School Notes: School of Public Health
November/December 2010

Students complete summer internship in public health training

Local high school and college students with the PARTNRS program (Parenting and Relationship Transition and Risk Study) completed a summer internship at YSPH designed to develop public health research skills and knowledge.

The three high school and two college students, selected from a pool of over 80 applicants, spent eight weeks learning about various aspects of public health work, including a training and certification program in human subject protection, HIPAA regulations, the safe handling of blood-borne pathogens, recruiting and interview techniques, facilitating interviews, and collecting specimens for STD testing. “The number and quality of applicants we received from the New Haven and Bridgeport area demonstrate the interest in public health research and the need for this type of program that helps to develop and grow future scientists from our own backyard,” said Trace Kershaw, an associate professor and principal investigator of PARTNRS. The program was funded by a grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Disaster in Haiti poses further risk to children

As Haiti rebuilds from the devastation of January’s earthquake, the country’s most vulnerable children will likely face unique and additional risks in the forms of gender-based violence against women, child trafficking, and poor psychosocial health.

Jhumka Gupta, assistant professor at YSPH, contends that the physical devastation, widespread displacement, and loss of life from the earthquake, coupled with the high rates of poverty and gender-based violence against women that existed pre-disaster, will further compromise children’s health and safety. Their findings appear in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“As international aid continues to pour into the Caribbean country, it is important that a holistic approach be developed to promote the safety and well-being of Haiti’s children,” said Gupta. Along with reunification of children with family members, it is also critical to ensure children’s safety within their own homes.

China’s public health threats topic of Yale conference

A delegation of Chinese health officials, political leaders, and executives traveled to Yale over the summer for a conference on controlling China’s rapidly increasing cancer rates and other serious public health problems.

Yale School of Public Health researchers are working with the International Prevention Research Institute (IPRI) and Chinese officials to establish the Comprehensive Cancer Center in Daqing, China. One of the many projects in Daqing is a landmark longitudinal study that will follow 300,000 people to assess the association between cancer and the many environmental and lifestyle risks facing the Chinese population.

“We paid a big price for economic growth in terms of people and land,” said Tongzhang Zheng, a YSPH professor. He illustrated the stunning rate of change in his native country with two photographs of the same place, taken 20 years apart. The first showed monkeys in a tree, gazing at the sunset; the second showed the Chinese National Theatre, a dome of titanium and glass, reflected in a manmade lake.