Karen E. Peters, a DrPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, received the 1999 Alan W. Donaldson Memorial Award, the highest award granted by the School of Public Health to graduating students for academic excellence, qualities of leadership, and community service.

The Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division presented 1998–99 Haenszel Research Awards to Kwan Hur, a PhD student in biostatistics conducting research on "A Random-Effects Zero-inflated Poisson Regression Model for Clustered Extra-Zero Count Data," and to Lorna Thorpe, a PhD student in epidemiology conducting research on "Predictors of HCV Prevalence in Young Drug Injectors, Chicago 1997–98."

At its annual meeting in March, the Alumni Association of the School of Public Health awarded Paul Q. Peterson Public Health Scholarships to: Christina M. Almeida, an MPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, conducting research on "Managed Care and Physician Group Practices"; Melissa Rader, an MPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, conducting research on "Hepatitis B and Young Injection Drug Users: Vaccinating a New Generation"; Michael E. Risty, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, conducting research on "Dental Screening"; and Lorna Thorpe, a PhD student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, conducting research on "The Collaborative Injection Drug User Studies—CIDUS II."

Activities

Students making presentations at the 1998 Annual American Public Health Association Meeting in Washington, DC, included:

Martha Barbiaux, MS, a PhD student, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Division, on "Reaching the Latino Community with the Child Passenger Safety Message."

Nikolai Butki, an MPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, on "Public Health and Medicine: A Collaborative Research Agenda for Emergency Departments."

Maria Cervania, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, on Public Health Student Caucus member orientation, "Women in Public Health Leadership," "Proportional Mortality Trends in Heart Disease and Cancer to the Year 2030," and the "Medicine and Public Health Initiative."

Michael Fagen, MPH, a PhD student, Community Health Sciences Division, on "Evaluating an MPH Degree Program for Core Competencies" and "Understanding News Media Coverage of Managed Care Ethics."

Franklin N. Gay, an MPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, on "Examining School-based Conflict Resolution among Latino Youth" and "Predictors of Violence: Ethnographic Interviews of Inner-City Youth."

Barbara E. Giloth, MPH, CHES, a DrPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, on "The Effects of a Chronic Disease Self-Management Program on Self-rated Health (SRH): A Multivariate Analysis."

Patricia Hannon, an MPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, on the "Impact on Breastfeeding of the Maternal Experience with a Jaundiced Newborn."

Jay Hurh, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, on "Brain Tumor Epidemiology: Is the Stage Set for Progress?"

Patti Jo Jukich, an MS student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, on "Brain Tumor Epidemiology: Is the Stage Set for Progress?"

Abdu Lateef Kareem, an MPH student, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Division, on "Why Do Insured IDUs Still Utilize Community-based Resources? A Formative Assessment of the UIC School of Public Health’s Community Outreach Intervention Projects."

Judith Kruger Lang, a PhD student, Community Health Sciences Division, on "Older Adult Preferences for Physician Inquiry" and "Aging Issues."

Herminia Taveras, MPH, a PhD student, Community Health Sciences Division, on "Examining School-based Conflict Resolution among Latino Youth," "Why Do Insured IDUs Still Utilize Community-based Resources? A Formative Assessment of the UIC School of Public Health’s Community Outreach Intervention Projects," and "Predictors of Violence: Ethnographic Interviews of Inner-City Youth."

Lorna Thorpe, a PhD student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, on "It’s a New Generation: Infection Risks for Blood-borne Pathogens among Young and Recently Initiated Drug Injectors."

Sharla K. Willis, a DrPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, on the "Impact on Breastfeeding of the Maternal Experience with a Jaundiced Newborn."

Lina Augius, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, was named to the Chicago Schweitzer Urban Fellows Program of the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. Schweitzer fellows are selected from among students pursuing degrees in the health professions who are recognized for their commitment to underserved populations in Chicago. Since October, Ms. Augius has been a volunteer at the Community Health Clinic in West Town, where she has been doing diabetes education and assessing the prevalence of diabetes among the clinic’s patients.

Michael Fagen, MPH, a PhD student, Community Health Sciences Division, received a second year of funding in support of his predoctoral fellowship in prevention research training from the National Institute of Mental Health. Mr. Fagen’s paper on "Understanding News Media Coverage of Managed Care Ethics" was commissioned by the Milbank Memorial Fund as part of the fund’s project to document "The Transformation of American Health Care." Mr. Fagen was selected as a recipient of a UIC University Fellowship, the most distinguished award the university offers to graduate students, for the 1999–2000 academic year.

Barbara E. Giloth, MPH, CHES, a DrPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, was appointed to the new Education Board of the American Public Health Association and was also appointed as a member-at-large to APHA’s 1999 Annual Meeting Program Planning Committee.

Danielle B. Jackson, an MPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, was a member of a work group appointed by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health to assist in producing the Healthy People 2000 Progress Review on Black Americans and in organizing a live satellite broadcast chaired by Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher and delivered to over 200 interactive sites across the country on October 26. Ms. Jackson authored a section of the review on homicide objectives and progress and assisted with the logistics of the satellite broadcast. She also worked under Mildred Hunter, MPH, an SPH alumna and director of the DHHS Region V Office of Minority Health, to coordinate closely with the DHHS Region V state health departments and their Offices of Minority Health.

Joel F. Karman, MSW, LSW, an MPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, gave poster presentations entitled "Predictive Factors for Failure to Comply with Listing Requirements in Liver Transplant Candidates with Alcoholic Cirrhosis" at the American Society of Transplantation Annual Scientific Meeting in May and "Risk Factors for Early Recurrent Alcoholism in Liver Transplant Candidates with Alcoholic Cirrhosis" at the American Gastroenterological Association Annual Meeting during Digestive Diseases Week in Orlando, Florida, also in May. The latter title was selected as a Poster of Distinction during this event.

Bulmaro Martinez, an MPH student, Community Health Sciences Division, received a scholarship from the Hispanic Alliance for Career Enhancement. Based on academic achievement, community service, and leadership experience, the award is presented annually to support Hispanic students pursuing advanced degrees. Mr. Martinez works as a research assistant in the UIC Medical Center in the Department of Research and Development where he conducts data and statistical analysis.

Isabel M. Martinez, MPH, a PhD student, Community Health Sciences Division, was selected as a fellow of the Future Leaders in Minority Health Program. Co-sponsored by the Chicago Health Consortium and the Illinois Area Health Education Centers, the program fosters development of leadership skills of selected Chicago-area minority students pursuing advanced degrees in the health professions through collaboration with community-based organizations. During a practicum with the Centro San Bonifacio, Ms. Martinez aided in the development of an initiative to prevent domestic violence against Latina women. She also wrote a grant proposal to the Today’s Chicago Woman Foundation that resulted in a seed-funding award to support the project.

Prachi Mehta, a DrPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, assumed a new position as systems trainer with the National Center for Infectious Diseases, Biostatistics and Information Management Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in April. She is responsible for training personnel in state health departments in the use of the Public Health Laboratory Information System (PHLIS), including the Salmonella Outbreak Detection Algorithm, an outbreak detection program for food-borne pathogens. In addition, Ms. Mehta will be integrating her work into a doctoral thesis by performing an evaluation of PHLIS.

Kingsley Onyemere, a PhD student, Community Health Sciences Division, and Kris Zierold, a PhD student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division, were accepted for the Cambridge Seminar on Diabetes Epidemiology, sponsored by the World Health Organization and the Swiss Foundation for Diabetes Research and held at Cambridge University. Both received full scholarships to attend the course, which draws participants from all over the world. The course provides not only didactic training to those new to the field, but acts as an important point of connection to a growing network of researchers.

Karen E. Peters, a DrPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, serves as project director for the Cooperative Actions for Health Project of the American Medical Association’s Medicine and Public Health Initiative.

Teresa Louise-Bender Pape, MA, a DrPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, has begun a postdoctoral fellowship in the Institute for Health Services Research and Policy Studies in Northwestern University’s Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Ms. Pape also works as a speech-language pathologist at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and as a health services research scientist in the Midwest Center for Health Services and Policy Research of the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital’s Department of Health Services Research and Development, where she is involved with the Spinal Cord Injury Quality Enhancement Research Initiative.

Gail J. H. Wilson, RN, MS, MPH, a DrPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, was named executive director of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation’s Greater Illinois Chapter, the national organization’s second largest chapter. Ms. Wilson is the first woman to hold this position. She most recently served as director of the Chicago Healthy Steps Program at Advocate Health Care and prior to that was vice president of physician services at The University of Chicago Hospitals and director of the Chicago Lying-in Hospital.

Joe Wislar, MS (‘99), presented his thesis findings in a talk entitled "The Association between Criminal Activity and the Termination of SSI Benefits" at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in November and gave a presentation on "The Structure and Correlates of a Debriefing Instrument in a Drug Use Survey" at the annual meeting of the American Association of Public Opinion Research in May. Mr. Wislar is first author of a paper entitled "Can Self-reported Drug Use Data Be Used to Assess Sex Risk Behavior in Adolescents?" in press in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

The Public Health Student Association elected the following officers for 1999–2000: co-presidents —Sonjay Sarma, an MPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division, and James Qualls, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division; vice president—Monica McCarthy, an MPH student, Health Policy and Administration Division; secretary—Caitlin Shannon, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division; treasurer—Urvi Shah, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division; Health Professions Student Council representative—Lina Augius, an MPH Student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division; and Committee on Academic Progress student representative—Jennie Levy, an MPH student, Epidemiology and Biostatistics Division.