School of Public Health 

The Rutgers School of Public Health, along with Rutgers University and the New Jersey Department of Health, has been monitoring the coronavirus disease or COVID-19 - the World Health Organization’s name for the coronavirus disease that makes no reference to places, animals, or people to avoid stigma. Information, resources, and FAQ on COVID-19 are available here.

 

As public health professionals guided by health equity and justice, we cannot reiterate enough the importance of avoiding assumptions about who may or may not have come into contact with someone carrying the virus based on their identity. We must recognize the harm we do to our diverse community if we allow ourselves to make such assumptions. 

 

We need only to think back to the 80's AIDS epidemic or the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, as evidence of the detrimental effect that stigma has on health. Now, more than ever, we must be guided by our principals to eliminate stigma and discrimination to avoid repeating lessons history should have taught us. 

I encourage you all to read this thoughtful New England Journal of Medicine editorial, " Panic, Paranoia, and Public Health — The AIDS Epidemic's Lessons for Ebola , " by my colleagues and ACT-UP friends Greg Gonsalves and Peter Staley , which should inform our reaction to COVID-19.

Sincerely,

Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH

Dean and Professor

Rutgers School of Public Health

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In classrooms around the country, young students are sharing Valentine’s Day cards with their classmates and friends to mark relationships and connections and show care for one another.

However, this light-hearted rite of passage — often filled with humor and candy — may mark the last time personal relationships get much classroom attention. Just about the time paper hearts and chocolate kisses are getting replaced with lectures about how puberty leads to body odor and periods, the focus on relationships get pushed aside.

Too often, sex education teaches young people about their changing bodies, but not about much else. To address this, Leslie Kantor, PhD , chair of the department of urban-global public health, along with Guttmacher Institute colleagu e, Laura D. Lindberg, PhD , authored a Valentine's Day op-ed for Romper calling for the expansion of sex education to place greater emphasis on pleasure and relationships.

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Juul, the popular e-cigarette brand that is being sued for fueling the youth e-cigarette epidemic, is by far the most commonly used brand among high school e-cigarette users, with some Juul users not even considering themselves e-cigarette users, a Rutgers-led study finds.

The study , published in  J AMA Network Open , suggests that health officials might be underestimating the prevalence of teen e-cigarette use.  

“We’ve suspected that the brand Juul contributed to the increase of e-cigarette use among teens, but I think we were surprised at the extent of the brand’s popularity among young people,” said Mary Hrywna, PhD , an assistant professor in the department of health behavior, society and policy, and a member of the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies, who co-authored the study with Michelle B. Manderski, PhD, lecturer in the department of biostatistics and epidemiology and Center member; and Cristine Delnevo, PhD , professor in the department of health behavior, society and policy and Center director. 

Hrywna added that “almost half of current e-cigarette users said Juul was the first e-cigarette product they tried and more than half of the high students reported seeing people use Juul on school grounds.”

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Young sexual minority men — including those who are gay, bisexual, queer or straight-identified men who have sex with men — do not fully understand their risk for human papillomavirus (HPV) due to a lack of information from health care providers, according to Rutgers researchers.

About 79 million Americans are infected with HPV, with about 14 million becoming newly infected each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a sexually transmitted infection, HPV can lead to several types of cancer, including anal and penile cancer, and is particularly concerning for sexual minority men due to the high prevalence of HIV and smoking in this community and the low HPV vaccination rates overall among men.

“Particularly in light of the decades-long focus on gay men’s health care as HIV care, there is a missed opportunity for HPV prevention in the community,” said study co-author Caleb LoSchiavo, MPH , a doctoral student at the Rutgers School of Public Health and member of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies .  

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Leslie Kantor, PhD , chair of the department of urban-global public health, and a leading expert on teen pregnancy, spoke to the New York Times on why Brazil's abstinence-only campaign doesn't work, pointing to dozens of studies on the issue, which has been the subject of a fierce political fight in the United States since the 1980s.

Sex education programs that emphasize abstinence, have tended to exclude information pertinent to gay and bisexual people and provided misleading information about the efficacy of condoms and contraceptives, said Kantor. The idea of limiting, or delaying, sex education might seem politically expedient, but is ultimately a bad idea.

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A recent Rutgers School of Public Health New Jersey Safe Schools Program   study examined student-athlete concussion incidence reporting data by certified athletic trainers (ATC) and school nurses at public secondary schools and high schools throughout New Jersey. The study is an attempt to address gaps in youth concussion and symptom surveillance in the U.S.

Over the duration of the three-year study, 300 concussions were reported. Concussions occurred most commonly in fall, likely because of the high proportion of male student athletes participating in football. Football players comprised many of the total reported incidents, but sports such a soccer and cheerleading also contributed to many of the reported concussions.

“The school ATC is commonly available after school hours when play typically takes place as opposed to school nurses, who may only be able to see the student during school hours,” added Derek Shendell, DEnv, associate professor in the department of environmental and occupational health and senior study author.

Adrienne Sherman, MPH’19, is currently a Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologist applied epidemiology fellow in Washington D.C., leading e-cigarette and vaping associated lung injury (EVALI) case investigations.

Under the direction of senior research epidemiologist, Kenan Zamore, and the supervisory medical officer, Preetha Iyengar, Sherman is responsible for reviewing medical records of suspected e-cigarette or vaping injury cases that are reported to the Washington D.C. Department of Health. For more complex cases, she discusses each case’s clinical presentation, symptoms, infectious disease lab results, and pre-existing conditions with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) EVALI response teams. As part of these investigations, she has had the opportunity to interview patients and their families to gather additional information, such as any prior visits to healthcare facilities and exposure to various e-cigarette and vaping products, as well as illicit substance use.

“One of the most important pieces of information I had to collect was the specific type of vaping/e-cigarette device that case patients were using, and the types of substances that were used in it,” said Sherman. “During the interviews and initial discussions with healthcare providers, I would ask if they knew the type of device and substance [nicotine, THC] the case patient used and if they still had any of the e-cigarette or vaping product left for laboratory analysis.”

Sherman is also responsible for directly reporting Washington D.C.'s EVALI case data to the CDC through a new national surveillance system. 

In addition to her work with EVALI, Sherman has also responded to several multidrug-resistant organism outbreaks in the Washington D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area working with the department’s healthcare associated infections team.

“The outbreaks that I am responding to involve bacteria capable of plasmid-mediated resistance. Basically, these bacteria can come in contact with other bacteria of the same or different species and transfer the DNA that codes for antimicrobial resistance to other organisms,” she said. “These multidrug-resistant organisms typically colonize in vulnerable patient populations, and can even cause bloodstream, pulmonary, urinary or wound infections that are difficult or impossible to treat, making these outbreaks especially dangerous and a growing public health concern.” 

Sherman encourages Rutgers School of Public Health graduates interested in the field of epidemiology to explore employment opportunities at the state and local leveland consider applying for fellowships. Her experience has provided her with invaluable opportunities, which only keep developing. 

Rutgers School of Public Health