Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health at Rollins

Multiple GDEH alum attended the annual Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Conference April 21-24 in Atlanta! We are proud that our program yields such talented and dedicated alum and that it can have such a direct impact on the public health workforce. Pictured from left to right: Julia Sobolik, Stephen Mugel, Miranda Delahoy, Courtney Victor, Elizabeth Sajewski, Freddy Lamar, Heather Reese, Rebecca Kann (GDEH MPH and UW PhD), Kait Taibl.

Check out this month's edition of The Greenprint, highlighting the work of PhD students Tsz Shan Ma and Ziyin Tang by visiting the GDEH website towards the bottom of the "Research" page: https://tinyurl.com/25xswm8f. The Greenprint is a monthly research newsletter that recognizes accomplishments and highlights the exciting research our PhD students are doing.

Publication alert! Last month, GDEH PhD students, Youran Tan, Kaitlin Taibl, and Jasmin Eatman, and faculty members, Dana Barr, Stephanie Eick, Donghai Liang, Parinya (Prinn) Panuwet and P. Barry Ryan, were published in Environmental Science & Technology, one of the premier environmental health academic journals. They found that pregnant women who were exposed to multiple PFAS had higher levels of TNF alpha, a clinical biomarker that is predictive of preterm birth. Donghai Liang

Publication alert! Last month, a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) assessment featuring GDEH faculty members Tom Clasen and Matthew Freeman was published and highlighted in The Lancet, the world's highest-impact academic journal. Their research found that "1·4 (95% CI 1·3–1·5) million deaths and 74 (68–80) million disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) could have been prevented by safe WASH in 2019, representing 2·5% of global deaths and 2·9% of global DALYs from all causes" suggesting the importance of WASH-focused global health interventions.

The Greenprint is a monthly research newsletter, created by GDEH PhD students, that recognizes accomplishments and highlights the exciting research our PhD students are doing. Be sure to check out this month's edition which highlights the work of Courtney Victor and Kaitlin Taibl. The monthly newsletters are also posted on the GDEH website towards the bottom of the Research page: https://tinyurl.com/25xswm8f.

Publication alert! GDEH faculty member Matthew Freeman was part of a team including London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the WHO to systematically review the impact of handwashing on respiratory infections and found that handwashing promotion reduces respiratory infections by 17%. The findings were recently published in The Lancet and you can find the full article here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)00021-1/fulltext .

McMullan Award honors Clare McCarthy’s work as a changemaker | Emory University | Atlanta GA Clare McCarthy, an environmental sciences major with a minor in community building and social change, distinguished herself by applying her intellectual gifts as a climate leader both on and off campus.

Congratulations to our second year EHS PhD student, Ziyin Tang, who recently received the prestigious Conquer Cancer Annual Meeting Merit Award from Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation (http://conquer.org/news/conquer-cancer-announces-2023-asco-annual-meeting-merit-award-recipients). Annual Meeting Merit Awards support students and trainees who are first authors on abstracts selected for presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. Among the 40,000 conference attendees, Ziyin is among 1 of the 143 recipients recognized with Merit Awards. These recipients are recognized for their respective field and research advancements within the cancer care community.

Meanwhile, Ziyin's abstract, entitled "Lung cancer metabolomics: A pooled analysis in the Cancer Prevention Studies", was accepted as an oral presentation by the highly competitive ASCO conference program (>6,500 abstracts were submitted and very few are accepted as the platform oral presentation). In the upcoming ASCO annual meeting, Ziyin will report the exciting study findings from the ongoing collaboration between GDEH and American Cancer Society (P*s: Liang and Wang) supported by the HERCULES Pilot Grant and the ACS grant supported by the Gudefin Family Foundation.

Please join us in congratulating GDEH second year PhD student Kait Taibl on her recent scholar award from the Philanthropic Educational Organization (PEO)! Kait is one of 110 doctoral students in the U. S. and Canada selected to receive a $20,000 Scholar Award from the P.E.O. Sisterhood. She was sponsored by Chapter N of Atlanta, GA.

Kaitlin graduated with a B.S. in Health Sciences from Chapman University in 2017 and a M.S.P.H. in Environmental Health and Epidemiology from Emory University in 2021. She was the recipient of the Legacy Scholarship, Outstanding Health Sciences Senior Award, Departmental Honors, Rollins School of Public Health Merit Scholarship, Delta Omega Honorary Society, among many other honors.

The P.E.O. Scholar Awards were established in 1991 to provide substantial merit-based awards for women of the United States and Canada who are pursuing a doctoral-level degree at an accredited college or university. Scholar Awards recipients are a select group of women chosen for their high level of academic achievement and their potential for having a positive impact on society.

The RSPH Outstanding APE Award poster event took place this past Monday and two of the nine finalists selected were students in the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health. Congratulations to Erica Kahn, BS/MPH in Environmental Health, and Sabrina Chow, MPH in Environmental Health and Epidemiology!