a diverse and highly skilled academic and community-based research team to undertake this challenging project.

Jason Salemi, PhD, MPH, FACE
Associate Professor, Concentration Lead for the PhD Program in Epidemiology
College of Public Health

Recognized for seminal work in translational science related to COVID-19 transmission and mitigation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Salemi is a nationally recognized epidemiologist with expertise in birth defects, surveillance methodology, evaluation, and research. He built a comprehensive, interactive dashboard to track COVID-19, which received national attention and has been an invaluable resource for researchers, advocacy groups, county commissioners, and citizens. In 2021, Dr. Salemi conducted approximately 350 interviews to local, regional, national and international media outlets regarding COVID-19 transmission and mitigation. His presence was also evident in eleven presentations he made regarding COVID-19 at regional and state-level venues including the Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners and the Emergency Medical Planning Council. He also engaged with Publix Super Markets, Inc. to lead various townhall discussions with employees regarding COVID vaccination. Dr. Salemi had 14 publications in 2021, received the 2021 Griot Drum Community Hero award from the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists, the Above and Beyond Coronavirus Distinction (ABCD) award from the Society for Epidemiologic Research, and was selected as a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology.

Monica Uddin, PhD
Professor, Global and Planetary Health
College of Public Health

Recognized for distinguished contributions to the field of public health for genomics research to identify predictors for stress-related mental disorders related to depression and PTSD.

Dr. Uddin’s innovative research seeks to identify genetic and epigenetic predictors of stress-related mental disorders, with a particular focus on depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. A central theme of this work is the recognition that lived experience has a substantial impact on risk for mental disorders, and that this risk is likely mediated in part by changes to genomic biology. In 2021, Dr. Uddin was awarded duration of grant funding for two important projects for which she serves as MPI and that all address genomic factors in traumatic stress and mental health: Epigenomic Predictors of PTSD and Traumatic Stress in an African American Cohort; The impact of traumatic stress on the methylome: implications for PTSD; and Transgenerational Epigenomics of Trauma and PTSD in Rwanda. In addition, she and her colleagues published four articles in 2021 with two additional manuscripts in press.

Thomas Unnasch, PhD
Distinguished University Professor, Global and Planetary Health
College of Public Health

Recognized for distinguished contributions in translational science related to COVID‐19, modeling, projections and mitigation during the pandemic.

Dr. Unnasch’s long‐term research has focused on vector‐borne diseases; his laboratory is involved with developing new tools to enhance the efficiency of the surveillance activities and development of molecular based methods for the detection of the black fly vector in Africa and Latin America. In 2021, Dr. Unnasch’s work with USF colleagues on the development of mathematical algorithms to use data collected from screening pools of vectors—such as COVID‐19 pools—to quantify the intensity of exposure in affected human populations resulted in his being one of the experts at USF and in Florida identified early in the pandemic to assist in explaining the status of transmission and mitigation.

Excerpt reposted from USF Newsroom

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USF College of Public Health Dean Donna Petersen will broaden her presence at the university by immediately assuming the role of chief health officer and interim associate vice provost for Student Health and Wellness.

The purpose of this decision comes in an effort to allow the goals outlined in USF’s Strategic Plan to come to fruition, and to make the USF community an overall safer and healthier place, according to a universitywide email sent Wednesday by President Rhea Law.

Petersen’s new duties include being the voice for employee and student health concerns at the university and being a vital communicative bridge between USF Health and external support units that promote wellness. She will also head a collaborative mission to implement ideal financial and organizational structures that support accessible and qualitative services at the university. She will hold these positions through Aug. 7, 2023.

Along with her formal duties, Petersen said she must approach the positions with compassion and personability to represent the community as a whole.

“The other aspect of the position is to consider the health needs of the entire community, not just students, but all of our employees and to create an environment and a culture that supports and promotes the health of the university community,” she said.

“We know we have a responsibility to contribute to the greater good of the Tampa Bay community and we know we will do that better if we take care of ourselves and also serve as role models for other organizations.”

Law said Petersen was a perfect fit for these positions due to her experience handling the pandemic as the chair of the USF COVID-19 response taskforce.

“Dr. Petersen’s outstanding management of USF’s response to the global pandemic ideally positions her to craft how we can address ongoing needs for health, wellness and support among all members of the university community,” Law said in the email.

Guiding the university through challenging times taught Petersen more than just how to deal with issues relating to COVID-19.

“I think we all learned that it wasn’t just testing and quarantine that mattered, it was how we reimagined work, reconfigured spaces, applied technology, educated the community, promoted transparency, communicated with all constituents and adapted policies that collectively … allowed us to experience fewer cases than other similar institutions,” she said.

“It is also important to note that we shared our expertise freely with the larger community. Public health requires a collective response.”

Petersen is not leaving her current position as a dean, as these roles are an addition to her responsibilities at the university.

Assuming these positions will allow her to more directly offer support to students, staff and the community as a whole, and implement public health measures to boost safety measures at the university.

“In these new roles, I will be actively practicing public health myself, with a clear imperative to create systems and structures that support student and employee health and create a culture that contributes to student success, our strategic plan and making USF a great place to work,” Petersen said.

Reposted from The Oracle

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