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.
June 25, 2021
On April 30, Shelby Johnson, Public Health Project Coordinator at the Baylor College of Medicine-Houston AIDS Education Training Center (AETC) and UTHealth School of Public Health alumni, facilitated and moderated the HIV Prevention Symposium: Innovative Approaches to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), an all-day virtual event.
June 18, 2021
We are pleased to announce that UTHealth School of Public Health is ranked in the top 25 schools of public health in the nation, as reported by the US News and World Report. This ranking places UTHealth School of Public Health as the number 1 school of public health in Texas. It is through the hard work put in by our faculty and staff that this achievement is possible.
June 16, 2021
Ruth Sanchez, MD, MPH is a graduate from UTHealth School of Public Health’s Austin campus. As a dual-degree MD/MPH student, she was able to share courses between her MD and MPH programs, finishing both degrees faster together than if she had completed them separately.
June 11, 2021
To help guide businesses across the state, a seven-part, weekly, industry-specific webinar series was created: Reopen Texas: Return to Work the Right Way. The collaboration between The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (SWCOEH); the Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (P2R) Academy; and the Health and Safety Council (HASC) helped answer FAQs on the safe return to work when reopening businesses and other environments.
June 10, 2021
Jennifer Ish, MS, a SWCOEH NIOSH trainee in Occupational Epidemiology, will present her abstract at the 33rd Annual Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE 2021), held Aug. 23-26 as a virtual conference, hosted by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.
May 27, 2021
Alanna Morrison, PhD, FAHA, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences and director of the Human Genetics Center, has been selected to receive the 2020 President’s Scholar Award for Excellence in Research.
May 27, 2021
Roger Williams is a Houston-based Master of Public Health Epidemiology student. During the summer of 2020, he conducted two separate remote practicums: one project with Ethne Health Community Clinic under Dr. Robert Contino and the second with Harvard Medical School under Dr. Molly Franke.
May 25, 2021
We're highlighting the mentor and mentee relationship between alumnus, Dr. Kimberly Pounds, and current student, Brianna Lewis, MHCA. Dr. Kimberly Pounds graduated with her DrPH in Health Promotion/Health Education in 2002 and currently serves as an Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Assessment and Outreach Programs at Texas Southern University. Bri Lewis, MHCA, is currently a DrPH student in the Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences program. She currently serves as a Project Specialist and Research Coordinator II at UTHealth as well.
May 21, 2021
George Delclos, MD, MPH, PhD, Professor in the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health within the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environmental Sciences (EHGES) at the UTHealth School of Public Health spoke at the Texas CARES: Covid-19 antibody project webinar on Tuesday, May 18.
May 7, 2021
Courtney Dezendorf, MEd, serves as the Director of the Office of Practice and Learning with the Texas Department of State Health Services. At the beginning of the pandemic, it became clear that statewide contact tracing will be needed. The Texas DSHS partnered with the UTHealth School of Public Health to help staff the statewide Contact Tracing Program, with Courtney leading the charge.
