Since May 2025, second-year student at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, Yesmeena Shmaitelly, has played a pivotal role in advancing the Harris Health Food is Medicine (FIM) study, a multi-phased project providing fresh produce and nutrition education to at-risk pregnant mothers in the Greater Houston region.
The Swaddle Study, led by Serwaa S. Omowale, PhD, LMSW, MPH, assistant professor in Management, Policy, and Community Health and Center for Health Equity (CHE) faculty, is a federally supported, groundbreaking community-based research project designed to address long-standing racial inequities in maternal and infant health outcomes among Black families in the U.S..
As we look forward to the year ahead, I invite and encourage you to renew your commitment and passion for the field of public health, and to not lose sight of the importance of our work.
New research presents promising results from an innovative technique that utilizes temperature control to genetically engineer sterile populations of insects, such as mosquitoes responsible for diseases like malaria, dengue, and other vector-borne illnesses.
September 22, 2022
Restrepo's research shows that the community at the Texas-Mexico border has among the highest prevalence of type 2 Diabetes among tuberculosis patients worldwide.
September 19, 2022
This collaboration between researchers from UTHealth School of Public Health, along with the UAMS, BCM, and Texas Department of State Health Services, determined that hypospadias, which affects 1 out of 200 boys born in the U.S., co-occurs with CHDs.
September 8, 2022
Researchers at the UTHealth CHPPR are working alongside community partners to expand the recovery support peer specialist workforce in Texas, addressing a shortage of peer substance use disorder workers in the state.
August 22, 2022
While the paper utilized pre-COVID-19 data, the researchers say their findings suggest that COVID-era gig workers will likely see an even greater increase in poor overall health and psychological distress.
August 10, 2022
Those administering vaccines should address hesitancies some may have by holding “respectful conversations...address any misinformation; share the benefits of vaccines, curate honest information, and rebuild the trust that has been lost in science and public health,” says Paula Cuccaro, PhD.
July 29, 2022
The “Examining implementation needs and readiness for mental, social, and emotional health programming at The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston” project aims to improve youth’s mental, social, and emotional health by assisting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Houston (BGCGH) in implementing and scaling-up evidence-based programming.
July 26, 2022
First Mile Care is a company dedicated to chronic disease care and prevention that works with physicians and communities throughout the U.S. to reduce prediabetes rates. The Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research (CHPPR) partners with First Mile Care to pilot a diabetes prevention program, the Sustainable Culturally Adapted Nutrition (SCAN) program, in Houston, TX.
July 22, 2022
“We’re there to get a pulse on the population’s health behaviors so that we can adjust our healthcare programs to responds the needs of the LGBTQ+ population,” says Irene Tami-Maury, DMD, DrPH, MSc assistant professor with the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics & Environmental Sciences.
July 21, 2022
Bijal Balasubramanian, MBBS, PhD, Professor and Dallas Campus Dean of The University of Texas Health Science Center Houston School of Public Health and co-Director of the UTHealth Houston Institute for Implementation Science was recently appointed to the “Health of Primary Care Scorecard” committee. Alongside her peers, Balasubramanian will lend her expertise to building the foundation of what the future of quality primary care will look like across the country.
July 19, 2022
A collaboration between CHPPR’s Colorectal Cancer Control and Prevention (CRCCP) and Organizational Readiness projects aims to help federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) improve their colorectal cancer screening (CRCS) rates. By performing needs and readiness assessments with the FQHCs, the teams can identify factors that influence the implementation of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) that could increase CRCS rates, allowing for more effective implementation with improved results.
