Schools@Downstate 

School of Public Health

Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences

• Dr. Laura A. Geer, Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Sciences and colleague Dr. Lori A. Hoepner, Assistant Professor (co-guest editors on the Special Issue ‘Maternal and Fetal Exposure to Environmental Insults’ in IJEPRH) collaborated with Dr. Ryne Veneema, COM graduate and current medical resident, on a review paper titled Climate Change-Related Environmental Exposures and Perinatal and Maternal Health Outcomes in the U.S.

• Dr. Paul Landsbergis, Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Sciences recently co-authored a American Public Health Association (APHA) policy document titled Support Decent Work for All as a Public Health Goal in the United States.

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

• In an invited commentary in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Dr. Janet Rosenbaum, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,  explores how adults can support adolescents in future pandemics, including improving lagging adolescent vaccination take-up and simultaneously engaging in evidence-based disease protections and improving adolescents’ opportunities to interact together and attend school. She also explored how survey data during the early pandemic excludes adolescents from marginalized populations, and how statistical approaches are unlikely to compensate for these evidence gaps. Link to the article, "Adolescents’ pro-social behavior during the early COVID-19 pandemic" is here.

• Epidemiology DrPH Candidate Alecia James, MPH recently published a study examining the differences between the Alpha and Omicron waves of COVID-19 in our patient population at the University Hospital at Downstate. The comparison of the demographic and clinical factors associated with SARS-CoV-2-infected patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) during the Omicron And Alpha waves shows that the patients in the Omicron wave experienced less severe outcomes than those of the Alpha wave. In contrast to the Alpha variant, the Omicron variant exhibited enhanced infectivity and disease severity in females. The full article can be found here.

• Biostatistics Assistant Professor, Dr. Rose Saint Fleur-Calixte is the first author of a new study examining unmet medical needs and food insecurity in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities. The complexity of care for this vulnerable population requires families to provide a significant amount of health care at home, representing a substantial economic cost. Dr. Calixte found that families whose children did not have health insurance and a usual source of medical care were more likely to delay or avoid needed medical treatment. Children with NDD whose parents had less than a college degree and those from households with income <$75,000 were at higher risk for food insecurity. These findings underscore the need for screening children with NDD to identify those who need linkages to healthcare providers and care coordination organizations. The study was co-authored by Dr. Elizabeth Helzner (EPID/BIOS) and Dr. Marlene Camacho-Rivera (CHSC). The full article can be accessed here.

Health Policy and Management

• Dr. Victor Puac-Polanco, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management and Epidemiology and Biostatistics, recently co-authored a paper entitled “Development of a model to predict combined antidepressant medication and psychotherapy treatment response for depression among veterans.” The article describes a model, created using machine learning methods, that seeks to help treatment decisions for patients with depression in the US Veterans Health Administration. The article is available free of charge up to March 23, 2023.

• Dr. Thomas Mackie, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management and Chair, recently co-authored two papers on the implementation of Reach Out and Read, a program that incorporates book distribution and literacy education into pediatric child well-visits to improve early childhood language development. The papers include both a scoping review to characterize the state of the evidence on Reach Out and Read implementation (available free of charge at here) and a mixed methods study to investigate site-level variation in the implementation of Reach Out and Read in three pediatric settings (available free of charge here). 

College of Nursing

The newly established CON Monthly Research Meeting had its inaugural meeting on February 13, 2023 under the leadership of Dr. Marie-Claire Roberts. All CON tenure-track faculty attended as well as nurses from the hospital to discuss ideas and strategies for the conduct of research at Downstate. "Nursing Research impacts our Downstate community and ultimately the patients and families we serve, said Dr. Escallier, Dean of the College.

Research activity is gaining momentum in the CON. Of note, the SEED grant to explore redesign of nursing education is well underway. Data are being collected and we hope to move forward with data analysis in the near future.

HRSA scholarships were awarded to graduate students enrolled in Advanced Practice Nursing specialties.

• •  Dr. Joanne Ritter-Tietel, Project Director, reports that funds enable students to obtain a high-quality nursing education without hefty student loan debt.