News

Underrepresented populations suffer most from COVID-19 in nursing homes, assisted living communities

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Older racial and ethnic minority residents in nursing homes and assisted living communities in the United States and their caregivers have been hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to two new Medical Center research studies. The findings from the study led by Yue Li, a professor of public health sciences, are the first to document the disproportionate impact on residents from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds in nursing homes across all states. Disparities of this magnitude, Li says, suggest that long-standing, fundamental inequalities in nursing homes resulting from segregated facilities with limited resources and poorest quality of care are being “exacerbated by the pandemic.”

The second study, led by Helena Temkin-Greener, also a professor of public health sciences, was a first-ever empirical study involving the incidence of COVID-19 in US assisted living communities. “Immediate actions are needed to ensure that as the pandemic continues to evolve, nursing home residents from underrepresented racial/ethnic backgrounds, and the frontline workers caring for them, do not bear an additional later or sufferings due to systemic inequalities,” reported the study’s researchers.

The research was also featured on CNN.

Read Yue and Helena's new published studies:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jgs.16847

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jgs.16850

Dr. Green Speaks at UR Alumni Event on Community Engagement

Monday, September 21, 2020

CCHP Community Health Policy & Education Director Dr. Theresa Green recently spoke at a UR alumni online learning event, titled "Community Engagement: Making the World Ever Better." In January 2020, for the first time, the University received the Carnegie Foundation’s selective classification in community engagement. Dr. Green co-led the successful UR application for this classification. The alumni event explored the University’s history of community engagement which led to this recognition, its current work with the community and commemorated Global Day of Service. In case you missed it, the event was taped and will soon be archived here.

Congratulations to Dr. Green!

Theresa Green elected as President of the Monroe County Board of Health

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Theresa Green, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences and the Director of Community Health Policy and Education at the Center for Community Health within the University of Rochester Medical Center,  has been elected as President of the Monroe County Board of Health.

Congratulations!

Twylla Dillion Appointed Executive Director of HealthConnect One

Friday, September 11, 2020

Twylla Dillion, PhD graduate of our Health Services Research program has been appointed as the Executive Director of HealthConnect One. Since 1986, HealthConnect One (based in Chicago) has been the national leader in advancing respectful, community-based, peer-to-peer support for pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and early parenting. Their vision is to see every baby, mother, and family thrive in a healthy community. We work to achieve this vision through an equity focused approach supporting the first 1000 days for birthing families.

Congratulations Twylla!

Xu, Intrator Publish Article in JAMDA

Friday, August 14, 2020

Former PhD Student, Huiwen Xu and current faculty member Orna Intrator have published a new paper in Journal of the American Medical Directors Association (JAMDA). Read Shortages of Staff in Nursing Homes During COVID-19 Pandemic: What Are the Driving Factors?

Paula Cupertino Awarded Grant From National Cancer Institute

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Congratulations to Paula Cupertino who has been awarded a grant (Administrative Supplement to Stimulate or Strengthen Global Cancer Health Disparities Research) for a clinical trial in Mexico by the Center for Global Health (National Cancer Institute). Congratulations!

Mitchell Wharton (Former MPH Grad student) authors paper about Health and Social Inequalities of HIV and COVID-19

Monday, July 13, 2020

Former MPH student and current Assistant professor of clinical nursing, Mitchell J. Wharton, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, CNS, has authored a paper, "Alarm at the Gate—Health and Social Inequalities are Comorbid Conditions of HIV and COVID-19."

COVID-19 Toll in Nursing Homes Linked to Staffing Levels and Quality

Thursday, June 18, 2020

A new study shows that residents of long-term care facilities with lower nurse staffing levels, poorer quality scores, and higher concentrations of disadvantaged residents suffer from higher rates of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths.  

“In nursing homes, quality and staffing are important factors, and there already exists system-wide disparities in which facilities with lower resources and higher concentrations of socio-economically disadvantaged residents have poorer health outcomes,” said Yue Li, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Public Health Sciences and lead author of the study which appears in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. “These same institutional disparities are now playing out during the coronavirus pandemic.”

Residents of long-term care facilities have been shown to be highly vulnerable to respiratory disease outbreaks, such as influenza or other common human coronaviruses. Current evidence suggests that COVID-19 disproportionately impacts older adults and individuals with chronic health conditions. These factors are more concentrated in nursing homes where residents are characterized by advanced age, more frequent and complex chronic disease patterns, and highly impaired physical, cognitive, and immune system functions, putting these populations at greater risk for more severe COVID-19 infections.

This phenomenon first came to light in a skilled nursing facility in the Seattle area in February during the early stages of the pandemic, where more than half of the residents in the facility became infected and a third died. Since that time, 50,000 coronavirus-related deaths, approximately 40 percent of the total, have been linked to nursing homes across the U.S.

The new study examined nursing home level data published on the Connecticut Department of Health and Human Services website. At the time of the study, Connecticut was one of the few states that made this information publically available. This information was compared to data from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Service’s (CMS) Nursing Home Compare website, which tracks quality, staffing, and health outcomes for nursing homes nationwide. 

Analyses of the data showed that long-term care facilities with higher concentrations of disadvantaged residents, including Medicaid residents and racial and ethnic minorities, lower nurse staffing levels, particularly registered nurses (RN), and lower scores on CMS five-star quality measures, had higher rates of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Higher nurse staffing ratios in particular was strongly associated with fewer cases and deaths.

“In most nursing homes, RNs are the linchpin for the assessment and provision of medical care, including early identification of and response to emergencies and life threatening situations,” said Li. “Our findings of the strong negative association between RN staffing and the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes are consistent with research that has demonstrated that increased nursing levels are key to an institution’s ability to respond to outbreaks of emerging infections.”

New Paper Published by Alio on Self-Reported Experiences of Racial Discrimination Among African Americans in Upstate New York

Wednesday, June 17, 2020

Associate Professor, Amina Alio, PhD has published a new paper in the Journal of Black Studies about Self-Reported Experiences of Racial Discrimination Among African Americans in Upstate New York. Dr. Alio has extensive experience in community-based participatory research, qualitative and quantitative methods, and evaluation design. Her research areas include racial/ethnic health disparities and global health. Specifically, Dr. Alio focuses on the impact of behavioral, psychosocial and environmental factors on pregnancy outcomes, particularly among African Americans. Her international research is in women's reproductive health, HIV prevention, intimate partner violence and pregnancy outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.

Read the article

PHS 2020 Graduation Address given by Marielena Vélez de Brown

Friday, May 22, 2020

Fatal Opioid Overdoses May Be More Common Than Thought

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Opioids have been blamed for the deaths of at least 400,000 U.S. residents in the past two decades—but research now shows that number could be much higher.

Researchers looked at data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on about 630,000 people who died of drug overdoses between 1999 and 2016. They separated the deaths into two categories: those with and without a specific drug indicated.

For the first category, they analyzed how contributing causes of death (such as injuries and heart problems) and personal characteristics (such as age and gender) correlated with opioid involvement. They then used these analyses to calculate the probability of opioid involvement for each unidentified drug overdose, and they found that the number of opioid deaths is likely 28 percent higher than generally reported.

Theodore Brown receives Lifetime Achievement Award from American Association for the History of Medicine

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Over the course of his distinguished career, Theodore Brown, professor emeritus of history and public health sciences has “advanced the cutting edge of medical historical scholarship and shaped the work of other historians.” (University of Rochester photo / Brandon Vick)

Theodore Brown, a University of Rochester professor emeritus of history and public health sciences, is the recipient of this year’s Genevieve Miller Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM).

Over the course of a long and distinguished career, Brown has been “a major contributor to the historical understanding of US health policy and politics, as well as the history of both US and international public health,” says John Harley Warner, the Avalon Professor of the History of Medicine at Yale University and a member of the AAHM’s Lifetime Achievement Award committee.

First established in 1988, the lifetime award is given annually to a member of the association who has retired from regular institutional practice with a distinguished record of support for the history of medicine, and who has continued to make important scholarly contributions.

Brown’s research interests run the gamut from US health policy and politics, to the history of psychosomatic medicine, stress research, and biopsychosocial approaches to clinical practice. Prior to his retirement in 2018, he had been the University’s inaugural Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor of Public Health and Policy, a position he held for five years.

His articles and coauthored books, among them Making Medical History: The Life and Times of Henry E. Sigerist (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Comrades in Health: US Health Internationalists, Abroad and at Home (Rutgers University Press, 2013), and a comprehensive history of the World Health Organization published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press— along with his “critical labor” in editing the Rochester Studies in the History of Medicine book series and a regular historical section for the American Journal of Public Health—“have advanced the cutting edge of medical historical scholarship and shaped the work of other historians,” says Warner. “Through his scholarship, mentorship, and leadership in organizations such as the Sigerist Circle of the American Association for the History of Medicine, he has been particularly instrumental in infusing issues of health activism, health disparities, and the American health left into the fabric of the mainstream history of medicine and public health.”

Gloria Culver, dean of the University’s School of Arts & Sciences, hails Brown for his leadership and collegiality. “He is a wonderful scholar and his impact on the field will be felt for years to come. My first thoughts when I heard the news was that this is not surprising—it’s so very well deserved. Ted is a leader and an amazing colleague.”

 Among the books Brown has authored or coauthored is the whimsical The Quest for Health Care Reform: A Satirical History, published by the American Public Health Association in 2012.

Chunkit Fung Receives Human Rights Leadership Award

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Chunkit Fung, M.D., associate professor of Medicine and Public Health Sciences, received the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Leadership Award from Rising Star Gala Leaders at the HRC Equality Convention held on May 1. Fung received his award in recognition of his dedication in leading the HRC Western New York Dinner Committee and for his fundraising efforts.

The HRC Western NY Chapter provides resources and hosts regular local events to support the LGBTQ community in Western NY, including HRC second Thursday network event and Annual Western NY HRC Dinner, a fundraiser that showcases and supports the work of the Human Rights Campaign.

The University of Rochester, including URMC, has been a sponsor for this event for the past three years.  Strong Memorial, Highland and Thompson Hospitals have been designated by the HRC as national leaders in LGBTQ healthcare.

Social distancing has stabilized, but failed to reverse, the spread of COVID-19

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

As policymakers try to restart the economy but also control COVID-19, data scientists at Cornell University and the University of Rochester are studying the impacts of social distancing. While social distancing has effectively slowed the spread of COVID-19, the measures have not reduced the total number of daily new cases.

“The effect is not as large as one would have hoped for going in,” says lead author Aaron Wagner, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University. As a result, he says, the states now reopening businesses and relaxing restrictions “do not have much headroom” for error. “You’re right on the edge of it starting to blow up again.”

“Policy makers need to be aware of this,” says co-author Elaine Hill, assistant professor of public health sciences at the University of Rochester. “We need more studies to identify the practices that can move us to a place where COVID-19 is actually contracting.”

The study authors suggest that policymakers:

• Consider a carefully phased relaxation of social distancing, such as first targeting a limited number of businesses and economic activities where duration of human contact is limited: restaurants offering take-out meals, for example, rather than in-restaurant dining; or construction activity where it might be easier to maintain social distancing between workers.
• Allow enough time for models like the one used in this study to assess the effect of the targeted relaxations before extending them to other areas.
• Consider augmenting social distancing with other practices, such as universal use of face masks, or contact tracing.

Epidemiology Alumnus AnnaLynn Williams Gives CPD/URBEST Career Story

Saturday, May 2, 2020

CPD/URBEST Career Story w/ AnnaLynn Williams, Ph.D.- What to think about when applying for NIH Fellowship and Transition Awards and planning for the pre- to post-doc transition.

May 1 recorded session available at this link.

#ThankYouPublicHealth! from NPHW.org

Friday, April 17, 2020

Timmy Li, URMC Epidemiology PhD Graduate in NY Post as "Hero of the Day"

Monday, April 13, 2020

Volunteer EMT Timmy Li normally spends his free time treating injured runners and cyclists in Central Park.

But as the Big Apple gets crushed with 911 calls due to the coronavirus pandemic, he’s now devoting his nights and weekends to far more serious emergencies, far outside the park’s borders.

“When it was declared a pandemic, I told myself, ‘as long I am not sick myself and as long as I’m available, I will continue to take shifts and calls,’” Li, 30, told The Post. 

“Pretty much every 911 call right now is COVID related. Almost everything. We still have the injuries, the car crashes, but almost everything is a potential COVID call.” 

The Queens resident, who also works full-time as a clinical researcher at Northwell Health, is part of the Central Park Medical Unit, a team of 150 volunteer EMTs who typically patrol the park’s 843 acres.

But as emergency calls skyrocket past previous records and hordes of EMTs call out sick, the team has now stepped up to handle emergency calls across Manhattan under the FDNY’s Mutual Aid system. 

“We’re working almost 24/7,” Li said. “It’s definitely challenging, physically exhausting, and mentally exhausting knowing that a lot of people are dying.”

The medic, who holds a doctorate in epidemiology, said his unit is used to disaster response, but the coronavirus is a whole different monster.

“We have responded to things like 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the blackout and the heat wave last summer. And those feel a little different in that those, the risk of me getting infected or injured was low. But this is very real,” Li said.

Today starts the 25th National Public Health Week!

Monday, April 6, 2020

#PublicHealth provides critical services & infrastructure, its work & impacts are often invisible, taken for granted.... except in a crisis ..... Today starts the 25th National Public Health Week. Kudos to the PH workforce everyday!#NPHW

@UR_Med
@UR_CTSI
@UofR

-Ann Dozier, RN, PhD, FAAN
Professor and Chair, Public Health Sciences

Robert Block Named to Northeast Lipid Association Board

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Robert Block, M.D., M.P.H., FACP, FNLA,  professor of Public Health Sciences, Medicine and in the Center for Community Health and Prevention, was recently named to serve a three-year term on the Northeast Lipid Association Board of Directors (the regional chapter of the National Lipid Association) beginning in June. 

Block specializes in the care of patients with complex lipid disorders including familial cholesterol disorders and directs the URMC Lipid Apheresis Program.

LETTER: Coronavirus and vaping — pandemic meets epidemic

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

To the Editor:

The World Health Organization has declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. The U.S. Surgeon General declared teen vaping a national epidemic. Research will show how much they are linked, but evidence already supports advice to quit vaping (and smoking) to help protect people from COVID-19.

Both vaping and smoking damage the lungs, and the recent vaping-related outbreak of lung disorders shows how serious that damage can be. People with weaker lungs are less able to fend off the effects of coronavirus, and people who have lung disease are at higher risk of more serious coronavirus illness.

In all the messaging about hand-washing and social distancing to prevent coronavirus, we also need to emphasize the importance of quitting smoking and vaping.

To stop vaping or smoking, contact your doctor and the NYS Smokers' Quitline at 1 (866) 697-8487 and at nysmokefree.com.

SCOTT McINTOSH, PhD

Public Health Sciences, University of Rochester

Twenty Presentations Scheduled for HSR Faculty and Students at Top Academic Conferences in June 2020

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Twenty presentations are scheduled for HSR faculty and students at two national academic conferences in health services research, AcademyHealth and ASHEcon (American Society of Health Economists) this year. Among them, twelve are scheduled as podium presentations.

AcademyHealth and ASHEcon attract scholars from worldwide to present the results of their pioneering research. Presentations for both meetings are selected on a highly competitive base.

HSR Abstracts Accepted by 2020 Annual Meeting of Academy Health & ASHEcon

The death toll of the opioid epidemic is higher than originally thought, researchers say

Friday, February 28, 2020

University Earns First Community Engagement Classification from Carnegie Foundation

Monday, February 3, 2020

The University has received 2020 Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, an elective designation that indicates institutional commitment to community engagement. This is the first time that the University has earned the classification from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, becoming one of 359 institutions nationwide to hold the distinction.

Vaping Linked to Higher Risk of Self-Reported COPD Diagnosis

Thursday, January 2, 2020

A new study reveals an elevated risk of self-reported chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — the third leading cause of death associated with smoking — among people using e-cigarettes. People who vaped were at increased risk even if they had never smoked tobacco, which casts doubt on e-cigarette companies’ claims that vaping is a safe alternative to smoking. 

According to the study, people who vaped were at a 47-percent greater risk of self-reported COPD diagnosis as compared to people in the study who did not use tobacco products. Compared to ex-smokers, people who had quit smoking and switched to e-cigarettes were 27 percent more likely to report a COPD diagnosis.

The study, published by Nicotine and Tobacco Research, is based on 2016 and 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) national survey data of nearly one million adults. Survey participants were asked whether they had ever been diagnosed with COPD by their health-care provider.

Authors of the study, which was funded in part by the University of Rochester Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UR CTSI), the National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration, are Zidian Xie, Ph.D., Deborah J Ossip, Ph.D., Irfan Rahman, Ph.D. and Dongmei Li, Ph.D.

“It is clear, based on the large sample size of this study, that there is a significant link between vaping and self-reported COPD diagnosis in adults, even among vapers who never smoked before,” said lead study author Zidian Xie.

Senior study author Dongmei Li, an associate professor in the UR CTSI, added, “More long-term clinical research is needed to determine how e-cigarette use is related to COPD, but our findings are consistent with other recent studies showing that e-cigarette use is associated with respiratory issues.”

“This study provides further evidence that vaping simply isn’t safe,” said Deborah Ossip, a tobacco research expert and professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “We hope that people begin to heed this message, especially young people who think vaping is cool and who are enticed by the thousands of available flavors.”

Recent statistics from the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention’s National Youth Tobacco Survey demonstrated the popularity of vaping among young people in the U.S. About one of every 10 middle school students and one out of four high school students reported in 2019 that they used electronic cigarettes.