Sarah Bass and Mohammed Alhajji

Bass, Alhajji receive top honors from Society of Behavioral Health

Research projects on HIV prevention in Philadelphia and hereditary disease in Saudi Arabia have won top honors for two researchers in the College of Public Health’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.  The Society of Behavioral Health will award annual prizes for best research abstracts in the nation to Sarah Bass, associate professor and director of the Risk Communication Laboratory, and Mohammed Alhajji, a PhD candidate and research assistant in the Lab.  Alhajji, who won in the student research category, proposed a promising intervention to prevent the spread...
HIV/AIDS
Global health
Awards
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Students
students on campus

My Lens project shares stories of those affected by the opioid crisis

Two faculty members in the College of Public Health have launched a three-piece education program that will roll out through 2020 on Temple’s campus as part of efforts to combat the opioid crisis. Over the next year, Deirdre Dingman, assistant professor in social and behavioral sciences, and Marsha Zibalese-Crawford, associate professor in social work, will work with Temple students, faculty and staff on the My Lens project, which will include on-campus presentations, connections to treatment resources, and a public art display in the fall.  “The number one underlying goa...
Students
Opioids
Community
girls doing group activity

Recreational therapy student starts Girls on the Run chapter

Recreational therapy student Gabrielle Savidge returned to her former elementary school in Bellmawr, NJ, to start a local chapter of the Girls on the Run program, thanks to fundraising and support from the Girls on the Run Central NJ Scholarship Fund. More than 50 girls from Bellmawr Park and Ethel M. Burke elementary schools have completed the program, which builds confidence, life skills, and healthy habits through group activities and running. Once a week, Savidge meets with the group to talk about topics like conflict resolution, positive self-talk, and discovering one’s i...
Students
Recreational Therapy
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Community

DNP student returns to Sierra Leone to evaluate state of healthcare

When Sheku Sillah started his nursing career, he always hoped to one day return to his home country of Sierra Leone, which—when he left the country at the age of 10—had an average life expectancy around 35. As a doctor of nursing practice student, Sillah fulfilled that dream, traveling to Freetown, Sierra Leone, on a trip to deliver medical supplies and evaluate the state of healthcare in the West African country. Since then, he has returned on multiple occasions alongside other Temple students. What first brought you to Philadelphia? I was born in Sierra Leone. My father w...
Nursing
Global health
Students
Child using a mirror while brushing teeth

Finding success in a dental care program for Armenian elementary schools

Before Hamlet Gasoyan joined the College of Public Health as a doctoral student, he was a practicing dentist. Though his doctoral research focuses on insurance benefit design and the benefits of bariatric surgery, he hasn’t left dental health behind. Gasoyan recently documented the benefits of a program that delivers dental care to rural villages of his native Armenia. His analysis determined that the program, which helps elementary school children develop the habit of brushing their teeth regularly, reduced the prevalence of cavities by 30 percent, making a significant impac...
Students
Interdisciplinary
Global health
Public Health Scholar Bowl team poses with faculty advisor Michelle Scarpulla

Scholar Bowl team places third for opioid overdose prevention program

On April 6, the College of Public Health Scholar Bowl team competed at St. Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri, for the seventh annual Public Health Scholar Bowl, demonstrating their knowledge of public health issues and ranking third in the case study competition for their fully planned intervention focusing on opioid overdose prevention in Philadelphia. Throughout the spring semester, team members Patrick Kelly (who also competed in last year’s competition and returned this year as team captain), Faith Befano, Venise Salcedo, Tirzah Sheppard, Melanie Schupler, and Auror...
Students

Through study abroad, MSW student uses the world as her classroom

Master of social work student Sierra Arigurinu’s experience in the field extends far beyond Philadelphia: After never imagining an education abroad as an undergraduate student, Arigurinu traveled over the 2017-2018 academic year to Poland, Iceland, and Germany, where she studied at the University of Applied Sciences Erfurt through the School of Social Work and Office of Education Abroad and Overseas Campuses.  As part of the programs in Poland and Germany, she and other Temple students explored poverty and social exclusion with students from host countries. Thanks to thes...
School of Social Work
Students