This is a special issue of the EMPH newsletter: it goes to the Class of 2023 and the Class of 2024. We have reached a new milestone with classes in both years of the program. Like last year’s inaugural class, the Class of 2024 is composed of successful, committed professionals seeking to expand their knowledge of public health and acquire skills they can use in their current and future work. I look forward to offering ways all of you can meet one another.
Martin Klein, MPH, PhD
One theme that comes up consistently when I ask students why they chose the Executive MPH is the quality of the school’s faculty. They are among the most productive and accomplished public health faculty in the country.
Faculty research informs the public and policymakers on important issues and YSPH faculty insights and commentary are widely reported in national and international media. For example, on August 25, The New York Times, CNN, and dozens of other media outlets around the world highlighted the work of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, an initiative led by YSPH Associate Professor Kaveh Khoshnood, Critical Topics Track Director. The Lab drew international attention with the release of a study identifying 21 "filtration" sites in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine where citizens and prisoners of war were being held for processing, interrogation, and detention possibly in violation of international humanitarian law. NPR, meanwhile, reported on a study by Associate Professor Nicole Deziel, a faculty member in the program, that found that children living near fracking sites in Pennsylvania are at increased risk of leukemia. And I opened The New York Times recently to find an opinion piece by Associate Professor Gregg Gonsalves, whom I interviewed for a session at one of last year’s intensives, on how history will remember Anthony Fauci.
We are at an inflection point for public health—the need for a highly trained public health workforce is self-evident. I am confident that the Executive MPH’s mission to match an accomplished, highly skilled student cohort with some of the best faculty in the country will generate graduates who will play an important role in determining the future of public health.
Professor Rafael Perez-Escamilla, PhD Course: Monitoring and Evaluation in Public Health: Principles and Applications.
Faculty profile
Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, PhD, is an internationally recognized expert in nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life and a leading authority on breastfeeding and early childhood development. His global public health nutrition and food security research programs have contributed to improvements in breastfeeding and other maternal, infant, and young child nutrition outcomes, iron deficiency anemia among infants, and household food security.
The Global Health Justice Partnership (GHJP), an initiative of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health, was established in 2012 to promote interdisciplinary, innovative, and effective responses to key problems in health justice. It is a transformative collaboration integrating different fields in order to make critical policy interventions, develop new kinds of cross-cutting research, and provide educational opportunities straddling a variety of academic disciplines.
Why did you choose to attend the Yale School of Public Health’s Executive MPH program?
KT: I loved the appeal of going to such a prestigious public health program, but with the flexibility of continuing my career as a physician assistant/associate in hand and reconstructive surgery. It also allows me to continue my work within leadership at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and with Ohana One, the nonprofit I helped found.
We invite you to share your personal news and successes with the rest of our community in the Executive MPH Newsletter. Submissions should be sent to Colin Poitras for consideration for publication.
Congratulations to Lisa Carter, EMPH ’23, who was awarded a 5-year, $3.6 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute to support her clinical trial entitled Leveraging Social Media to Increase Lung Cancer Screening Awareness, Knowledge, and Uptake in High-Risk Populations. This national study will use social media to connect high-risk, screening-eligible individuals with LungTalk, a computer-tailored decision support and health communication tool.
Ari Frenkel, EMPH ’23, has authored a children’s book about individuals with disabilities. The book, Everybody Is Special, was published February 2021 by Purple Bunny Books. The story involves a character, Little Bear Henley, who makes a new friend, Gilmore the Otter, who uses a wheelchair. Soon Henley learns that the otter possesses talents that far exceed him and all his friends. www.EverybodyIsSpecial.com
Ronaldo Verian, EMPH ’23, was featured in a video celebrating 2022 International Nurses Day. The video was produced by Sigma Nursing (the International Honor Society of Nursing), the only professional honor society nursing organization in the world. You can watch the video here.
Be Well@YSPH
Practice Kindness
Between the chaos around us and the chaos within us, the simple act of kindness seems to get lost. Sometimes we spend so much time wondering how we can help in the big picture, we forget the importance of small daily acts of kindness. We talk about helping the world but forget about helping our neighbors. It's the simplest acts of kindness, such as holding a door, saying hello, giving someone a ride or just asking someone if they need help, that make the biggest differences.
Global Health Leadership Initiative targets inequities in sepsis outcomes and care
The Yale Global Health Leadership Initiative has been awarded a highly competitive research grant exceeding $1 million to reduce inequities in sepsis care and outcomes among African American/Black and Latinx communities.
Two heart medications tied to greater heart attack risk during very hot weather
Beta-blockers can improve survival for people with coronary heart disease, while aspirin and other antiplatelet medications can reduce the risk of a heart attack. But those protections could backfire during hot-weather events, a new YSPH study has found.
Proximity to fracking sites associated with risk of childhood cancer
Pennsylvania children living near unconventional oil and gas developments at birth were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of 2 and 7 than those who did not live near this oil and gas activity, a YSPH study finds.
The Yale Center for Environmental Justice and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are partnering this year to present the fourth annual Global Environmental Justice Conference at the Yale School of the Environment.