This story originally published on July 15, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30th anniversary celebration.

“USF was chosen as the place for Florida’s College of Public Health,” Dr. Peter Levin wrote in 1984, “because of the broad base of knowledge found in the many colleges of the University and the unique Tampa location.”

Levin, the college’s first dean, expounded further, noting that not only faculty from the colleges of medicine and nursing, but from business, education, engineering, natural sciences and social sciences were “key to the development of the college.”

Three decades of growth and innumerable success stories later, former Fla. Rep. Samuel P. Bell III shed more light on the founding of COPH.

Like many created entities of any kind, it all started with one person’s idea and another person’s decision to act on it.

The idea person was Robert Hamlin, a graduate of the Harvard University College of Public Health. He brought his idea to Bell, dubbed “the godfather of the college” by Charles Mahan, another founder who was COPH dean from 1995 to 2002.

“He had retired to Florida and realized that there was not a college of public health in Florida,” Bell recalled of Hamlin. “He contacted my staff director, John Phelps, with the idea, and John and I discussed the idea and decided that we should pursue the project. When we began the effort, we discovered that there had not been a college of a public health created anywhere in the country for more than 20 years, and most emphasis was on clinical health.

From left: Dr. Donna Petersen, dean of the USF College of Public Health, the late Robert Hamlin and Rep. Sam Bell, “the godfather of COPH.”

“As a member of the Florida Legislature, I could see the results of public health problems – mental health issues, alcoholism, child abuse, heart attack and stroke brought on by lack of exercise and obesity, infant mortality, etc. – yet there was no focus to address these issues. In addition,” Bell said, “there was a shortage of trained public health workers as problems grew and population increased.”

Where to establish the college as a physical entity turned out to be fairly obvious. Logic dictated that the state’s first college of public health had to be part of a public university that had a medical school and was located in an urban area, and USF was the only institution in the state that met all three requirements.

“There was no bill,” Bell said of the necessary legislative action that followed. “The college was first created by a line item in the state appropriation. Of course, we had to work the proposal through the Board of Regents and the USF administration.”

All of it moved with surprising quickness and ease, he said, underscoring an idea whose time had come. Naturally, it didn’t hurt that its biggest proponent was in prime position to do it the most good.

“The College’s success must first recognize the man who made it all possible,” said Dr. Heather Stockwell, the first faculty hire in the college’s Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

“Without Sam Bell,” she said, “there would be no COPH.  Before our college was formed, there were no schools of public health in Florida. It was through the vision and leadership of Sam Bell that our college was formed and its funding secured in its early years so that it could grow and develop into the College we are all so proud of today!”

From left: Dr. Martha Coulter, Dr. Heather Stockwell and Dr. Peter Levin, first dean of COPH, ca. 1988.

“Sam Bell was absolutely committed to the idea that there needed to be a strong college of public health in this state,” Dr. Martha Coulter agreed. “He single-handedly got absolute support for us from the state legislature, so that we were not dependent completely on federal funds and training grants.”

“There was not much opposition to the effort,” Bell said. “It really flew under the radar. I was in leadership during all of this time and was chair of the appropriations committee in the House for the years 1985 through 1988, for four sessions. Before that, I had chaired the rules committee and was majority leader, so I was in a position to get support. After the College was initially approved, I was able to guide funding.”

If founding the college had seemed relatively easy, running it in the early days was not. Being the only college of public health in Florida created a heavy work load at the same time it underscored the demand for what a college of public health delivers.

The first year, Coulter and the other two faculty members in the Department of Community and Family Health traveled regularly to teach at the Florida Department of Health offices in Tallahassee and at USF-Sarasota, as well as in Tampa, said Coulter. There simply was no one else to do the job.

From left: Jennifer Harrell, filmmaker and documentarian Frederick Wiseman, Dr. Marti Coulter and the late James Harrell in an undated photo.  The Harrell Center is named for Harrell and his wife, Jennifer.

“Of course, this was before you could take things online,” she said, “and it certainly was a lot easier for us to go there than for all of them to come here.”

Simply finding space was another challenge. Originally housed on the first floor of the present Continuing Education building, the fledgling college wouldn’t see its own building for another seven years.

Community and Family Health had a particularly hard time finding a permanent home, Coulter said. It would reside alongside the college’s other departments in the present Continuing Education building, then move to the first floor of the University Professional Center, then find space in the Florida Mental Health Institute (now Behavioral and Community Sciences) building.

“I had to bend my head down to get into the attic to get into my office,” recalled Dr. Paul Leaverton, first chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

“Then we took over the auditorium. It used to be a basketball auditorium – just wherever we could find room, and that was where we were ’til ’91, when we moved into this building. We kept moving around in funny little quarters, so this building was really nice – and it still is.”

COPH groundbreaking ceremony for it’s $10-million building, March 1990.

Artist’s rendering of the COPH building.

A royal opening

Almost everyone expects fanfare at any major debut, the opening of a new building at a major university posing no exception, but probably no one expected the kind of pomp and circumstance that played at the USF College of Public Health’s opening of its own building in 1991.

A month before the building’s official dedication, two weeks before faculty and staff even began moving in, the first lecture was delivered by a scientist, and yet the affair was literally regal.

With an entourage of attendants by her side, Professor Dr. Her Royal Highness Princess Chulabhorn of Thailand, a biochemist, arrived in a police-escorted motorcade of limousines to speak about her research on medicinal plants.

Leaverton talked recently about how the building’s unusual opening came to pass.

“In the late ’80s, I had done a lot of work in Thailand with NIH and Thai scientists on the epidemiology of aplastic anemia,” Leaverton said.

Thailand had an unusually high rate of the rare but serious blood disorder, Leaverton said, and the group set out to investigate why.

“My colleague over there was probably the top scientist in Thailand. He was a really good medical scientist,” he said, “and he was also the king’s doctor.”

The king was a believer in education, Leaverton said, and his four children eagerly shared that belief. All earned advanced degrees, and two earned doctorates. Leaverton’s Thai counterpart was a friend of Princess Chulabhorn’s, having done post-graduate work with him in Germany.

“So even though she’s a multimillionaire as the king’s daughter, they took it to heart that they should give back to the community. So she got an education in science and directs her own research institute, mostly in cancer.

“I had not met her, but I had heard of her and knew she liked to give lectures occasionally, so I asked my friend, ‘Do you think she’d ever like to give a lecture at USF?’ He said, ‘I’ll ask her.’

A short time later, back at USF and ready to re-settle into his routine, Leaverton had a surprise waiting for him.

“The next thing I know, my phone’s ringing, and it’s the ambassador from Thailand asking if I’d like the princess to speak at USF.”

The answer was yes, and the ambassador personally flew down from Washington to make the arrangements.

“He sounded pretty upset,” Leaverton said, “but they have to handle the royal family with kid gloves. Turned out he was a wonderful man, and he came down a couple of times. We had to meet with the mayor of Tampa and the chief of police to make sure the princess got a motorcade from the airport to her hotel – she took over three floors at the new Wyndham – and from her hotel to USF and back again, no stopping at red lights. So it was quite a show.

“The building wasn’t scheduled to open until December, but to make her schedule, she could only come in November, so the dean opened the building just to accommodate her, which I thought was nice.

News story on Thailand’s Princess Chulabhorn’s royal visit for the COPH opening, November 1991.  Pictured with the princess (left) are Drs. Peter Levin (second from left) and Paul Leaverton, who watch as a student from Thailand extends a greeting.

“It was a packed audience. She gave a very technical lecture that no one understood except the biochemists, but it was a big show, and we got to have lunch with the president of the university. It was a royal opening for the college.”

When the college first opened for classes, Leaverton said, a few students were admitted even before the departments were created. After they were created, the departments didn’t last long initially.

Dean Levin created the initial four of COPH’s present five departments and recruited four professors from other institutions to chair them.

From left: Dennis Werner, senior research coordinator, Jan Marshburn, research assistant, and Lesley Bateman, PR and development coordinator, move into the new COPH building in November 1991.

Leaverton was brought in from the National Institutes of Health, and before that, the University of Iowa, to head Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Dr. Stewart Brooks would leave the University of Cincinnati to lead Environmental and Occupational Health. Dr. Stan Graven came from the University of Missouri to direct Community and Family Health. Dr. Tom Chirikos from Ohio State University would take the reins in Health Policy and Management.

“In early ’85,” Leaverton recalled, “the dean got to thinking maybe we didn’t need departments. We could just follow what he called the Texas model – no departments, just one big happy family. But the four chairs who had been recruited to be chairmen of departments objected mightily, and besides, I tried to convince the dean, students tend to think of themselves along discipline lines anyway, whether you call them departments or not. So he relented and re-created the four departments.”

Typical of the new departments, “Epi and Biostats,” as Leaverton calls it, consisted of two people. He and Stockwell were it for the time being, but that was about to change, although maybe not as quickly as they would have liked.

“The legislature was wonderfully generous,” Leaverton said. “They gave us a lot of tenure-track lines, almost unheard of in the creation of a new school. As chairman of Epi and Biostats, I had six tenure-track lines. Two of them were filled by Dr. Stockwell and me, but we had to recruit for the other four.

“Dr. Stockwell and I both had pretty high standards – she had been at Hopkins. We had a file of about 30 people. We rejected all of them. We didn’t think they were good enough to be on our faculty.

“So we had to start the recruiting process all over again, and she and I did all the teaching for that first year, because we were a two-person faculty. We did have a few adjuncts, maybe, here and there, and we eventually filled the faculty positions for the next year.”

Leaverton chaired the department until 1995, then remained as a professor for another six years. He retired as an emeritus professor in 2001.

Memories

The founders and early leaders of COPH have more memories than just those that deal with the college’s inception and its early operation, more memories than space could ever allow, including a few on the lighter side.

“When she was president of the university, she knew everybody on campus,” Coulter recalled of Betty Castor, “and when I got the funding to start the Harrell Center, I was walking across the campus behind the administration building, and she was walking back to her office from somewhere. She saw me all the way across the grounds and yelled out, ‘Hi, moneybags!’

Sam Bell and Betty Castor, former USF president and Florida Secretary of Education, at the COPH 25th anniversary gala, December 2009.

“She knew everybody and supported everybody, and no matter that I was an associate professor in the College of Public Health, she knew.”

“I recall conducting a final exam in epidemiology one evening in which two unusual events occurred,” said Leaverton. “First, a student came to me in obvious pain. She had accidentally put the wrong kind of eye drops in her eyes, which were nearly swollen shut. Okay, she was excused.

“Then, another lady went into labor. We called 911 and sent her to the hospital. It turned out to be a false alarm – she delivered two weeks later. Maybe my exams were too frightening.”

“Being a fan of Chevy Chase and SNL, especially his take-offs on the clumsiness of President Gerald Ford, I purposely stumbled up the auditorium stairs and fell against the podium on the stage, scattering papers everywhere,” Mahan recalled. “This was at one of our graduation convocations. Instead of the audience laughing at my parody of Chevy, they all thought it was real and rushed to the stage to help me – very embarrassing! I think it’s funny now, but I have a very bizarre sense of humor.”

The particulars vary from person to person, but the size, scope and overall success of the college are unanimous themes for the people who were there in its earliest days. In one way or another, all said they could not have foreseen in 1984 what it is on its 30^th anniversary.

“I don’t think we could have imagined,” Coulter said, “the ability to move as strongly as it has in the direction of being a research one university – USF as a whole and the College of Public Health as a leader in that regard. I don’t think we quite envisioned it that way. That has been very exciting.

“Also, the expansion of the whole global health department, the global health focus, and the ability to do international public health work with researchers that are in the global health unit. That really hadn’t been anticipated,” she said.

“I think Donna Petersen coming here was a huge milestone,” she added. “I think she is absolutely extraordinary. Without Donna’s leadership, we could not have gone as far as we’ve gone. She’s given us a lot of support for community-based research, and that’s been critical in terms of the direction that we’ve gone.”

“I’m very pleased with how well our students have done,” Leaverton said. “It’s kind of shocking, in a way. As I look back, we must have organized the curriculum pretty well, Heather [Stockwell] and I. We had to basically design it from scratch. We set up some pretty good courses, and they essentially stayed the same for a long time. We had some good faculty who kept the standards high.

COPH student Sherri Berger as a model for a National Public Health Week poster, March 1996.  She now is chief operating officer at the Centers for Disease Control.

“I actually saw some memos that said, ‘Don’t take Epi and Biostats at the same time, it’s too hard. You have to take them separately,’” Leaverton said. “Sometimes I would take some pride in that. We never made soft courses. Our courses were tough.”

Past, Future and Present

The few shortcomings the college’s founders can think of actually only further reflect the college’s success.

“If I could change one thing,” Stockwell said, “it would be to have a much larger building. The college’s rapid growth has resulted in a need for more space. Maybe we could add a floor?”

“Our beautiful building should have been built to be able to add additional stories,” Mahan concurred.

For Leaverton, it would be an epidemiology laboratory, something he said he and Dr. Doug Schocken, a cardiology professor, tried twice to get funded by NIH.

“If I could do that over, I would pursue that even more vigorously. But we tried,” he said.

Mahan said he sees the college’s future dependent upon “a stronger marriage” between the college and the state and local health departments.

Former COPH Dean Dr. Charles Mahan (above left, below right) participates in an exercise with the Hillsborough County Fire Rescue Hazardous Materials Unit, April 2000.

“What if you got your medical degree or nursing degree but never saw a patient and never went into a hospital? Well, why are we giving people public health degrees, and they never set foot in a health department, and they don’t work in the community, which is where the problems are?”

Mahan believes that national accreditation of health departments should be as universal as accreditation for colleges and universities, and that closing the gap between public health education and practice is the way to achieve it. COPH would help a health department earn accreditation, with the understanding that once it became accredited, it would become an “official outpost of the USF College of Public Health.”

“I hope the emphasis on a strong research program will continue,” Leaverton said. “Public health programs need to be based upon sound science, of course. I hope that never changes.”

“What I would like to see the college do is continue on the path that it’s on in terms of really being a leader in the country in community-based research,” Coulter said, “increasing its role as an intermediary between research and practice, and having a committed sense of responsibility to community service providers.”

“Over the next five years,” Stockwell said, “I think – or at least I hope – that public health in general will focus on a positive approach to health, not just disease prevention but improving the quality of health and health maintenance for all our citizens. To do this there will need to be a strong interdisciplinary approach to developing strategies that focus on primary prevention and sustainability at the community level.

“I think our college is uniquely positioned to address these issues,” she said. Its interdisciplinary educational focus positions it as a leader in public health education, and our emphasis on the development of high-quality, collaborative, community-based  research seeks to provide critical information to policy makers to address current and future public health concerns locally, nationally and internationally.”

From left: Susan Webb and Drs. Michael Reid and Phillip Marty establish the Public Health Leadership Institute with a grant from the CDC and ASPH, January 1995.

Stockwell remained with COPH until 2014, when she retired as professor emerita.

But between all the memories of COPH’s beginnings, all its history, successes, scarce shortcomings and envisioned futures stands the here and now.

“If imitation is the greatest form of flattery,” he said, “then we should be flattered, because every university in the state wants a college of public health.

“The College is having impact around the world. I had thought it would be a mecca for public health in Florida and a source of information and advice for state decision-makers. It has done that and much more. We now have graduates working on every continent. Our faculty are internationally recognized. Our students are studying and doing internships around the world. We are attracting major grants, and the research continues to grow.

“I am very proud of what the College has become and what it has done to touch lives around the world,” the college’s “godfather” concluded.

“It has far exceeded my hopes and expectations.”

The USF College of Public Health solves global problems and creates conditions that allow every person the right to universal health and well-being. Make a gift today and help the COPH to advance the public’s health for the next 30 years and beyond. 

Story by David Brothers, USF College of Public Health; photos courtesy of COPH and various faculty.

Related media:
30th anniversary website

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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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April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month

The USF College of Public Health is teaming with the university’s School of Social Work and Department of Criminology, both part of the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, to offer students a new graduate certificate in child advocacy studies.

The certificate is comprised of three courses—one on child maltreatment, one on victimology and the third on family and community violence in public health. Each course is worth three credits.

By the end of the certificate, students will be prepared to work in the child welfare field, especially in the area of child protective services.

“Students will learn about early intervention and prevention to ensure their advocacy begins at the earliest possible point of connection with the family,” noted Christopher Groeber, an associate in research at USF’s School of Social Work who teaches the course on child maltreatment. “Students will also learn about the importance of lived expertise and experience of those they will be serving and learn to focus on listening to hear not just listening to respond.”

According to Dr. Shelly Wagers, an associate professor of criminology who is teaching the victimology course, students will also get experience by examining real-life cases.

“This provides students with both knowledge and actual practice identifying important aspects of the cases and how to then make real service connections for children and families,” she said. “Students get hands-on experience through simulations that prepare them for the realities of working with families experiencing difficulties and are in contact with the systems trying to help them.”

Why a certificate in child advocacy studies now?

“There’s a huge need for graduate-level education on child advocacy,” said Dr. Abraham Salinas-Miranda, a COPH assistant professor and director of the Harrell Center who is teaching the public health segment of the certificate. “Many professionals work with children and adolescents and get very little training to recognize and respond to cases of child maltreatment. Knowing the phone number to report is not enough; we must also strive to understand the system of services and challenges that professionals and families face when trying to address the needs of victims of child maltreatment.”

Better training not only allows those working in child advocacy to more effectively serve children and their families, it also helps prevent burnout—a condition that plagues the field.

“There is an extremely high turnover rate of child protective services workers, which is cause for concern in a field that requires in-depth knowledge of the issue and skilled practitioners to ensure children and families receive quality care and effective intervention services,” said Dr. Sandra Stone, assistant dean of graduate studies who helped bring the certificate to fruition. “Better prepared workers are more likely to remain on the job and provide higher quality services to children and families in their care.”

According to Salinas, this interdisciplinary certificate course is valuable to anyone working in child advocacy.

“Any professional who interacts with children should apply so they can become more knowledgeable about adverse childhood experiences and child maltreatment—and learn how to effectively address them.” 

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Guatemala has the third-highest rate of femicide (the homicide of women based on gender) in the world. And according to UN Women, 21.2 percent of Guatemalan women have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime.

USF College of Public Health (COPH) MPH student Caitlynn Carr, who is also a doctoral candidate in applied anthropology at the university, is studying intimate partner violence (IPV) among Guatemalan women.

As part of her doctoral research, funded by a Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, Carr is conducting field research in Guatemala examining the barriers that indigenous women face when it comes to seeking help for IPV. Carr, who’s concentrating in maternal and child health, said examples of those barriers include governmental corruption, lack (and cost) of transportation, inability to take a day off from work, childcare issues and the fact that women rarely travel alone in the country. Other factors include racism against indigenous people, a machismo ideology, lack of services provided in Indigenous languages (there are 21 in Guatemala), fear of leaving a partner, economic dependence on a partner and others.

Carr’s research will also focus on ways to curb IPV.

Carr said she got interested in IPV in Guatemala when she visited the country with a Habitat for Humanity project in 2011. In 2015, she conducted research focused on Indigenous women’s psychosomatic/distress symptoms resulting from IPV.

“After conducting semi-structured interviews with 40 women and receiving surveys from 80 women, I found that only one of the participants sought formal services for the abuse that she experienced, illuminating a disconnection between IPV services and Indigenous women in rural areas of Guatemala [services are more prevalent/common in more urbanized areas],” Carr said.

Carr is currently living in Guatemala, immersing herself in the culture and living in the communities where she’s conducting her research. She cooks with community members, goes to church with them and builds friendships. Establishing these kinds of relationships is an important step to curbing IPV, Carr noted, as community-based and community-led programs have had more success than governmental programs at reducing IPV in Guatemala.

“Governmental programs oftentimes lack funding and resources, as well as personal outreach, which leads to limited accessibility and success. Oftentimes, nonprofit organizations fill in the gaps where governmental organizations fall short,” Carr said.

Carr­, who plans on pursuing postdoctoral research on violence prevention and IPV after graduation, hopes the research will illuminate potential avenues for violence prevention among Indigenous communities when formal governmental efforts fail.

“The research situates violence against Guatemalan women from a life course perspective and examines social determinants of health from both a socioeconomic and sociohistorical lens,” Carr said. “I’ll share study results with all stakeholders in the form of a comprehensive report and/or professional presentation with the hope of informing federal policy surrounding these issues.”

For information about family violence prevention and resources, visit the COPH’s Harrell Center.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post Examining intimate partner violence in Guatemala appeared first on College of Public Health News.

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 46 percent of U.S. youth—or 34 million children—have had at least one adverse childhood experience by age 18, and more than 20 percent have had two or more. 

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events such as the death or incarceration of a parent, child abuse, divorce, witnessing or being a victim of violence—in their own home or in the community—bullying, child neglect or living with someone who has been suicidal or had a drug or alcohol problem. 

School nurses, who have regular access to children and their health concerns, can be a vulnerable child’s first line of defense. To help train school nurses in recognizing and responding to ACEs, the Hillsborough Public School System recently invited experts from the USF College of Public Health (COPH) and USF College of Behavioral and Community Sciences (Criminology) to its Summer Institute for School Nurses. The program also focused on trauma-informed care (TIC). 

COPH faculty members who presented at the event included Dr. Abraham Salinas-Miranda, an alum and assistant professor who also directs the college’s Harrell Center on the Study of Family Violence, and Dr. Shelly Wagers, a USF associate professor of criminology (also affiliated with the Harrell Center). This event was organized in partnership with COPH’s Public Health Innovation and Research (PHIRE) and Lifelong Learning Academy, along with  USF Health’s Area Health Education Center and Hillsborough County Public Schools.  

“ACEs can exert a negative impact on school performance and learning,” notes Salinas-Miranda. “Many traumatized children experience physical and emotional distress that often are mistaken for other things, such as behavioral issues or inattentiveness. It also results in higher referral rates to specialized services in and outside the school. Trauma-related symptoms and their impact on the students’ lives also result in increased absenteeism. For all these reasons, it’s very important to have school personnel who can recognize ACEs and know how to implement TIC.”

Salinas-Miranda also pointed out that it’s important to prevent and address ACEs to improve population health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), five of the 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. are associated with ACEs, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, diabetes and suicide. Individuals with four or more ACEs have about 30 times greater odds of attempting suicide, compared with those with no ACEs.

As part of the training, the nurses—400 in all—were immersed in what’s called problem-based learning (PBL) and simulation. They examined a case of child abuse (delivered to their phones via a web-based app) that’s likely to be seen in schools. The free app was developed with the help of one of the Harrell Center’s community partners, Humanistic Technologies, Inc. The nurses then worked through a series of questions (for example, what are the facts, what are the core trauma concepts, what are next steps) to help solve the problem.

“By equipping school nurses with knowledge and practical tools they can use to recognize childhood traumatic stress and its consequences on school health, we hope an improved response can be implemented in the school setting and reach families and children with needed referrals or services,” Salinas-Miranda commented. “Thus, we believe this training provided not only knowledge and skills, but also a form of advocacy to improve our community response to child traumatic stress.”

What are next steps? Salinas-Miranda and colleagues urge students and community partners to advocate for ACE prevention. They also hope to offer more training on topics related to family violence to health and social service professionals. These programs will be offered through the COPH’s Lifelong Learning Academy. In addition, the group also plans to offer graduate training on several other child advocacy study topics for a brand-new interdisciplinary graduate certificate in child advocacy studies.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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USF College of Public Health (COPH) doctoral candidate Marlene Joannie Bewa was recently recognized for her many accomplishments and skills in the second-annual women’s edition of Tampa Magazines “Women to Watch 2022.”

Bewa is a medical doctor and winner of both a USF Outstanding Young Alumni Award and Golden Bull Award. She also is a United Nations Young Leader, among many other accomplishments.

Tampa Magazines feature article “Charging Forward” concentrated on USF alumnae and highlighted such prestigious Bulls as USF President Rhea Law, Melissa Seixas, state president of Duke Energy and Elizabeth Krystyn, co-founder of Baldwin Krystyn Sherman Partners & Baldwin Risk Partners.

“It’s a great honor to be included in this list alongside other women leaders such as Rhea Law and other prominent women in the Tampa Bay region,” Bewa said. “It’s a sign that our university and city value excellence, service, diversity, equity and inclusion, and they are keen to ensure gender equality including in academia and leadership roles.”

Bewa said she was encouraged to participate in the article by USF Foundation’s India Witte, who is also the former executive director of USF Women in Leadership and Philanthropy (WLP). 

“I am a WLP-endowed scholar, and I was actively involved in WLP’s Women Who Ignite Student Engagement (WISE) Advisory Council,” Bewa noted. “The magazine’s team were following me and were familiar with my research and global engagement work.”

Not one to rest on her (many!) laurels, Bewa is currently hard at work defending her PhD proposal, which focuses on understanding adolescents’ experiences and factors affecting access and utilization of modern contraception methods in Benin Republic (West Africa), where she is from.

She’s being supervised in her research by the COPH’s Drs. Claudia Parvanta, Russell Kirby, Cheryl Vamos and UC Berkeley’s Dr. Ndola Prata. She’s supported by the Schlumberger Foundation, a nonprofit that encourages science and technology education.

Bewa was also selected to receive an emerging scholar award by the Society of Family Planning to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on access to contraception nationwide in the United States, research she is conducting with the COPH’s Harrell Center Director Abraham Salinas-Miranda. 

And as if that hasn’t been enough, Bewa has also co-authored a paper selected as a top-cited article of 2020-2021. The article was published by Wiley in the American Journal of Community Psychology and is titled “Youth participatory approaches and health equity: conceptualization and integrative review.”

“I would like to give a special shout-out to the Tampa Magazines team, USF Alumni Association, WLP and the USF Foundation for their endless commitment to uplift women,” Bewa said.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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It’s not hard to see how suicide is a public health issue. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one person dies by suicide every 11 minutes in this country. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., and certain groups, including young people, seniors, veterans and those in the LGBTQ+ community, are at particularly high risk. 

Stemming Suicides with Outreach

To help stem suicides among vulnerable populations in the area, Dr. Joe Bohn, a USF College of Public Health (COPH) assistant professor and director of community engagement, teamed with students, faculty and community partners to begin a series of outreach events (e.g., virtual and in-person town hall meetings, coffee socials, etc.) for the suicide-prevention group Zero Suicide Partners of Pinellas.

Zero Suicide Partners Pinellas works with area behavioral specialists, health providers, schools, government and community partners to help prevent suicides.

The series has been coined the Growing Hope project.

“Last summer, I was participating in meetings for the Zero Suicide Partners of Pinellas and I asked what was being done in terms of community outreach,” Bohn said. “Nothing had been started, so I made a pitch for building an outreach program based on four vulnerable populations of focus—youth, LGBTQ+, veterans and seniors. The chair and community partners liked the idea, so we started planning last fall. We held our first event in November as a virtual town hall for the LGBTQ+ community and our second one for youth was in person in April.”

Bohn teamed with the COPH’s Harrell Center and its director, Dr. Abraham Salinas-Miranda, to plan for data collection for the intervention. He was also joined in the effort by doctoral student Kelli Agrawal and MPH student Alexandria O’Connell. 

Growing Hope aims to increase awareness of available resources and engage with community partners and subject matter experts to deepen connections and community resiliency.

“Originally, I thought I would just be helping with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) proposal,” Agrawal said. “However, once I started attending the planning meetings, I became really interested in the Growing Hope project. I love that the focus is on community, connection and strengths-based approaches to suicide prevention. This really aligns with my interests in mental health, resilience and community-engaged research.”

O’Connell was the moderator for the last town hall on youth and suicide, attended by about 80, including 10 youth participants. 

“We were able to get the youth perspective as well as the family and provider perspective,” O’Connell noted. “By sharing these experiences, you see the diversity and the underlying threads. It helps give kids and families a place to start to have conversations.”

One of the goals of the town halls is the development of what Bohn calls a “web of hope,” which he defines as “a self-sustaining and interwoven organic network of resources spanning all levels, from individuals to family to organizations and communities. It’s an idea still in its infancy,” Bohn said, “but I envision it tapping into people, processes, policies and technology. The idea is to reach the people with the greatest need who are not connected.”

Compassion, Connection, Conversation

In addition to their work with the town halls, both Agrawal and O’Connell recently presented posters on suicide prevention.

O’Connell used information gleaned from the LGBTQ+ Growing Hope town hall to develop a poster presentation entitled, “Compassion, Connection, and Equity: Keys to Community-Based Suicide Prevention for the LGBTQ+ Community of Pinellas County.”

The poster was compiled with the help of Drs. Bohn and Salinas-Miranda, Agrawal and Kristin Mathre, a family therapist, chair for the Zero Suicide Partners Pinellas and COO of Suncoast Center, a Pinellas County center offering behavioral health, substance abuse and other social support services. It explored the suicide risk factors the LGBTQ+ community faces as well as some protective measures, such as having LGBTQ+ allies in the schools.

“What we found from the research is we have to take a more targeted, narrow approach when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community and suicide,” O’Connell reported. “The LGBTQ+ community encompasses a broad spectrum of people. For example, gay people over 65 who have lived through the AIDS crisis have different needs and perspectives than a young trans person might.”

Agrawal’s poster, “Speaking Into Being: Examining the Role of Communicative Resilience in LGBTQ+ Suicide Prevention,” which used data collected from the LGBTQ+ suicide prevention town hall, was recently presented at the USF Graduate Student Research Symposium, held in March.

According to Agrawal, participants expressed the importance of peer and professional support, affirming identities, reducing stigma and normalizing kindness, among other things.

“We learned that communication that supports connection, compassion, hope, equity and empathy can enact resiliency in the LGBTQ+ community and help prevent suicides,” Agrawal said.

Next Steps

Bohn and his team are planning for the next town hall (to be held virtually on June 14) and upcoming in-person meetings including a series of veterans’ coffee socials and others, yet to be scheduled.

“The best thing we can do is to continue working to get community partners together to help drive more outreach. For youth, you have to get information out to parents and guardians. For other vulnerable populations, you want to look at social media distribution through groups and other personalized connection pathways,” Bohn said. “I think what’s important is extending our network through tailored channels where people know others with special or common interests.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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It’s something of a catch-22: Sleep is essential to good health, yet sleep is often reduced after traumatic events like sexual violence.

What can be done to improve the sleep of traumatized people, especially those experiencing sexual trauma and living in low-to-medium income countries with multiple health disparities? 

Conducting research is a first step.

 Cité Soleil: “Violent” and “Marginalized”

To better assess the relationship between sleep disturbances and non-partner sexual violence (NPSV), a team of academic researchers from around the country, including those from USF’s School of Social Work Interdisciplinary Research Lab (SWIRL), studied men and women post-earthquake in Haiti’s Cité Soleil. 

Violence, and in particular sexual violence, affects residents of Cité Soleil disproportionately said the researchers.

It’s a city that’s been characterized as “an understudied urban shantytown … [with the] nation’s most violent and most marginalized neighborhood.”

It’s been estimated that 50 percent of the residents of Cité Soleil have experienced NPSV versus the 7.68 percent in Haiti in general. Despite that grim statistic, the authors are quick to note that most Cité Soleil residents are law-abiding and hard-working.

The research team partnered with Haiti’s OREZON Cité Soleil (Organization for the Renovation and Education of the Cité Soleil Zone) to conduct the work.

The study, “Self-reported sleep disturbance patterns in urban Haitians: A latent class analysis,” 

has several co-authors, including SWIRL Director Dr. Guitele Rahill and Swirl Associate Director Dr. Manisha Joshi, both with USF’s College of Behavioral and Community Sciences (CBCS), School of Social Work and Dr. Abraham Salinas-Miranda, USF College of Public Health associate professor and director of public health initiatives for SWIRL. Salinas-Miranda is also the director of the Harrell Center.

Other authors include the CBCS’ Dr. Kerry Littlewood, New York University’s Dr. Judite Blanc and Florida International’s Dr. Christopher Rice. The research was published in the International Journal of Mental Health in February.

Violence and Sleep Disturbances

The researchers studied not only sleep disturbance among men and women who live in violent Cité Soleil, but they also examined the relationship between NPSV and sleep disturbances. Thirdly, they modeled associations of NPSV experience and sleep disturbance risk factors separately for men and women.

“This study has several unique contributions,” Dr. Rahill said. “The first is in its intentional focus on an understudied community and population whose race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status have rendered it nearly invisible with respect to health research. Our findings indicate that women and men in Cité Soleil are at great risk for suboptimal sleep patterns. In engaging and involving Cité Soleil residents in this study, we respond to an ethical imperative that sleep health and trauma interventions are a moral obligation, a human right and an issue of social justice for individuals worldwide, regardless of their race, ethnicity, country of residence or socioeconomic status.”

The study involved over 500 men and women, most in their late 20s, from Cité Soleil. Interestingly, the researchers found that more men than women in Cité Soleil reported NPSV, although female victims of NPSV reported more sleep disturbances than male victims. 

“The data were obtained through an anonymous survey, which made it easier for men to report having been victims in a setting where non-heteronormative sexual activity is stigmatized and illegal,” Dr. Joshi explained. “But, although more men [31.7 percent] reported experiencing NPSV, women who reported NPSV [22.9 percent] were more likely to report disrupted sleep. Women who reported more frequent sleep disruption were also more likely to report suicidal ideation.”

Other findings:

• Overall, 58 percent of the Haitians studied experienced insomnia (nearly two times the 30 percent reported in the U.S.) and 40 percent restless sleep (more than five times the 7.7 percent prevalence reported outside of Haiti). 
• Sleep disturbance score for NPSV victims was significantly higher than that for non-victims.
• Women and men who reported a higher level of suicide intentions and poorer physical health had increased odds of often having sleep disturbances.
• Women who reported often having sleep disturbances were also more likely to be depressed (although this was not found in men with frequent sleep disturbances).

Sleep Health and Quality of Life

“Sleep health is critical to overall health and quality of life,” noted Dr. Salinas-Miranda. “Yet the amount of sleep is often reduced after traumatic experiences, thus affecting overall sleep health. We encourage physicians, clinicians, public health advocates and policymakers in global and humanitarian settings to accentuate sleep health and NPSV prevention in disaster- preparedness programs, and to incorporate sleep-health promotion activities in interventions implemented after large-scale traumatic events. Even with limited access to medical professionals, sleep-health awareness and health-promotion activities can empower Cité Soleil residents to take charge of their sleep health and improve their overall health and quality of life.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

The post Sleep, sexual trauma and recovery appeared first on College of Public Health News.

Born and raised in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, USF College of Public Health (COPH) alumna Dr. Lynette Menezes immigrated to the United States after completing her undergraduate degree in microbiology and master’s degree in social work (MSW) from the University of Mumbai.

Menezes was first introduced to the field of public health at the age of 14 when she began volunteering to teach “street children,” children who depend on the streets for their survival. These children may live on the streets, work on the streets, have support networks on the streets or a combination of the three. 

In high school, she began volunteering at a leprosy hospital visiting with patients and witnessing firsthand the immense suffering from a stigmatizing disease.

“These visits motivated me, my siblings and friends to form a youth group and raise awareness about leprosy,” Menezes said. “Our hope was that by promoting early detection and treatment we could prevent the neurological effects of the disease and, thus, reduce the stigma associated with the accompanied disfigurement.”

Upon graduating with her microbiology degree, Menezes began working in a hospital laboratory—but she wanted more.

“Through my networks, I learned that a rural hospital serving leprosy patients was in need of a basic lab. I joined the Mukta Jeevan Leprosy Hospital and established a lab for the hospital providing basic lab diagnostics,” she said. “Living amidst leprosy patients for nearly two years was a life-changing experience. I knew that I needed an advanced degree if I wanted to make a difference in improving the health of marginalized communities. As there was no public health degree in India at the time, I enrolled and graduated with a MSW degree with a concentration in health.”

When Menezes made the move the U.S to join her husband, she jumped at the opportunity to earn an advanced degree in public health.

“I met with Dr. Bob McDermott, the chair of the former Department of Community and Family Health, who introduced me to Dr. Martha Coulter, former director of the Harrell Center,” she said. “They were both very welcoming and convincing about the PhD program at the COPH, and I was excited to enroll.”

As a new immigrant Menezes said she had little idea about the American educational system and the expectations of graduate students, but that everyone at the college was kind and welcoming.

“One of the senior students, Brenda Morrissette, now Dr. Brenda Joly, who was a year ahead of me in the PhD program was particularly helpful and supportive. I was so moved by her sincerity and graciousness to help me, and we have remained friends since,” she said. “Growing up in a competitive milieu in Mumbai, she was a wonderful role model for me. The other activities I enjoyed the most were the classroom deliberations and debates with faculty and peers on any given public health topic and learning from and commiserating with my peers after hours when the going was rough.”

Graduating with her PhD in public health, Menezes has been with USF Health ever since.

“After my first stint at the Chiles Center as a data analyst for the National Friendly Access Program, I was hired by the USF Division of Infectious Disease to expand their global programs and joined as an instructor and director of USF Health International” she said. “In 2006, I expanded these programs across the entire USF Morsani College of Medicine (MCOM), becoming the founding director of the USF Health International program at MCOM and an assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Disease.”

Menezes is currently the assistant vice president and assistant dean for international affairs at USF Health MCOM. In her roles, she’s been building and supporting international programs, faculty and student exchange in 38 countries.

She also founded the international medicine scholarly concentration for medical students where she teaches global public health principles and pioneered a robust medical student exchange program between USF and 25 academic institutions in 14 countries. The students engage in research as well as clinical training.

“In these roles, I have loved the opportunity to create, sustain and support global programs for USF Health students and faculty across the four colleges by mobilizing the diverse faculty and staff expertise at USF Health,” she said. “As a bonus, I have gotten to interact with some of the smartest and most interesting individuals from varied cultural backgrounds at USF and abroad. I’ve learned so much from their personal and professional stories of overcoming obstacles on their journey to success.”

COPH Alumni Fast Five

• What did you dream of becoming when you were young?
  • A doctor.
• Where would we find you on the weekend?
  • Volunteering with the homeless, reading, walking in a park or cooking.
• What is the last book you read?
  • “Paradise,” by Abdulrazak Gurnah.
• What superpower would you like to have?
  • To convert the skeptics that climate change is real and must be reversed.
• What’s your all-time favorite movie?
  • “The Sound of Music.”

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

The post Dr. Lynette Menezes honored with USF COPH Outstanding Alumni Award appeared first on College of Public Health News.

During the first full week of April each year, the American Public Health Association brings together communities across the United States to observe National Public Health Week (NPHW). It’s a time to recognize the contributions of public health and highlight issues that are important to improving our nation.

To celebrate NPHW, the USF College of Public Health (COPH) hosted an array of events throughout the weeks of March 24- April 10 in conjunction with this year’s theme, “Public Health Is Where You Are.”

Kicking off the celebrations on March 24, the Maternal and Child Health Student Organization hosted their 13th annual symposium virtually. Participants learned how a shared vision for health equity is necessary to address the unique challenges for maternal and child health globally.

Next, the USF Harrell Center hosted its annual Run Family Violence Out of Tampa Bay 5K from March 26-27. Faculty, staff, students and friends of the college ran, walked, jogged and more to raise over $10,000. One hundred percent of the funds raised benefited community-academic projects addressing family violence.

The celebration continued with the Chiles Center Synergy on March 30. In celebration of its 25th anniversary, the center hosted a special event to share the current research and practice initiatives of faculty, staff and students. Participants were able to walk around in groups to see all the amazing research happening at the center.

The COPH Annual Picnic was finally back in person at the USF Riverfront Park on April 1. COPH faculty, staff, students, alumni and their family members gathered together for an afternoon of food and fun.

Give Life Day took place in the COPH lobby on April 5. COPHers were able to make a difference in someone’s life by donating blood with OneBlood. They also learned how to keep themselves and their friends and family healthy and register with the National Marrow Donor Program and Donate Life Florida.

The college then held its annual NPWH Awards Ceremony recognizing the hardworking students, faculty, alumni, staff and other professionals in the field with awards and accolades. View the ceremony here.

Students from every corner of the college were recognized with awards and scholarships from groups as diverse as the Canada Research Grant by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program to Florida West Africa Linkage Institute Tuition Waiver Award.

Dr. Dinorah Martinez Tyson was given an Excellence in Teaching Award (you can read her story here).

“This is something we are always very excited about and look forward to each year,” COPH Dean Donna Petersen said. “This award is incredibly special because it’s given by the students.”

A great honor, as well, is to be recognized by your college for the work you’ve done post-graduation.

“We look for people who are impacting the community and serving in leadership positions,” Petersen said. “And this year we are fortunate to honor two outstanding alumni.” They are Dr. Lynette Menezes and Commander Lane Vause (click on each name to view more).

Lastly, Petersen introduced the 2022 Florida Outstanding Woman in Public Health Award, given to Dr. Cynthia M. Harris (read more of her story here).

“This award was created in 1988 by Dr. Charles Mahan, who was the dean of the COPH. He believed that through his career it was the women around him who actually made things happen,” Petersen said. “We received so many nominations and it’s always heartwarming and inspiring to see how many women are out there working very hard in a variety of areas to support public health and improve the quality of life.”

For World Health Day on April 7, the COPH hosted a “This Is Public Health Student Event and World Health Day.” Students were able to stop by and meet with COPH student organizations and enjoy an ice cream social. Later, students were able to meet and have a virtual conversation with students from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador.

Other events throughout the week included several service events, an internship/career fair and capstone project presentations. View all the events here.

For more photos from NPHW, click here.

Story by Caitlin Keough, USF College of Public Health

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