nurses administer coronavirus vaccine

Nursing students administer first doses of COVID vaccine

Nursing students from the College of Public Health were among the first Philadelphia healthcare providers to deliver COVID vaccines when inoculations of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine began in the city on Wednesday, December 16. Junior nursing students Madison Nesteruk, Dana Senour and Alondra Torregrossa joined Temple University Hospital registered nurses and CPH faculty members to assist in the vaccination of 250 front-line employees at the hospital. Temple received 1,950 doses of the vaccine in the first week of its availability, part of a batch of around 15,000 arriving in Phi...
Nursing
Students
Coronavirus
a suitcase and a paper mask

A negative test before or after travel doesn’t necessarily mean you are COVID-free

Many people who may still be weighing travel or holiday celebrations with extended family may be considering testing for COVID in order to gather safely. However, testing negative for the virus does not make gathering safe and should not be used as the basis for shortening quarantine periods. In recent weeks and months, many institutions and states, including Pennsylvania, had required that out-of-state travellers must take a COVID-19 test and/or quarantine for 14 days after travel. Then, last week, the CDC changed its guidance to a 10-day quarantine, or 7-day quarantine with a...
Opinion
Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Coronavirus
people entering a grocery store

Visits to public locations correlate with rate of COVID diagnoses

Efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 have been built around minimizing gatherings of people in public places. A new study from Temple University puts real-life data from the early months of the pandemic behind the wisdom of that strategy. The study also suggests a reason why, early in the outbreak, Americans in urban and rural environments may have had different perceptions of the threat that the virus presented.  In an article published in Preventing Chronic Disease, co-authors Abby Rudolph, an infectious disease and social epidemiologist in the College of Public Health,...
Coronavirus
Epidemiology and Biostatistics
the entrance to prevention point philadelphia

Study explores COVID-19's impact on persons with substance use disorder

While COVID-19 has challenged every organization and population, its effects have disproportionately affected more vulnerable groups, such as individuals with substance use disorder (SUD). More than 23 million Americans experience SUD, but even in the absence of a pandemic only around 10 percent receive treatment. They are more likely to be unstably housed, have chronic health conditions, and may not have easy access to bathrooms or other resources with running water to wash hands. They may have few financial resources to obtain masks and sanitizers.  The facilities that offer...
Coronavirus
Substance Use
Social and Behavioral Sciences
people testing for coronavirus at the STAR complex turf field

What can professional sports teach us about COVID containment?

Krys Johnson, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Temple’s College of Public Health, has become a voice on the COVID pandemic. She also is a diehard sports fan—with the NFL season and some school sports around the country about to begin, we spoke with Johnson about the COVID containment strategies that professional sports leagues are taking and how their experiences might be instructive. NBA players are together in a "bubble" in Orlando. Hockey players are semi-isolated in designated hotels and arenas in two Canadian cities. Major League Baseball ha...
Coronavirus
Epidemiology and Biostatistics
young couple wearing masks

People judged to be more attractive when wearing a mask, study finds

COVID-19 is changing our appearance in public, and researchers are beginning to examine the social implications of a world where we interact with our faces partly covered by masks. Now a new study shows that people are judged to be more attractive when wearing face masks covering their nose and mouth. In the study, by researchers from Temple University's College of Public Health and the Center for Human Appearance at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, photographs of 60 faces with and without wearing surgical-style masks were rated on attractiveness. T...
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Coronavirus
illustration of social networks

Q&A: How social network analysis can help us understand COVID-19

Abby Rudolph is an infectious disease epidemiologist in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Her research examines how social relationships influence risk behaviors and health service use. In July, she was named the 2020 recipient of the Freeman Award for her work in the field. The International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA) grants the award “for significant contributions to the scientific study of social structure,” to scholars who are under 40 years old or who have received their PhD within the past 10 years.  Rudolph’s examinations of social...
Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Faculty
Coronavirus
students use safe practices and social distancing during occupational therapy class

A look at hybrid education during the coronavirus pandemic

Summer lab sessions for Human Dynamics in Occupational Therapy, a first-year graduate course, demonstrated how essential classes—those where educational objectives can't be fully met online, such as hands-on clinical courses—can safely blend in-person instruction with stay-home online lectures. Students wore surgical masks and plastic face shields. They fanned out into four classrooms to avoid crowding together.   “Luckily, we have the whole first floor of STAR [the Aramark Student Training and Recreation Complex],” says Kimberly Gargin, interim program director for o...
Health and Rehabilitation Sciences
Occupational therapy
Coronavirus
students walking on campus

College announces contact tracing certificate program

Responding to the pressing need to contain the COVID-19 virus as facilities re-open, Temple's College of Public Health has created a certificate program in contact tracing. The program, offered starting in mid-June, will train students to immediately begin working with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by reaching out to individuals who have been in contact with people who have tested positive for COVID-19. "In order for us to re-open, in addition to mass testing, we need to have contact tracing, so when people are identified as positive, we can find their contacts," said Resa...
Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Coronavirus
School of Social Work
illustration of an owl in graduation cap

Class of 2020 honored at online celebration

In a virtual celebration of its Class of 2020, with students distanced to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the College of Public Health honored 790 undergraduate and 386 graduate students for their accomplishments in receiving new degrees. "Instead of gathering in the Liacouras Center surrounded by about 7,000 people, we're scattered around the country and the world watching this together," said Dean Laura A. Siminoff in her opening remarks. In the online video event, Siminoff and other speakers congratulated graduates and stressed the dramatically heightened value o...
Students
Graduation
Coronavirus

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