School Notes: School of Public Health
January/February 2015

Fighting pneumonia

Pneumonia is the world’s leading cause of respiratory deaths in children under age 5. The majority of those deaths occur in the developing world, where the vaccine is expensive and has not been widely introduced. With a $1.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a team of YSPH researchers led by Daniel Weinberger, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, will investigate how the potentially life-saving vaccine could impact low-income communities worldwide. The study will seek to analyze a complex set of hospitalization and administrative data on pneumonia to understand the varying effectiveness of vaccination on different socioeconomic groups. The research will begin by examining data from Latin America, where the vaccine has a foothold, and then use that information to develop models of the vaccine’s potential impact in similar low- and middle-income communities.

Measuring fruit and vegetable consumption in skin

A diet rich in fruit and vegetables is linked to various improved health outcomes, but accurately measuring consumption by self-report, especially with children, is challenging and can be of questionable validity.  A device being developed in a collaboration that involves researchers from YSPH has the potential to change that. Researchers demonstrated for the first time that the device, which uses blue laser light to quickly and painlessly scan the skin of a subject’s palm, accurately measures changes in a biomarker known as skin carotenoids in response to an intervention involving a diet enriched in fruits and vegetables. The team led by Susan T. Mayne, C.-E. A. Winslow Professor of Epidemiology, reported that this technique accurately tracked skin carotenoid changes over a 28-week period that was divided into distinct dietary phases marked by varying intake of fruits and vegetables.

Recognition for global curriculum

Yale University has been ranked as one of the ten “Best Global Universities for Social Sciences and Public Health” by U.S. News and World Report. The rankings encompass 500 institutions in 49 countries. Yale University and the Yale School of Public Health have steadily expanded international activity over the last five years. In 2009, the School of Public Health retooled its global health curriculum so that MPH students in any department or division could enroll in the global health concentration and develop their expertise to encompass the skills and perspective to work in the global arena. To date, 135 students have graduated from this program.