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.
April 5, 2022
As of March 16th, 2022, Christine Markham, PhD, has officially been appointed as Chair of the Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at UTHealth School of Public Health. After serving as interim chair since 2019, Dean Eric Boerwinkle, PhD has identified Markham as the most qualified candidate to take on the leadership role.
April 4, 2022
Deanna Hoelscher, PhD, regional dean of the UTHealth School of Public Health Austin Campus, served as the lead author on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ position paper on the prevention of pediatric overweight and obesity, published in February 2022. This position paper supersedes the academy’s previous paper written in 2013, in which Hoelscher also served as lead author.
April 1, 2022
The distance between Texas and Ukraine, at nearly 6,000 miles, seems vast. Despite the distance, communities here, and elsewhere across the globe, have experienced the reverberating effects of the Russian invasion of that country. The American Psychological Association reports that 80% of Americans find the Russian invasion of Ukraine to be a significant source of stress. Stress factors that coattail the economic impacts of the war showcase just the outermost layers of war's impact on public health.
March 22, 2022
Danielle Harmon, MPH is the Executive Director for the US Lactation Consultant Association (USLCA). Danielle received her Master of Public Health in Community Health Practice in 2012. As a national association for lactation care providers, Danielle oversees the growth and development of USLCA’s programs and resources to ensure the organization is supporting the advancement of the lactation profession.
March 16, 2022
UTHealth School of Public Health Brownsville campus student, Ghadir Helal Salsa has been named the recipient of the 2022 Dr. Gerry C. Gunnin, Ph.D. Public Health Memorial Fellowship (Gunnin Fellowship). This highly competitive award assists students pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree in public health at an accredited Texas school.
February 25, 2022
Aanand Naik, MD, has been appointed chair of the Department of Management, Policy and Community Health, and associate dean for Learning Health Systems at UTHealth School of Public Health. Naik has also been selected as the Nancy P. and Vincent F. Guinee, MD Distinguished Chair and executive director of the UTHealth Houston Consortium on Aging.
February 24, 2022
Melissa Peskin, PhD, with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health, has been accepted into The University of Texas Kenneth I. Shine, M.D. Academy of Health Science for her teaching excellence and commitment to the enhancement of health science education.
February 22, 2022
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health announces the establishment innovative academic health partnerships with the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) and Dallas County Health and Human Services (DCHHS), formalizing and expanding upon existing collaborations between the school and the institutions that date to the very origins of the entities.
February 10, 2022
In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Colorectal Cancer Control Program (CRCCP) made great strides in increasing colorectal cancer screening (CRCS) and follow-up rates through partnerships with Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) across Texas.
February 8, 2022
The most recent results of The University of Texas MD Anderson initiative, “Active Living After Cancer,” has been published in Cancer, the journal of the American Cancer Society (ACS), showing that an increase of physical activity for breast cancer survivors in minority and medically underserved areas can improve quality of life.
