School Notes: School of Public Health
July/August 2011

Gates Foundation grant to improve global health

A recent Yale School of Public Health graduate has won a Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Margo Klar ’11MPH will pursue an innovative global health and development research project to reduce childbirth-related infections in developing countries. With the grant, Klar will introduce a clean, simple, and sharp umbilical cord–cutting device that is designed to reduce the incidence of infection related to poor delivery hygiene in developing countries. The device is called the Ceramic Umbilical Cord Finger Scissors.

Birth weight and mortality linked

An individual’s life expectancy is influenced by his or her weight at birth, with smaller babies living, on average, fewer years than their heavier peers, new research by Yale’s Center for Pediatric, Perinatal and Environmental Epidemiology suggests. Small body size at birth has been associated with increased risk of heart disease and stroke, while high birth weight has been linked with increased risk of obesity, diabetes, and some adult cancers. To learn how body size at birth influences adult mortality, the researchers, led by Michael B. Bracken ’70MPH, ’74PhD, the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Epidemiology, conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of previously published studies on the topic. Their analyses comprised nearly 40,000 deaths, including 11,400 from cardiovascular causes and 8,300 from cancer. Lower birth weight increased the risk of adult mortality from all of the causes considered. Individuals with a birth weight of less than 3,000 grams (or about 6.61 pounds) had a 13 percent increased overall mortality risk, compared with those with a birth weight of 3,000 to 4,000 grams.

Endometrial cancer and weight

Women who put on substantial weight in early adulthood were diagnosed with endometrial cancer at much younger ages than their peers who gained weight later in life, new research by the Yale School of Public Health has found. In addition, long-term obesity significantly increased the risk of this cancer, which develops in the lining of the uterus and is the most commonly diagnosed gynecological cancer in the United States today. Some 42,000 American women are diagnosed with the cancer annually and nearly 8,000 die from the disease. At any given age, a significant trend was observed between the length of time that a woman was overweight and her risk of endometrial cancer. The longer the time overweight, the higher the risk of endometrial cancer, the study found.