School Notes: School of Public Health
September/October 2016

Faculty, student honored

Two faculty members and a student were honored by the graduating class of 2016 for their exceptional skills in the classroom and in helping to train and prepare future public health leaders. Assistant Professor Nicola Hawley was named the 2016 Teacher of the Year for the passion she brings to the global non-communicable disease course she teaches and for her accessibility and thoughtful feedback. Shiyi Wang, the Distinguished Student Mentor, was selected for his support and insightful approach and his superb academic and thesis mentoring. Both are in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Yasmmyn Salinas, a PhD candidate, received the Teaching Fellow Award, a prize that recognizes a PhD student who plays an instrumental role in shaping the next generation of public health professionals. 

HIV/AIDS program expensive, but saves lives

While a UN program to suppress the spread of HIV/AIDS is expensive, the investment would increase survival, reduce the number of children orphaned by HIV, and contain the global AIDS epidemic, according to a study coauthored by the School of Public Health. Known as 90-90-90, the program has three objectives: diagnosing 90 percent of HIV-infected persons worldwide; linking 90 percent of identified cases to antiretroviral therapy (ART); and achieving virologic suppression for 90 percent of ART recipients. The cost is estimated to be $54 billion over the next ten years, but the study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that the investment would be cost effective. 

Yale faculty help state fight opioid epidemic

Experts from Yale’s schools of public health and medicine are partnering with the state of Connecticut to address an opioid epidemic that claimed hundreds of lives last year. Over the coming three months, Yale scientists will work on a strategic plan to reduce opioid abuse; the plan will be implemented over the next three years. Although overdose deaths in Connecticut have been caused by both heroin and prescription opioid misuse, in 2015, heroin alone was a factor in more than 400 deaths, an increase of more than 40 percent since the beginning of the decade. The drug is often mixed with other synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, which makes it even deadlier.