First published on April 6, 2015 in observance of the COPH’s 30^th anniversary celebration.

Dr. Karen Liller has been a child and adolescent injury prevention researcher for a quarter of a century.  A professor in the USF College of Public Health’s Department of Community and Family Health and a member of the Florida Injury Prevention Advisory Group, she worked with a Tampa General program called More Health in the mid-1990s to help evaluate its health education programs.  One of those programs promoted bicycle helmets for children.

Dr. Karen Liller

“I evaluated their program, and I started observational studies of children’s bicycle helmet use in Hillsborough County,” Liller said.  “I was monitoring this because, as part of the Injury Group, I knew this bill had been denied two times before.  We were all part of the advocacy efforts with Tallahassee between the state of Florida program, More Health and the college to get this passed.”

A natural proponent of requiring kids to wear helmets when they rode their bikes, Liller had her interest piqued.  From casual observation alone, she surmised that few were.  Determined to put scientifically collected numbers to the problem, she and a cadre of her graduate students set about the task of collecting data.

From low expectations to high hopes, then action

“I was focused on unintentional injuries in children,” she said.  “Nationally, this was a huge issue.  I had some colleagues at Harborview Injury Prevention Program in the state of  Washington, and they were some of the early leaders nationally in helmet use.  So I naturally got very, very interested and started looking, started conducting observational studies, because I didn’t know:  What is the helmet use rate? “I developed and performed community observations,” she said.  “I would hire my grad assistants, and they would stand on corners doing observational surveys of kids in helmets.  We mapped out the whole county, and I had them on streets everywhere.  We had a whole protocol of where we wanted to be, because we wanted to capture observational surveys in many different places – in community sites, in schools, not near schools, etc., so we had a good idea of what was going on in Hillsborough County.”

As low as Liller’s expectations were, reality turned out to be even worse.

“I can tell you, it was pitifully low,” she said.  “For children under 16, it was about three percent.”

Liller set out on a concentrated campaign to get a helmet law passed.  It already had languished and died in two previous legislative sessions, and she was determined to make the third try count.

“I did many radio spots and TV spots and Good Morning Whomever promoting bicycle helmets as the law was working its way through the legislature,” she recalled.

“I wanted to get ahold of it,” she said, “because I knew this was a national issue, and I knew states were starting to pass laws.  Florida is a tough state to get a law passed for children’s injury prevention.  In fact, we just got the booster seat law done.  We were one of the last states to do that.  I knew it was going to be a battle.  So, I knew I’d better get started early.” Liller learned through focus groups that legislators weren’t the only people she needed to convince.  Some parents didn’t want a law telling them to put helmets on their kids’ heads.  After all, bicycle shops already were selling more helmets.  McDonald’s was giving out helmet discount coupons and safe rider certificates.  Why should there be a legal mandate?

“My answer to them was, ‘Do you have a driver’s license?  Yes?  Well, the government told you to do that.’

“It always surprised me when parents would argue with me on this issue.  The famous one for me was, ‘I rode a bike all the time when I was a kid, and I never got a head injury.’  I’d say, ‘When was that?  Where was that?’  And it would be some idyllic little community in some other state, and I’d say, ‘Try riding a bike in Tampa now, and get back to me on that.  The world has changed.  The roads have changed.  The danger level has changed.”

Clearly, the law’s chief proponent had taken on a daunting task, but being part of the state’s first college of public health had its rewards.  Dr. Charles Mahan, state health director under Gov. Lawton Chiles, was a valuable ally.  COPH was still the only school of public health in Florida, and COPH professors were trekking all the way to Tallahassee to teach weekly classes at the state health department office.  Through the department’s close working relationship with COPH, Mahan already had known Liller and had been supportive of her efforts.

Dr. Charles Mahan

“We knew that Karen was really focused on getting a child helmet law through, and certainly, we were very much in favor of that,” said Mahan, who was COPH dean by the time the measure was in its third incarnation.  Mahan had known Chiles since well before the latter began his two terms as governor.

When Mahan was a medical student at the University of Florida, Chiles became interested in his work on infant mortality.  Personal and professional bonds soon followed.

“When he was a senator, I would go around the country and hold hearings with him,” Mahan recalled.  “He would do all the talking, but I would help him figure out what to say, depending on what the issue was.”

Mahan knew the governor well enough to know he was predisposed to children’s health issues.

“Any issue related to children was something that Gov. and Mrs. Chiles were supportive of,” Mahan said.  “Anything that needed his support on children’s issues for safety or survival or whatever, he would tell the staff – me and everyone else – to make sure that it got supported.” With the encouragement of a popular governor, the proposal was gaining momentum.  The awareness raised by the news of the pending legislation helped engender educational outreaches that helped the ball roll faster.

“Betty Castor, who became president of USF, was head of education at the time,” Mahan said, “and the school systems jumped right in with educational efforts.”

Those collective efforts eventually generated the irresistible momentum that carried the measure over the finish line.

“With Charlie’s support and the governor’s, on the third attempt, it was successful,” Liller said.  “And I testified and did a variety of things locally, as well, for the bill.  A colleague of mine also did a cost-effectiveness study, and he also testified with that in Tallahassee.  I think it was a combination of all of these things.  We kept sending the legislators our research findings, and with all the backing, eventually, in 1996, the bill passed.”

A victory not etched in stone

“Bike helmets are an investment we should make to ensure our children’s health and safety,” Chiles declared as he signed the bill onto law.

The measure became effective on Jan. 1, 1997, and for the next 12 months, it was easy for anyone to live with.  A violator would receive a warning and a bicycle safety brochure.  As of Jan. 1, 1998, however, that brochure was delivered with a $17 citation.  It was a light fine as fines go, and even it could be circumvented.

“After the first year, you could get a fine if the child was riding, was under the age of 16 and didn’t have a helmet on,” Liller said, “but you could get around that if you could show evidence of a bicycle helmet.”

That, of course, was only when the law was enforced, which, according to Liller, wasn’t – and still isn’t – very often.

“Police are very reluctant,” she said.  “I talk to them about how many tickets they’ve given, and usually the answer is ‘none,’ at least in Hillsborough County.  They’re very reluctant to stop a child on a bike.”

Nonetheless, she said, by 1998, helmet use had risen exponentially, to 67 percent in Hillsborough County.  So even without much enforcement, the law was accomplishing its purpose.

“I think the law has been great,” Liller said.  “We did an analysis of its efficacy.  We did show that helmet use has gone up, and we showed that injuries have gone down.  And that was great.  That was the intent of the law.  Injury prevention does its best, many times, when there’s a policy change or a legislative change, because it just reaches more people.”

Mahan agreed. “Having it as law is a big awareness raiser,” he said.  “It gets all over the papers and the news again and again.  The legislature is considering this measure.  That’s news.  The legislature passed it today.  That’s news.  The governor signed it into law.  That’s news again.  It went into effect today, so that’s news, too.

“For the majority of parents, who care so much about their kids, just the awareness-raising and then seeing other kids out there with their helmets on helped, but it took time.  As with any legislation, it takes about three years to get a good idea through.  It’s very hard to take a new idea on regulation to the legislature.”

“It was a very exciting time,” Liller said, “because, the first couple of times, I would go to the injury meetings, we’d work on the language of the law, and it just kept getting defeated.  The first year we did it, I think we just put it out there and said, ‘Let’s just see how it goes.’  The second year, we didn’t have the information about the penalty.  I still don’t like the penalty.  I don’t to this day.  But it was a really exciting process, and I’m so glad I was part of it.”

Still, Liller knows that no law is etched in stone.  The state threw a scare into helmet proponents and safety advocates in general when it partially repealed its motorcycle helmet law by limiting the requirement to riders under 21. “We were very afraid that they were going to repeal the bicycle helmet law, too, but so far, so good,” Liller said.  “They haven’t touched that law.  I think that’s because it’s for children.  I think if we would have had that helmet law for all ages, we would have been in trouble.”

“When I was at the state health office,” Mahan said, “the helmet law was a big plus, but at the same time, we lost the motorcycle helmet law, and that’s had tremendous consequences.”

The work continues

“We want it to become a norm,” Liller said of bicycle helmet use.  “We want it to be that, when these children have children, there won’t be any question when you get on a bike.  And we’re starting to see that.”

Mahan concurred.  He said he and his wife live two blocks from an elementary school, and the progress is easily visible.

“A lot of the kids are riding their bikes to school,” he said, “and every one of them has a helmet on.”

Work since the law’s passage has been geared toward bicycle helmet give-away programs.

“If you don’t have a helmet, we can find you one,” Liller said.  “We can find a program – Safe Kids, Tampa General, we can find somewhere to get you a helmet.”

Liller’s work on the law continues to influence safety initiatives.

“Our work has been in world publications about helmet use, about laws, about how it’s done,” she said.  “The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation wants to know about strategies, and it seems that the strategies that were developed in the ’90s – people are still really interested in those.  We were always pleased that our work is often cited as an example, even though many years have passed.”

Liller said she also is gratified to see the lasting validation of her and her colleagues’ methodology.

“It’s interesting that the work that we did is still being used.  If you run a program, you do some observational surveys.  You look at that helmet use on those kids.  You don’t just ask them.  You actually watch them.”

In the intervening years, Liller’s focus has shifted to high school sports injuries, but she remains committed to the legislation she helped to bring about, and she remains engaged with it, most recently as a content reviewer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Wisconsin Population Health Institute for strategies they want to propose for child safety seats – and yes, bicycle helmets. Her message for the naysayers remains the same.

“We’re not telling children they can’t ride bikes,” she said.  “We’re not telling children they can’t have fun or anything else we were accused of so often.  Basically, it’s just taking necessary precautions.  There’s been some literature that says we should let kids take more risks.  We don’t want to stop anyone from taking risks or having fun or getting exercise.  We just don’t want a child to die from a perfectly preventable head injury.  We’re smarter now.”

Story by David Brothers, College of Public Health.  Photos courtesy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, Helmets On Heads, County Mayo and other sources.

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First published on October 7, 2019 in observance of the COPH’s 35^th anniversary celebration.

Advocacy is as important in public health as data analyses and needs’ assessments.

But students have traditionally lacked advocacy experience.

In 2018, Dr. Karen Liller, a USF College of Public Health (COPH) professor specializing in injury prevention and health education, decided to remedy that situation by starting the Activist Lab at the COPH.

The group, which is run with the help of two research assistants and a six-student advisory board made up of graduate and undergraduate students, provides interdisciplinary advocacy, education, research and service opportunities for students to develop the skills that will promote their success as effective public health advocates and leaders.

The Activist Lab, directed by Liller, is the second such lab in the country, with the first being at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

Liller says she had been wanting to start a program like the Activist Lab at the COPH for a while, to compliment the Doctoral Student Leadership Institute she began as dean of the USF Graduate School, now known as the Office of Graduate Studies.

“I strongly believed students needed much more preparation in leadership and advocacy skills before they graduated,” Liller commented.

In just one year of its existence, hundreds of students have taken part in the Activist Lab’s educational and service opportunities, which include activism boot camps, seminars, guest speakers, journal clubs, writing groups, research efforts and public health in a minute videos. These videos—only 60 seconds long—have featured faculty and community leaders discussing pertinent public health issues, everything from the importance of voting to refugee health.

According to Liller, some of the Activist Lab’s first-year highlights include:

• work with Dr. Mark Roberts and other University of Pittsburgh researchers on a measles simulator for Florida (called FRED Florida Measles Simulator), which shows how cases of the viral infection can grow in an area with just a 10 percent drop in immunizations
• a gun violence prevention and advocacy seminar, held in partnership with USF Health and led by Parkland shooting survivors David Hogg and Emma González

Things won’t slow down for the Activist Lab anytime soon. In addition to the continuation of seminars, speakers and learning opportunities, the organization has the following things planned for the future:

• a boot camp on the prevention of firearm violence, scheduled for January
• a new program called “More Opportunities to Use Learned Advocacy” (MOULA), where students work with particular agencies, such as Moms Demand Action and the Guardian ad Litem program, on advocacy issues
• the launch of a new podcast series called “Advocation—Change It Up!” The first podcast features Dr. Jill Roberts, a COPH alumna and assistant professor of global health, discussing the importance of immunizations.
• an oral presentation on activism, to be delivered at the 2019 American Public Health Association (APHA) meeting in November

The Activist Lab serves as an exciting hub of learning and action for students to become directly involved in practicing leadership and advocacy skills, says Liller, who sees the lab’s numbers growing and its reach expanding beyond the college and university to the state, nation and world. 

“For example, with our podcast new persons will be reached and advocacy skills can be expanded and practiced,” remarked Liller. “Students can become part of our advisory board and really help shape the direction of the lab. They can participate in all of our events, and as we grow more and more opportunities will become available.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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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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From receiving awards to making presentations to attending a spirited reception, USF College of Public Health (COPH) students, faculty, staff and alumni left their mark on the annual American Public Health Association (APHA) Meeting and Expo.

The theme for this year’s event, attended by more than 10,000 public health advocates and held in Atlanta from Nov. 12-15, was “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Overcoming Social and Ethical Challenges.”

Here, some highlights.

Awards

Dr. Karen Liller, a Distinguished University Health Professor and director of the college’s Activist Lab, received the Distinguished Career Award from the APHA’s Injury Control and Emergency Health Section. The award recognizes an individual for their outstanding contributions and dedication to the study of injury and violence prevention.

In her three-page nomination letter, COPH Dean Donna Petersen hailed Liller as a “tireless champion of public health in all its many forms, though injury prevention has and remains her primary focus and passion.”

Petersen went on to outline Liller’s many roles in injury prevention through her distinguished 30-year career, including receiving millions of dollars in federal, state and local funding, producing nearly 200 peer-reviewed publications, teaching thousands of students, writing a textbook on injury in children and adolescents and being a leading contributor to media outlets looking for an injury-prevention specialist.

“I felt so honored to receive this award because it is truly an award from my peers in injury prevention, which means so very much,” Liller said. “After 30 years of work in this field, I still feel there is so much more to do, and I am just getting started! I am proud of my successes, and this award signifies my passion for preventing injuries and death among children and adolescents. I could not be more thrilled and look forward to the years ahead.”

COPH Associate Professor Dr. Jennifer Marshall, who is also director of the Sunshine Education & Research Center, received the Effective Practice Award from the APHA’s Maternal Child Health Section.

The Effective Practice Award is given to those whose work has made a significant contribution to effective public health practice within maternal and child health. Dr. Marshall’s co-leadership of the CADENCE program for patients with perinatal opioid use, co-development of the public health leadership training program, PHEARLESS, and her long-standing research and evaluation collaborations with Healthy Start and the Florida Department of Health led to her nomination.

“It was truly an honor to receive the APHA MCH Section Effective Practice Award,” said Marshall, who is also an alum of the college. “I was an APHA Student Fellow and then Senior Fellow over a decade ago, and I have been actively involved in the section since then as co-chair of the Child Care and Children & Youth With Special Health Care Needs committees. It was wonderful to be nominated by my long-time mentor, Russ Kirby, and to have Dean Petersen in attendance for the award ceremony at the Martha Mae Elliot luncheon.”

Research

Doctoral student Chinyere Reid received the APHA’s Latino Caucus Student Award plus a $250 cash prize for her research abstract titled, “Weathering the COVID-19 storm: Examining the influence of general stress, pandemic-related pregnancy stress and social support on the mental health of pregnant Latina women.”

According to its website, the Latino Caucus for Public Health, affiliated with the APHA, “represents and advocates for the health interests of the Latino community, both within and outside the APHA, while providing leadership opportunities for students and young professionals to engage in research, policy and advocacy efforts.”

Reid was presented with her award at the caucus’ 50^th anniversary gala held in Atlanta during the APHA.

“I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the recognition of my research efforts, especially as the presented study was an extension of my dissertation and adds to ongoing efforts in advancing perinatal health within Latinx communities,” said Reid, whose abstract was one of more than 30 considered for the award.

Reception

With temps in the 50s, a slight breeze in the air and Edison lights providing a festive glow, it was a lovely evening for the college’s annual gathering at APHA.

The festivities kicked off early with tasty appetizers and a private bar.

As per usual, Dean Donna Petersen welcomed attendees giving a special shout-out to COPH students, faculty, alumni, staff and friends of the college. She introduced videos highlighting recent news in the college, including renaming the COPH building after the college’s founder, Sam P. Bell, III, and a $100,000 gift honoring Bell from the Florida Healthy Kid’s Corporation in support of student scholarships.

Liz Bannon, the college’s new alumni officer, invited alums to whip out their phones and scan a QR code for a quick interest engagement survey. “I’m delighted to join the college and meet all of you,” Bannon said. “I didn’t earn a public health degree, but I am a legacy Bull. Public health already feels like home to me.”

Bannon also shared exciting news.

“Your COPH alumni scholarship fund has reached endowment level of $25,000, but as Dean Petersen said, we’re not stopping there! The new goal is $50,000 so that multiple $1,000 student scholarships can be awarded,” Bannon noted.

Development Officer Beth Ahmedic challenged the group to make a gift of any amount to any account.

“As Liz said, we’ve moved the bar for the alumni scholarship fund,” Ahmedic stated. “However, I invite you to consider making a gift to the Founder’s Fund. This fund was created by Sam Bell and allows college leadership to direct the funds to the area of greatest need.”

By night’s end, more than 130 guests visited Bulls Country in Atlanta. Before everyone bid farewell, Dean Petersen had one more new development to share. After 19 years of leadership, she is stepping down as dean of the college.

“The college is stronger than ever because of you,” Petersen said. “I’m leaving the dean’s office, but not the college. I look forward to seeing you at future events because I know you love the college as much as I do.”

Story by Donna Campisano and Natalie Preston for USF College of Public Health

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Dr. Donna Petersen, dean of the USF College of Public Health (COPH), delivered the college’s annual State of the College address in person to a packed Samuel P. Bell, III auditorium on Sept. 22.

This year’s presentation highlighted the college’s people, passion and potential. “Our people are the foundation of everything we do,” Petersen said, as she introduced the numerous new hires, promotions, new doctoral scholars and faculty, staff, student and alumni award winners.

“We recognize and thank all of these folks who not only enrich the college but also what we do collectively as USF Health to improve lives and create opportunities for our students and teams to learn and grow professionally,” Petersen said.

One who received special recognition was Dr. Karen Liller, a Distinguished University Health Professor, who was presented with the Cliff Blair Award for Excellence in Teaching. The award, named for the late COPH professor Cliff Blair who famously made difficult subjects easy to understand and who received the student’s teaching award seven times, is given to instructors who, according to the award’s website, “reach deep within and far beyond to provide extraordinary learning moments for students.”

“This award is so meaningful to me,” Liller said as she accepted the award. “I knew Cliff for many years. He always had time for you and was so approachable and funny. He was an amazing individual and I can’t thank you enough.”

Petersen then moved into highlighting the college’s passion—which is educating students and serving the community. Some statistics of note:

• The fall 2023 incoming class is comprised of 466 undergraduate students, 220 master’s students ​and 30 doctoral students​.
• Since May 2022, the college graduated 1,492 bachelor students,​ 314 master’s students​ and 36 doctoral students​.
• During the 2022-2023 academic year, the college’s faculty taught 83,254 student contact hours, up 2.5% over the prior year.
• A team, which included two COPH MHA students, took home second place in the CLARION Case Competition, a national competition that promotes the development of interprofessional relationships among health professional students.
• Two health sciences majors were recently elected USF Student Government president and vice president.
• One student who recently graduated summa cum laude was named a UG Golden Bull and was a Phi Beta Kappa inductee.

“Our faculty amazes me every year,” Petersen said. “Every year you teach more and more and more. And we can’t thank you enough. You help ensure the future of our field.”

Petersen went on to make note of the college’s main initiatives in 2022, including new curriculum collaborations with other areas of USF Health, such as the School of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences and the Taneja College of Pharmacy; instituting one-credit graduate courses; new graduate student boot camps that focus on things like writing and professionalism; the start of the Disease Intervention Specialist Training Academy (DISTA) and the Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice and its inaugural PHEARLESS cohort, devoted to workforce development.

She also elaborated on the strides of the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative, which now has 100% participation for all the maternity hospitals in the state; the achievements of the Center for Global Health and Inter-Disciplinary Research, which has active grants totaling $49.9 million;  the genomics program, which recently enrolled its largest MSPH class; and other programs like the COPH Lifelong Learning Academy, which awarded approximately 2,046 CPH and CHES credits in 2022-2023.

Finally, Petersen talked about the college’s potential, “where we are, where we’re going and what we want to do,” she said. And because potential takes funding, she also gave an overview of the college’s budget and grants and outlined some of the important work students and faculty are doing in the research realm.

“We are doing incredible work that is increasingly recognized by different groups locally and around the country,” Petersen commented. “We had 120 research proposals submitted last year. That’s an enormous increase over the prior year. And our active awards are up to an all-time high, from $19.9 million in fiscal year 2020 to $34.98 million in 2023.”

Petersen ended her address looking to the future, making mention of a variety of events to take place and acknowledging and thanking everyone involved in the college for their support and work.

She recounted a story she heard about a man living in New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. His dream, Petersen said, was to open a grocery store, because every time he saw someone carrying groceries on a bus, he knew it was likely the third bus they’d been carrying the groceries on as there were no nearby food marts.

“He said, ‘You know, they say you only live once. But that’s not the truth. You only die once, but you live every day. And every day that you live, you have to do something impactful. Have a few kids, get a job, pay your bills, grow old and die—that’s not why you’re here. My purpose is easy. It’s to serve.’ So, every day,” Petersen added, “do something that matters. Be kind. Be helpful. Because that’s what we’re about.”

To view the entire address, click here.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Even before COVID-19 reared its head, roughly 50 percent of U.S. adults reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.

Social isolation and loneliness are at epidemic levels, reports U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, prompting his office to recently issue a Surgeon General Advisory to raise awareness about the health impacts of social disconnection.

“It’s been an underappreciated public health crisis,” Murthy said in a press release, “that’s harmed individual and societal health.”

For example, adults who lack social connection increase their risk of premature death by 60 percent—about the same amount as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Older adults with limited human connection increase their risk of dementia by 50 percent. And loneliness can increase a person’s risk of heart disease and stroke by approximately 30 percent.

These sobering statistics, as well as prompting from USF College of Public Health’s (COPH) Dean Donna Petersen to address the issue, led the COPH’s Activist Lab to develop a program called “Let’s Chat.”

Let’s Chat is a community outreach program staffed by Activist Lab members who are available to chat and provide mental health materials to help end loneliness.

“The connection between loneliness and one’s health is astonishing,” said Dr. Karen Liller, director of the Activist Lab. “This is an epidemic among younger and older individuals and cannot be ignored. The Surgeon General’s report on this topic and his book ‘Together’ should be must-reads for the public health community.”

The first few Let’s Chat sessions were held at a local café, but members are now looking for new venues and partnerships.

“Over 25 individuals have signed up for the Let’s Chat Task Force, which is a partnership between the Activist Lab and the Florida Public Health Association,” Liller said. “Through the task force, we hope to learn from each other about effective strategies, implement the strategies and then evaluate our results. The ultimate goal is to provide ways to increase social connection and decrease loneliness across Florida and beyond.”

To get involved, contact the Activist Lab at COPHActivistLab@usf.edu.

Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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In the summer of 2022, after a rash of mass shootings, the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) convened a task force on gun violence prevention made up of experts from 13 member schools.

Dr. Karen Liller, a USF College of Public Health Distinguished University Health Professor and injury-prevention researcher, was one of those experts.

The task force worked to review existing literature, identify needs and gaps and develop recommendations for strategies informed by evidence that can be used by schools and programs of public health, as well as the ASPPH as an organization, to help fight gun violence.

In January, the ASPPH’s task force released its report,  “Gun Violence Prevention: An Academic Public Health Framework.”

“It was our goal to develop recommendations that could be implemented over time so that schools and programs [of public health] and the ASPPH could develop and help lead strategies for significant change in a consistent manner,” Liller said.

The ASPPH’s recommendations center on four domains:

• Education and training
• Research
• Policy and advocacy
• Practice

Liller said some of the specific recommendations for schools and programs of public health include:

• Incorporating gun violence prevention into curricula and creating new curricula if needed.
• Providing seed funding for research on gun violence prevention.
• Actively advocating for change.
• Practicing community-based participatory research. “Students should be participating in a wide array of areas including internships and practicums related to gun violence prevention,” Liller explained.

Liller said she also hopes the ASPPH will work to develop a legislative agenda for gun violence prevention and provide a resource site for the modules and curricula on gun violence.

“It was important for me and the entire task force to make sure this report does not just sit on a shelf,” Liller noted. “We were careful to develop recommendations that are doable and include not only what schools and programs can do, but how the ASPPH can support our efforts. We will monitor our progress with real-time tracking while the ASPPH formally reevaluates the progress of the report’s recommendations in three years.”

Participating in the task force was a career highlight, Liller said.

“Working with this group of scientists was so fulfilling,” she commented. “It was exciting to hear a diversity of ideas as to how we can make change. We worked together well, and everyone did their part to review the information and develop and revise recommendations.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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Advocation – Change It Up! is an exciting podcast from the University of South Florida College of Public Health Activist Lab.

The host, Dr. Karen Liller is a professor at the USF College of Public Health (COPH) and director of the Activist Lab. Each episode she is joined by a student co-host from the Activist Lab.

The Activist Lab prepares students to be exemplary advocates and leaders in public health. Visit their website to learn more about the Activist Lab’s education programs, outreach, research and more!

This episode focuses on injustices to marginalized groups (such as through hate crimes and victimization by extremist groups) and features leading academic and community advocates, Mike Deeson, Reverend Dr. Bernice Powell-Jackson and Dr. Jacob Glickman who provide historical significance, understanding of hate and recommendations for change.

Listen to the episode here.

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Dr. Karen Liller, a Distinguished University Health Professor in the USF College of Public Health, was recently named a fellow of the American Academy of Health Behavior (AAHB).

According to its website, the AAHB serves as the “research home for health behavior scholars committed to excellence and diversity in research to improve the public’s health.”

To be named a fellow, candidates must be members of the academy for five continuous years, have authored or co-authored at least 50 research publications and demonstrated service to the AAHB. Other criteria include being a principal or co-principal investigator of research grants totaling at least $1.5 million, being a principal or co-principal investigator on at least 25 research grants and/or presenting at least 75 scientific papers at national or international meetings.

“This is recognition of significant contributions to the field of health behavior research and demonstrated involvement in the AAHB,” said Liller, who is also director of the college’s Activist Lab. “My role, as I see it, is to continue to conduct and promote excellence in health behavior research and serve as a contributor to the work of the organization.”

To be voted a fellow by the AAHB’s board of directors, a candidate needs a two-thirds majority. Liller received a unanimous vote.

“It feels so gratifying to be recognized by the AAHB,” Liller said. “Being a fellow of the AAHB is an honor, as the organization focuses on meritocracy related to research while also working on strategies to mentor students and new faculty in the field. I see that advancing the research, education and service missions of the college and of my own research focused on child and adolescent injury prevention.”

Liller’s appointment will last as long as she is an active member of the AAHB.

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health

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