Nichola St. James

Doctoral student brings athletic training skills to COVID response

Athletic programs everywhere are on pause as people stay home, but the skills that athletic trainers bring to public health are proving to be adaptable and vital amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Nichola St. James, a doctoral student in Temple's athletic training program, is among those making the pivot. In a normal spring, St. James might be working at a sporting event, "making sure that everybody is safe and caring for any injured athletes," she says. Instead, she has been on the front lines of the healthcare system, screening patients and essential workers for COVID. "Our role ju...
Coronavirus
Students
Athletic Training
Cynthia Nieves

Telemundo highlights DNP student's COVID resource video

Cynthia Nieves is a Doctor of Nursing Practice student at Temple's College of Public Health, a mother, and a working nurse at Temple's Episcopal Hospital. She also has found the time to communicate information about COVID-19 by making an educational Spanish-language video for local media.    "I kept it all factual information from the CDC, how it spreads, how to prevent it, the importance of social distancing, especially for elders—lots of resources," she said. Parts of the video have run on the local Telemundo TV affiliate. Nieves, former vice president of the Philadelphi...
Coronavirus
Nursing
Students
students visiting hospital or school as superheroes

MPH student Shenoy encourages others to share #VoiceOverVirus

Temple master of public health student Maya Shenoy's Voice Over Virus project is only a few weeks old, and already it has been called "the Facebook of COVID-19."   Voice Over Virus allows people to share COVID experiences. The idea was one of five winning projects selected in the recent Pandemic Response Hackathon, an international event sponsored by health technology company Datavant. In a hackathon blitz that lasted just 48 hours, she linked up with an international team of developers whom she'd never met before, and they rapidly built out the idea, creating a website (voi...
Coronavirus
Students
Community
philadelphia

Amid COVID-19, social work student delivers meals to families in need

The national public health emergency is providing public health students real-life opportunities to make the most of their training and instincts. Working toward her May graduation with a degree in social work, Temple College of Public Health undergraduate Rachel Dettrey felt she needed to do something extra to help out in the COVID-19 crisis.  "I knew I wanted to be involved in food distribution and mitigation of the impact of COVID," Dettrey says. "One of the first things I was thinking about was everyone in Philadelphia. There are a lot of issues with accessibility and reso...
Coronavirus
School of Social Work
Students
student practicing american sign language

Speech, Language and hearing students bring ASL classes to local high school

Extracurricular clubs are routine for the high-achieving students at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science, a magnet school in Philadelphia. So it was impressive—but not unusual—to see around 20 students after school on a Monday afternoon learning American Sign Language. The class is a partnership with the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Public Health. Three undergraduate students were volunteer instructors: two majoring in speech, language and hearing science, and one in psychology. The ASL instruction, interru...
Communication Sciences and Disorders
Students
Community
research day presentation

Students impress, virtually and in record numbers, at Research Day

More than 100 students logged in via video on April 3 to describe their research and scholarly projects for the College of Public Health's annual Research and Evidence Based Practice Day. The event is a showcase of yearlong projects by the college’s undergraduate and graduate students and is designed to give them valuable experience in setting up public health projects and presenting the results to others.   Under normal circumstances, the day is an energetic in-person gathering, with aisles of posters and students describing the work. This year, undergraduate and graduate s...
Students
Research
Alyson Chambers

On the ground at a COVID-19 testing site

On the afternoon that was supposed to be baseball’s opening day, the parking lot at Citizens Bank Park buzzed with activity. The Phillies weren’t playing – the coronavirus pandemic has led to a cancellation of games in all the major sporting leagues—but the South Philadelphia site has found a new purpose as a drive-through public testing site for COVID-19.  Alyson Chambers, a senior public health major at Temple, helped control the flow of vehicles, register volunteers, and keep the mood upbeat. Chambers is working in community outreach for the Bioterrorism and Public...
Students
Coronavirus
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 Medicine 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 sprea...
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

Pages