Schools@Downstate

School Of Health Professions

Midwifery

Dr. Ronnie Lichtman, MW Chair, continues in the PI role on two ongoing research studies:

• The first project compares outcomes between program graduates who were educated to be Certified Midwives and those educated to be Certified Nurse-Midwives.

• The second is an interprofessional study to explore nationwide the use of gender neutral/diverse/inclusive language within informed consent templates and IRB guidance. Dr. Susanrachel Condon, new MW faculty, published an international study on pregnancy and osteoporosis in the Journal of Midwifery.

Physical Therapy

• Drs. Farhad Haeri, Puneet Dhaliwal, and Dennis Torre produced four abstracts accepted for presentation at national conferences.

Health Informatics

Drs. Mohammad Faysel, David Kaufman, and Adie Jumbo, collaborated in producing:

• • • • A professional’s learning guide about COVID-19 and online resources,

      • Five conference abstracts

      • Three poster presentations & three peer-reviewed journal articles,

      • A workshop presentation

      • A colloquium

      • Two national presentations, and an international presentation.

      • The HI team also has three funded grants and one with a pending disposition.

Occupational Therapy

• Drs. Nancy Kline and Efekona Nuwere along with Professors Vikram Pagpatan and Richard Sabel produced a peer-reviewed journal article (with student co-authors), one platform presentation at the NYSOTA conference, two poster presentations at the NYSOTA conference (one with student authors), and a platform presentation at the AOTA national educational summit.

Dean, Dr. Allen Lewis continues in the Co-PI role on the Downstate HRSA LEND grant and he conducted two invited presentations at the Human Development Institute of the University of Kentucky.

School Of Public Health

Community Health Sciences

• Dr. Denise Bruno, Associate Professor and Interim Chair in the Department of Community Health Sciences, served as senior author on a paper calling for a change to the HPV vaccine guidelines in the journal Human Vaccine and Therapeutics: An opportunity to increase human papillomavirus vaccination rates: change the guidelines. The publication can be viewed here

Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences

• Dr. Lori A. Hoepner, Assistant Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences is senior author of "Phthalate and bisphenol a exposures during pregnancy: findings from the National Children's Study" in Environmental Research. Vivian Nguyen, MD/MPH-EOHS student is a co-author on the study.

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

• Dr. Michael Szarek and DrPH alumnus Dr. Shah Islam were coinvestigators on a recent study, "Lipoprotein(a) and the effect of alirocumab on coronary and non-coronary revascularization following acute coronary syndrome", that was presented by Dr. Szarek at the European Society of Cardiology meeting.

  • • The research team found that alirocumab reduced revascularization after acute coronary syndrome, especially in patients with elevated lipoprotein(a) at baseline. The publication can be viewed here.

• Dr. Janet Rosenbaum joined the 75-member Journal of Adolescent Health editorial board by invitation. JAH has the 6th highest impact factor of pediatrics journals.

• Dr. Elizabeth Helzner was a coauthor on a recent study linking hearing loss to depressive symptoms in older adults. The study was based on data collected by Dr. Helzner as part of the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study.

  • • Moderate or greater hearing loss was associated with approximately 2.5 times higher odds of concurrent depressive symptoms, as well as a 25% higher risk of incident depressive symptoms over time. The open access publication can be viewed here: https://lnkd.in/dNkNh-kJ.

Health Policy and Management

• Anu Shetty, MPH (Health Policy and Management)/MD student, presented at the American Public Health Association in Boston on her work in the medical school student-run political asylum clinic.

  • • The presentation, entitled "Analyzing the outcomes and success of a medical school student-run political asylum clinic and its implications on public health," was co-authored by Brandon Grill, Faisal Elai, Sifan Lu, Arthur Grant, Aram Durgerian, and Lori Zomback.

• Drs. Azure Thompson, from the Department of Community Health Sciences, and Thomas I Mackie (senior author), from the Department of Health Policy and Management, along with Ms. Leah Ramella (lead author) and Ms. Ana Schaefer, from the Research Foundation, co-authored an article in General Hospital Psychiatry, based on data from the Evaluating Lifelines for Moms (ELM) Study.

  • • This study examined the initiatives that the nation's 15 Perinatal Psychiatry Access Programs implemented in response to calls to advance mental healthcare equity. The publication can be viewed here.

• Dr. Daniel Ehlke is working with Alissa Belzie, a student in the College of Medicine, on the development of a survey tool to assess the need for mental health screening, and further mental health resources, for incoming college students.

Downstate SPH APHA Research Presentations: View highlights from the conference here

School Of Graduate Studies

Graduate Schools at health sciences universities are typically engines of research. SGS is currently small, but we have implemented a number of changes this academic year that are aimed at improving the size of our applicant pool and the effectiveness of our PhD training. We expect that such changes will positively impact Research at Downstate. These include:

• SGS joined the BioMedCAS central online application portal system. Moving away from a stand-alone Downstate application is expected to attract more applicants to Downstate.

• SGS joined most other biomedical science graduate schools nationally and eliminated the GRE requirement. This change is also expected to attract more applicants to Downstate.

• SGS is working to establish NIH F30 and F31 fellowship application training programs to provide more support and training for students to apply for fellowships

Throughout all of this, the SGS student council is working closely with Interim Dean Christini and the SGS administrative team to provide ideas and input into how to make SGS even stronger.

College of Nursing

SEED Grant Study

• SUNY Downstate SEED Grant Study: "Entry-Level Nursing Education Redesign: from nursing competencies to patient outcomes," PI-Marie-Claire Roberts, Co-PIs Joanne Ritter-Teitel, Jean McHugh, and Barbara Messina. This program of research will investigate the readiness of the College of Nursing to support redesign of nursing education and work toward a Competency-based learning approach.

HRSA Grant

• The College of Nursing was awarded a 5-year grant (we are in year 3). The HRSA grant is to secure Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students. We are pleased to share that for the AY 2022-2023 we are planning to administer approximately 120 scholarships in the amount of $198,700.

The College of Nursing was selected as one of the fifty Nursing Schools across the US, by the American Association of Colleges (AACN), to participate in a project titled “Building a Culture of Belonging in Academic Nursing”. The LAMP survey is used to assess learning environments in schools of nursing to better understand how these environment influence student experiences and outcomes.