Are there better ways to evaluate how prescribed therapies are working while patients are living their everyday lives, when doctors aren’t there to check? New answers may come from the digital devices we carry and wear, says Donna Coffman, a biostatistician in the College of Public Health. Coffman is leading a National Cancer Institute-funded study of smoking cessation treatments as a way to develop models that could help researchers improve patient responses to all sorts of ongoing therapies, from managing addictive behaviors to compliance with medication-taking.  “We n...

Can low computer literacy limit a person’s ability to benefit from a health support system? A new study from Stephen J. Lepore, professor and chair of the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, found that less tech-savvy people may not get the full benefits of an online health service. The push toward more technology in patient support may risk bringing the “digital divide” to healthcare. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in the European Journal of Cancer Care, set up internet support groups for breast cancer patients. The resul...

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) recommend that children eat nutrient-dense snacks throughout the day to meet their nutritional needs. But are teens snacking in ways that lead to better health—or unwanted weight? A new study led by College of Public Health researchers and published in Nutrients has found that adolescents with normal weight had fewer snacks daily and smaller snacks per occasion (i.e., fewer calories per snack) than teens classified as overweight or obese.  Other findings from the study include that teens with overweight and obesity were consuming...

As the opioid epidemic has widened, some of the most heavily impacted areas have been in rural Appalachia, a region of the country stretching from parts of New York to northern Alabama and Georgia. Opioid use in this region has grown disproportionately, driven in part by the higher prevalence of people using prescription opioids non-medically, the transition from prescription opioids to heroin, and the more recent increased availability of Fentanyl. This has presented a potentially overwhelming public health challenge in rural areas, where facilities offering treatment for subst...

Preeclampsia, a syndrome that can affect pregnant women, has been called mysterious in both popular and scientific literature. It is characterized by high blood pressure and often protein in the urine. Symptoms vary, ranging from headaches to seizures and life-threatening complications. What causes preeclampsia, which occurs in an estimated five to eight percent of all pregnancies, is not well understood, so there isn’t a way to determine who will develop it. The only established treatment is clinically induced delivery, which sometimes leads to premature birth. “Currently...

Alzheimer’s disease takes away the memories we have of our lives, robbing the brain’s ability to hold on to them. There’s no cure yet. But it’s possible that, with early diagnosis and treatment, memory loss might be slowed.   Jamie Reilly, director of Temple’s Concepts and Cognition Laboratory and associate professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has long held that treatment to help people maintain words and concepts they consider important, before dementia erases them, is a more promising approach than trying to restore already-forgott...

College of Public Health researchers have developed an advanced clinical test that they hope practitioners may soon use to assess stroke patients and work toward recovery of diminished speech abilities. The Temple Assessment of Language and Short-Term Memory in Aphasia (TALSA) is for diagnosing people with aphasia, a language disorder often caused by stroke. It can impair a person’s ability to speak, write, or process incoming language, even though the person’s intellect and stored knowledge of language remain intact. There are around 100,000 new aphasia cases annually in t...

Public Health Management Corporation’s Research and Evaluation Group has invited Brittany R. Schuler, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, to its inaugural Visiting Scholars Program for the 2019-2020 academic year. In collaboration with PHMC researchers and practitioners, the visiting scholars will pursue and strengthen their research, build a knowledge base in a specific area of public health and further support their academic goals.  Schuler’s research aims to understand and improve daily household routines in an effort to improve well-being and protect chi...

Individuals of transgender experience are disproportionately affected by HIV, but resources for prevention and treatment within the mainstream healthcare system can be limited. Often, it’s grass-roots organizations that fill the healthcare gap for this community. In Philadelphia, the homegrown Trans Equity Project has been delivering peer-based health education and support to transgender individuals since 2003. A new research effort seeks to understand whether this local program, which provides a six-session HIV risk reduction program, could provide a model for other organizat...