On September 10, 2018, Dr. Bruce Link visited the University of Michigan to give a talk entitled “Stigma and discrimination associated with mental disorders and what we can do about it.” Dr. Link is a Professor at the University of California – Riverside and is an expert in social and psychiatric epidemiology. You can watch his lecture here.

Allison Delaney (MPH 2018) will be the Pediatric/Women’s Health Chaplain and serve as Faculty in the Department of Patient Counseling within the College of Health Professions at Virginia Commonwealth University starting in September.

Joshua Montgomery (MPH 2017) has been selected as a Public Health Analyst Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) Fellow! Josh will  work in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in Washington, DC. The Chief Medical Officer serves as the primary medical advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Health on the development and implementation of HHS-wide public health policy recommendations. He will begin his fellowship in Fall 2018.

Congrats to Allison and Josh!!

GREMAP member Michael Trujillo will be graduating from VCU this spring with his doctorate in Health Psychology. After graduation, Michael will do a post-doctoral fellowship at the university of California San Francisco working with Nancy Adler, one of the worlds experts in stress and disparities.

Congratulations Michael!!

The Michigan Center for Diabetes Translational Research (MCDTR) will be hosting their annual symposium May 10, 2018, from 9 AM to 1 PM. The symposium will be held in the lower level of the dining area in building 18 of the North Campus Research Complex (2800 Plymouth Rd. Ann Arbor, MI). The symposium will include talks, a poster session, and a buffet lunch.

For more information about the symposium, or to submit an application to present at the poster section, please visit the MCDTR website.

GREMAP is excited to launch another alumni into the world!

Josh Montgomery, MPH graduated this semester (he is shown here with VCU Graduate Program Directors Dr. Saba Masho and Jordyn Wallenborn, PhD graduate).

His capstone, “Evaluation of characteristics associated with weight loss in the Richmond YMCA Diabetes Control Program,” used community-based participatory research principles and a mixed-methods approach to examine the correlates of weight change in a local diabetes self-management program.

Congrats Josh!!!

 

 

 

MPH student Joshua Montgomery and Jana Smith, Association Director of Community Health at the YMCA of Greater Richmond, co-presented at the 2017 American Public Health Association annual meeting as part of a panel on “Participatory Approaches to Address Social Disparities and Social Determinants of Health.” Their talk was titled “Leveraging community strengths to address social disparities in diabetes care” and discussed on ongoing collaboration around the YMCA’s Diabetes Control Program. Congrats team!

The Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina has written an article featuring new faculty member (and GREMAP alumnus) Dr. Matt Lohman. Dr. Lohman is joining the Arnold School of Public Health as an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics. The article features Dr. Lohman’s work on mental health in older adults.

An interdisciplinary team, lead by Dr. Nao Hagiwara at Virginia Commonwealth University, has been awarded a 1.7 million dollar grant to study interactions between doctors and black patients with diabetes. The team has members with expertise in many different fields, including GREMAP’s own Dr. Briana Mezuk. This will allow them to study this subject with a variety of methods and approaches to reach a deeper understanding. The team hopes that this research will produce findings that can help to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health.