Sayali Tarlekar selected as Editor

Sayali Tarlekar, SRPH student, has been selected to be the Co- Editor in Chief of Context-The Journal of Health Students Taking Action together. The journal can be viewed at contextjournal.org.

Dr. Marlynn May accepts award

Dr. Marlynn May is the inaugural recipient of the Wimberly Chair in Health Services Research, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities (SLEHC), with a focus on Community-Based Research. The Wimberly Chair, endowed through a $1 million gift in honor of The Rt. Rev. Don A. Wimberly, eighth Bishop of the 57-county Episcopal Diocese of Texas, was created to sustain the work of an established scholar with a demonstrated interest in community-based research and underserved communities, as evidenced by practice, teaching, research, and publications.

The SLEHC was created in 1997 as a component of the St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System located in Houston. It is a public, non-operating charity that has engaged in grant-making and community-based research since its inception. It has awarded 1, 294 grants totaling more than $74 million to nonprofit service organizations. Its grant-making is directed toward disease prevention and health promotion among the underserved.

Marlynn’s work first came to the attention of SLEHC through a CBPR Project he created nearly three years ago in partnership with the Paso del Norte Health Foundation in El Paso. Representatives of SLEHC visited the El Paso Project , became interested in his work with community-academy partnerships, and over the past year they have continued to discuss ways in which he, SLEHC and SRPH might partner.

USA Center for Rural Health Preparedness HIKEer Program

The Galveston County Health District has partnered with the USA Center for Rural Health Preparedness as the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health to promote a long-term study of the public health impacts of Hurricanes on the Gulf Coast.

As such, the USA Center has created a registry of individuals who were affected by Hurricane Ike. This registry will serve as a way to contact individuals over the next five years to learn about their evacuation, sheltering, and recovery after Hurricane Ike. It is expected that this study with help identify our community health needs and ultimately improve planning for and responding to future such natural disasters.

The Health District supports this study. If you are willing to participate in this important study, visit the USA Center registry website at www.rural-preparedness.org/hiker.

Dr. Scott Lillibridge to present on Medical Special Needs Preparednes

The newly established National Center for Emergency Medical Preparedness and Response – NCEMPR – a Texas A&M System enterprise encompassing the Health Science Center (HSC), Texas Engineering Extension Service/National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (TEEX/NERRTC) and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES), in partnership with the Texas Department of State Health Services, is hosting a 2 day symposium focused on Medical Special Needs Preparedness. This symposium will be held in Austin, Texas, on February 10, 2009 from 1-5pm and continue on the morning of February 11, 2009, from 8am-noon.

The purpose of this symposium is to review activities and challenges in the wake of Hurricane Ike and propose new models and solutions related to the management of Medical Special Needs populations.

Key issues to be discussed include notification, registries, evacuations, staffing and equipping MSN shelters, medical and public health challenges, communications, training, discharge planning and future planning considerations.

USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness and Texas AgriLife

County Government Today (pdf) features the USA Center for Rural Public Health Preparedness

iThumb? I don't think so

The iPhone recently launched to much fanfare around the globe, further highlighting our desire for constant electronic communication, at least for the younger generation. But with text messaging, instant messaging and email all at your fingertips, should you worry about getting “Blackberry thumb?”

“Doubtful,” said Jerome Congleton, Ph.D., professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health and an expert in ergonomics and occupational health.

“Moderation in life and ergonomics is the key. If you are going do a lot of keying, an external mouse and keyboard is the answer along with raising your flat screen. The likelihood of repetitive motion injury (from cell phones) is not likely because of the recovery period between usages.”

While you may worry about your children, parents or even grandparents “texting” too much, a bigger concern is sending and reading messages while driving, which is not an uncommon occurrence. Since phones have been in cars, experts have said the safest way to talk is to pull off the road and park. The same advice holds true for reading and sending messages.

A&M Team Tackles WAter

Institute for Public Health and Water Quality Chairman Paul Hunter stood in the foyer of the Reynolds Medical Building on the Texas A&M University campus and revealed a staggering statistic.

Around the globe, he said, a child dies from a water-borne disease every eight to 10 seconds.

But Hunter said he hoped to decrease that mortality rate with help from a new partnership between the institute and the Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Rural Public Health.

"I hope this is an incredibly long-term venture that really makes a difference in people's lives," said Hunter, a professor at the University of East Anglia in England and a leading expert on water and health.

The partnership between the School of Rural Public Health and the Institute for Public Health and Water Quality, which has relocated to College Station from the University of Illinois, was formally announced Tuesday.

As part of the collaboration, the School of Rural Public Health will establish a Center for Excellence in Public Health and Water Research that will tackle issues related to contaminated drinking water, water conservation and safe reuse of water.

"I think this begins our commitment to improve drinking water quality in the United States and worldwide," said Roderick McCallum, interim dean of the School of Rural Public Health and vice president for academic affairs for the Health Science Center.

The Institute for Public Health and Water Quality was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 2005 while at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The independent institute focuses on science and education and stresses public health through safe drinking water.

Institute Executive Director Jennie Ward-Robinson said she and others looked at several universities -- including the University of California, Berkeley, and Emory University -- before deciding on a location. After they looked at the faculty and research at Texas A&M, it became obvious where the institute needed to be, she said.

"At the end of the day ... there was no doubt this was the place for IPWR to call home," Ward-Robinson said.

The institute is under the School of Rural Public Health, and researchers are expected to partner with their counterparts in related Texas A&M University departments.

Hunter said he and others were drawn to Texas A&M because it featured, in one place, all the necessary fields of study -- environmental engineering, agriculture and small-scale water engineering, in particular. He also lauded the School of Rural Public Health, the only school of its kind focused on rural health.

"Water-borne diseases and water problems are very much a rural health problem," Hunter said, explaining the difficulty of providing to rural residents a system that is both cost-efficient and easy to operate.

Hunter pointed to a previous project in Puerto Rico as a real-world example of the work that would be done by the partnership. Often researchers make the mistake of going into a community and implementing a complicated system without providing the necessary training, he said.

"All right, you'll do," Hunter said, explaining how community members are often randomly selected. "I'm going to talk to you for an hour about water quality. Won't that be good?"

But researchers have found that it is more efficient to offer in-depth training to an elected member of the community. In such cases, he said, results have shown that water quality goes up and deaths go down.

The new partnership hopes to duplicate results from Puerto Rico on a better-defined scale in Trinidad, he said.

If that effort succeeds, researchers can take their evidence-based results to policymakers and help them make informed decisions on water-quality standards, said Hunter and Nancy Dickey, president of the Health Science Center and vice chancellor for health affairs.

"As you well know, the Health Science Center is dedicated to fostering ... scientific discoveries and translating them into real-world solutions," Dickey said, adding that the partnership would "truly highlight the number of programs offered by both the university and the Health Science Center."

-Holly Huffman, The Eagle