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Francisco Cartujano helped develop a toolkit with the American Lung Association
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
Francisco Cartujano helped develop the Addressing Tobacco Use in Hispanic and Latino Communities toolkit with the American Lung Association. The toolkit includes culturally competent strategies, tools, and lessons learned that can be implemented by public health professionals, clinicians, and community partners serving diverse Hispanic or Latino communities.
Dr. Yu Liu and his team have been funded by the University Research Awards
Monday, May 15, 2023
Dr. Yu Liu and his team, Drs. Chen Zhang, Kevin Fiscella and Mitchell Wharton have been funded by the University Research Awards to do an important project to "Develop an evidence-based guide for capturing and evaluating structural racism against Black/African American populations affected by HIV in the US".
Diana Fernandez , M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D. is an author for a Nutrition Journal Publication
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Diana Fernandez is an author for "Longitudinal trends in produce purchasing behavior: a descriptive study of transaction level data from loyalty card households" which was recently published by the Nutrition Journal.
Read the full journal article here: https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12937-022-00814-9
Robert Block, M.D., M.P.H., Scott McIntosh, Ph.D., and Kelly Thevenet-Morrison , M.S. are authors for a Music and Medicine Journal
Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Robert Block, Scott McIntosh, and Kelly Thevenet-Morrison are authors for a journal article called "Effects of a Pilot Music Therapy Intervention on Motivation in Patients with Severe Hypercholesterolemia". It was recently published with the Music and Medicine Journal.
Philip K. Hopke is ranked #111 among Best Scientists for 2023
Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Philip K. Hopke has ranked #111 in the world ranking and #59 in United States in the 2023 Edition of the Ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Environmental Sciences. He has also been recognized with the Environmental Sciences Leader Award for 2023. Congratulations!
Wyatte Hall PBS Interview
Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Wyatte Hall was recently interviewed for a PBS story on the misunderstood reason deaf children fall behind.
Watch the full interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwv4Ya7n0yI
Wyatte Hall Joins Congressional Briefing on Language Access for Deaf Children
Monday, February 27, 2023
Wyatte Hall, Ph.D., assistant professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC), took part in a congressional briefing at the U.S. Capitol on February 22 to advocate for earlier and better language access for deaf children. The briefing was part of the eighth annual Education and Advocacy Summit hosted by the Conference of Educational Administrators of Schools and Programs for the Deaf.
Hall, who is also an assistant professor in Neurology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics and the Center for Community Health & Prevention at URMC, has studied the prevalence and impact of language deprivation on deaf children and adults for almost 10 years. While most children share a common language with their parents and have access to that language from infancy, the majority of deaf children are born into hearing families that use spoken language and many have delayed access to language.
Language – whether spoken or signed – is like sustenance for the brain. Without it, children can experience cognitive and developmental delays, as well as worse physical health, long-term academic achievement, and mental health issues throughout life.
Getting access to language late is really bad for a child’s development, health, and quality of life across the lifespan,” said Hall. “The fact that many deaf children in the U.S. have delayed access to language is a national public health emergency.
Hall and his collaborators, Naomi Caselli, Ph.D., assistant professor of Deaf Studies at Boston University, and Michele Berke, Ph.D., early childhood education principal at the California School for the Deaf, know that there is hope for deaf children born into hearing families. In a recent study, they found that such children who had access to an immersive American Sign Language (ASL)-English bilingual environment by age three attained age-appropriate academic achievement regardless of their parents’ signing abilities. They also found that children who entered the program later had significantly lower scores in all academic subjects on average, and children with stronger ASL skills tended to have better academic achievement scores.
That is why they argued in front of congressional staffers, alongside others from the Education and Advocacy Summit, that early education in an ASL bilingual school is crucial to ensuring deaf children achieve expected academic outcomes and a foundation for a healthy life. They called on congress to fund bilingual schools, and to increase funding for research on ASL, deaf health, and deaf education through the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and to earmark funds in the CDC Early Hearing Detection and Intervention program’s budget for ASL programs, deaf mentors, and immersion programs. They also emphasized that ASL should be an “and” option for deaf children alongside English, allaying misconceptions that learning ASL could impede English language development.
“I’m honored to be a part of this briefing and to share my research with policymakers,” Hall said. “I hope this is an ongoing step toward positive change, so future generations of deaf and hard-of-hearing kids have more equitable access to language, improved education, better health, and overall higher quality of life throughout their lifetimes.”
Hall was the first graduate of the Rochester Postdoc Partnership, a unique postdoctoral training program designed to advance the research and academic careers of Deaf and hard of hearing (Deaf/HH) scientists. While in the program, he explored the relationship between early childhood language experiences and subsequent life outcomes of Deaf people. He performed qualitative work with local deaf Rochester community members, co-edited the first-ever academic text focusing on the role of language deprivation in the deaf mental health field, and developed the Deaf Childhood Experiences Questionnaire.
He currently is director of the Visual Language Access and Acquisition Lab at URMC and co-directs the Future Deaf Scientists program under the Wilmot Cancer Institute, a cancer research education and training program seeking to empower Deaf high school students to thrive in medical and science careers.
Francisco Cartujano, M.D. is a 2023 Awardee!
Tuesday, January 31, 2023
Francisco Cartujano, M.D. is a 2023 awardee of the Richard C. Devereaux Outstanding Young Investigator Award for his project, "Advancing Lung Cancer Screening Among Latinos One Text at a Time".
Tips to Advance Health Equity Concepts in Residency Training
Monday, January 30, 2023
Last week, an article from the American Medical Association highlighted work by Theresa Green, Ph.D., M.B.A., the UR CTSI's director of health equity education. Green was part of a panel discussion at the inaugural Health Systems Science Summit where she discussed efforts to advance health equity in health systems science – the study of how care is delivered, how health professionals work together to deliver that care, and how the health system can improve patient care and health care delivery.
Read the article: https://www.ama-assn.org/education/accelerating-change-medical-education/tips-advance-health-equity-concepts-residency
PHS Epi PhD Student, Mostafa Mohamed is a Primary Author on a Journal Article
Thursday, January 26, 2023
PHS Epi PhD student, Mostafa Mohamed, is a primary author on a journal article titled Association of polypharmacy and potential drug-drug interactions with adverse treatment outcomes in older adults with advanced cancer.
You can find the full journal article here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36692475/