EHGES In the News

December 2022

We had a wonderful time giving thanks at our annual Thanksgiving luncheon, held at the School of Public Health Houston Campus on November 11th. Check out more photos here!

EHGES HIGHLIGHTS

UTHealth Houston Associate Professor Awarded $5.9 Million Grant to Adapt Elder Abuse Screening Tool for Home-Based Primary Care

Brad Cannell, PhD, associate professor at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health in Dallas, along with MedStar Mobile Health Care and Texas Adult Protective Services, previously created Detection of Elder Abuse Through Emergency Care Technicians (DETECT), a screening tool and protocol designed to help EMTs and paramedics recognize potential elder mistreatment when responding to 911 calls in the field. The new grant, funded by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, will expand that program by adapting DETECT for home-based primary care.in Arkansas had a co-occurring CHD.

UTHealth Houston Assistant Professor Awarded a One-Year Fellowship with TOPMed

Zeynep Coban-Akdemir, PhD, assistant professor at UTHealth Houston Campus has been awarded the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Fellowship from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which is a one-year award that fully supports her as an early career investigator. Coban-Akdemir applied for the fellowship for the project titled, "Systematic profiling and characterization of transcripts that are associated with quantitative blood disease traits through putative gain-of-function variants."

Learn more about TOPMed here .

Fuqing Wu, PhD, COVID-19 Research Data Published in ScienceDirect

Assistant professor in epidemiology at the UTHealth Houston Campus, Fuqing Wu, PhD, has published his research data in the latest issue of ScienceDirect Journal.

Wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) has been widely used as a public health tool to monitor SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Using published wastewater data, we showed this model can recapitulate the temporal dynamics of viral load in wastewater and predict the true number of cases that peaked earlier and higher than the number of clinically reported cases during the sampling period.

This work is a collaboration with Kristina Mena, PhD, professor and dean of UTHealth Houston El Paso Campus, Yang Kuang, PhD, at Arizona State University, Bruce Pell, PhD, at Lawrence Technological University, and Tin Phan, PhD, at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

NIA Awards Restrepo R01 Grant to Study Immune Dysfunction in Older Adults

Blanca Restrepo, PhD, associate professor at the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health Brownsville Campus, has been awarded an R01 Grant from the National Institute of Aging (NIA).

The study will address issues with older adults and how age is associated with metabolic alterations like type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) and with an immunologic decline associated with a higher risk of dying from lung infections like pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). The project will study immune and metabolic dysfunction during aging in human cohorts.

Read more from NIH and the R01 Award here.

UPCOMING EHGES EVENTS

JOIN US FOR EHGES EXAM JAM!

Tuesday, Dec 6

11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

RAS Building

6th-floor lobby

Study Tips + EHGES Swag + lunch boxes (until supplies run out)

Let's celebrate the final days of the fall 2022 semester!

RSVP here!

Center for Infectious Diseases

Lecture Series

Emerging Infections and Emerging Responses in the Context of the Island of Cyprus

Presenter: Ender Volkan, PhD

Vice Dean of the Cyprus International University Faculty of Pharmacy

Friday, Dec. 16

2:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.(CST)

School of Public Health

RAS E705

Click here to join via Webex

Important Academic Dates

Last day of classes for fall

Friday, Dec. 9

Final Exams for fall classes

Dec. 12-16

End of fall term

Friday, Dec. 16

-CLOSED

School of Public Health

Christmas Holidays

New Year's Day

Monday, December 26 -

Friday, December 30

Monday, Jan 2

Academic Calendar Information

EHGES Faculty and Students On Location!

Flick through our photos to see EHGES faculty and students presenting at different conferences and events in November. Click here!

The Cupboard

UTHealth School of Public Health

Houston Campus

The Cupboard is the first no-cost food resource for

students and staff who may need it.

Location: UTHealth School of Public Health

Houston Campus

Floor: B-04

Email: thecupboard@uth.tmc.edu

Be sure to follow their Instagram for future

updates!

EHGES NOTES

Student Update: Course Delivery Guidelines for the Spring 2023 term

All students, except for international students on F1 and J1 visas, can attend classes virtually and synchronously via WebEx.
All students are welcome to attend in-person courses (those with a PH, PHM, and PHD prefix) from the assigned classroom on their respective campus (classroom information will be available in myUTH before the start of the term.)
Online courses (those with a PHW, PHWM, or PHWD prefix) will continue to be delivered asynchronously online as usual. Some online courses may be delivered synchronously via WebEx; this information will be provided in the course notes and indicated by a meeting time.
Students enrolled in independent studies, PH 9997 Practicum, PHM 9998 Culminating Experience/Thesis Research, and PHD 9999 Dissertation Research should work with their faculty advisor or supervising faculty member to make appropriate arrangements.

Need more information about course guidelines? Click here for more info!

The Texas Medical Center Library and the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health library offer many student and faculty services, including Canvas training, navigating the SPH library website, writing services, and much more. Contact Kelsey Koym for assistance and more information. Email Kelsey Koym here or visit the TMC Library website for more details.

Reminder: For more information on how to handle media requests, see the UTHealth Houston HOOP policy here. If you are contacted by the media, please call the UTHealth Houston Media Relations team on the hotline, 713-500-3030 - someone is available 24/7. Deb Lake is the designated School of Public Health contact. Always choose to call the hotline for immediate assistance.

Teaching Assistant Training Course Registration Form

The Teaching Assistant (TA) Training course is a self-paced online course available to students currently holding a TA position, or those looking to pursue a TA position. Students who hold TA positions are highly encouraged to sign-up for the course. Upon completing this course, students will receive a certificate to show they are prepared for the position. If you took the training in previous semesters, you do not need to retake the training. This course also gives TA position applicants with less experience the opportunity to be more competitive candidates. The course does not guarantee TA position placement following the completion of the course. Registration is required (You will need to sign in to Microsoft 365 with your UTHealth Houston credentials first to access the form.) The training is offered on Canvas and will take approximately 5 hours to complete.

TA Training Spring: 12/19/2022 - 1/27/2023 (6 weeks)

Contact xi.chen@uth.tmc.edu for questions.

SUBMISSIONS AND NEWSLETTER DEADLINE

All campuses are encouraged to submit items for consideration for the monthly EHGES newsletter. Please feel free to submit your items to sphehges@uth.tmc.edu.