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.
October 27, 2021
Research led by Ryan Suk, PhD, MS, assistant professor of Health Economics at UTHealth School of Public Health, was recently published on the JAMA Network Open, showing that suicide rates among cancer patients living in low-income or rural areas are much higher compared with high-income or urban areas.
October 25, 2021
In response to the Paso del Norte region’s population growth and economic expansion, UTHealth School of Public Health – El Paso is pleased to offer the graduate level program, Master of Public Health (MPH) in Healthcare Management.
October 20, 2021
Jack Tsai, PhD, regional dean of the San Antonio campus and professor of public health, has been appointed editor-in-chief of the Nature Portfolio Journal’s (NPJ) Mental Health Research. Tsai will advance the journal’s mission by emphasizing quality research on behavioral health, and inviting people with diverse backgrounds and opinions and early career researchers to be involved.
October 10, 2021
Christina Villarreal didn’t expect to move back to her native Rio Grande Valley after going away to college and teaching in the Dallas area for five years. But in 2003, during her pregnancy, she realized that as a single mom she would need some family support. She returned home to Brownsville to look for a job.
September 30, 2021
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health Undergraduate Summer Research Experience, which gave undergraduates the opportunity to apprentice with faculty researchers, completed the 2021 program in August.
September 20, 2021
When Dr. Steven Kelder, MPH, joined the UTHealth School of Public Health CATCH research team as a graduate student in 1987, he admits he couldn’t have foreseen the ways in which the CATCH school health programs - founded within UTHealth and initially designed to improve cardiovascular health by teaching kids about nutrition and exercise - would grow.
September 15, 2021
“I applied to UTHealth and picked the Brownsville campus because it looked like they were doing some interesting research, and I had read about Dr. Joseph McCormick and his work in Africa. Just a few days after submitting my application, I got a call from Brownsville, and the faculty there have really welcomed me ever since."
August 25, 2021
Janet Gutiérrez, DrPH, safety manager over the UTHealth Radiation Safety Program of Environmental Health and Safety, was recognized by the Health Physics Society, the national professional trade organization for radiation safety, for her decades-long commitment to the field.
August 16, 2021
Lisa Mitchell-Bennett’s journey took her around the globe and landed her in the Rio Grande Valley, which she now considers her home. Born in Mexico, she grew up in California, with stints living and working in South and Central America, Europe, Asia and across the US. She arrived at the US-Mexico border after graduate school to work with refugees, planning to stay for a year.
August 12, 2021
Dr. David Gimeno Ruiz de Porras, PhD, and Dr. George L. Delclos, PhD, of the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH) at UTHealth School of Public Health co-authored an article published Aug. 9 by the American Journal of Public Health. The article, “Monitoring Self-Perceived Occupational Health Inequities in Central America, 2011-2018”, analyzes changes in occupational health inequity between 2011 and 2018 among a representative sample of over 20,000 workers in Central America.
