Featured News and Articles
The Center for Public Health Practice is pleased to announce the following awards:
April 27, 2021
Center for Public Health Practice Award for Translation and Application of Research to Public Health Policy and Practice
Alexander Sunderman of the Department of Epidemiology and Praveen Kumar of the Department of Health Policy and Management received the Center for Public Health Practice Award for Translation and Application of Research to Public Health Policy and Practice for their project, “Whole Genome Sequencing Surveillance and EHR Machine Learning for Enhanced Hospital Outbreak Detection.” The CPHP Translation Award honors the Graduate School of Public Health Dean’s Day project best demonstrating a contribution to policy making and/or applications for improving practice.
Catherine Cartier Ulrich Memorial Award: Public Health in Service to the Underserved
The Catherine Cartier Ulrich Memorial Award was established by the Center for Public Health Practice to honor the memory of Catherine Cartier Ulrich for her work improving the health of underserved populations. The Cartier Ulrich Memorial Award honors one master’s level and one doctoral level student each year and is open to all Dean’s Day projects that show a commitment to public health service to the underserved. In 2021, Darien Beall, an MPH student in the Department of Epidemiology, was recognized for the master’s level project, “Allegheny County Health Department Overdose Surveillance Experience: Death Narratives during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Doctoral candidate, Stephanie Christian of the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences was recognized for her work “Formative Evaluation of a Front Desk Program at a Latino Community Resource Center.”
Center for Public Health Practice Welcomes Interim Director and Deputy Director
July 1, 2020
The Center for Public Health Practice welcomes Elizabeth Van Nostrand, JD as its interim director and Tina Batra Hershey, JD, MPH as its interim deputy director!
Elizabeth Van Nostrand is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Pitt Public Health, an Adjunct Professor in the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Law, an Instructor in the Katz Executive MBA Program, the Principal Investigator for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Public Health Training Center, and the Director of the MPH and JD/MPH programs. She is a former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow for excellence in public health law education. She currently teaches Public Health Law and Ethics, Current Issues in Health Law, Health Law, and Law in Public Health Practice – an interdisciplinary, practice-based class. Her recent and current projects include researching the public health system with respect to emergency preparedness and response, integrating traditional legal analysis with social networking principles, analyzing hydraulic fracturing and its impact on the aquifer, co-authoring the Louisiana, DC, and Pennsylvania Public Health Law Bench Books, and investigating laws governing infectious diseases outbreaks as part of the MIDAS National Center of Excellence. Previously, she was an attorney specializing in litigation with the United States Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC, with Thompson & Knight in Dallas, Texas, and with several small law firms in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is an active member of the Louisiana Bar.
Tina Batra Hershey is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Pitt Public Health and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where she teaches courses on health care compliance, health law and ethics, health care fraud, and health policy and management in public health. At Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, she is an Adjunct Instructor of Health Law. Her current and recent projects include enhancing tribal legal preparedness for public health emergencies through the Tribal Legal Preparedness Project; co-authoring public health emergency law manuals and bench books for the District of Columbia and Louisiana; and examining the impact of laws and policies related to infectious disease outbreaks, access to primary care after Superstorm Sandy, the delivery and quality of health care services, health equity, and the social determinants of health. Before coming to Pitt Public Health, Batra Hershey was a health care attorney in Washington, DC and Pittsburgh. She is a member of the Pennsylvania and District of Columbia Bars.
Please join us and welcoming them into their new roles!
Faculty from the Center for Public Health Practice Releases a New Article in the Journal of American Dental Association
December 2019
Child Dental Neglect Laws
The Center for Public Health Practice’s Elizabeth Van Nostrand, JD recently collaborated with a team from the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine on an interjurisdictional comparison of statutes and regulations pertaining to the reporting of child dental neglect by dentists.
To read the results of the study in the Journal of the Dental Association, click on the link below:
Child Dental Neglect Laws
Center for Public Health Practice and School of Medicine Faculty Collaborate on Sepsis Study
July 18, 2019; Journal of the American Medical Association
Faculty from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Public Health Practice and School of Medicine collaborated on a retrospective cohort study of hospitalized adults with sepsis to determine whether New York sepsis regulations helped reduce sepsis mortality compared to states lacking regulations. The results of the study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and featured on NPR.
To read the complete article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, click on the link below:
To read the NPR story, click on the link below:
Regulations That Mandate Sepsis Care Appear to Have Worked in New York
Public Health Research and Practice Should Coexist
June 27, 2019; ASTHO Public Health Weekly
“As public health leaders, we can and should do a better job of disseminating research and applying it to improve public health programs and policies.” Wendy E. Braund, MD, MPH, MSEd, FACPM, director of the Center for Public Health Practice, recently shared her thoughts on the importance of practice-based research and implementation science in public health agencies.
To read the complete article in ASTHO Public Health Weekly, click on the link below:
