News | College of Public Health

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

Epidemiology and Biostatistics students, faculty recognized at awards ceremony

Students and faculty in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics were recognized for their work over the academic year at the department’s annual Awards and Recognition Event, held at the end of the spring 2020 semester. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s event was held virtually. The following students were recognized for their achievement: Sulaiman Alquwayfili, Phillip Cerroni, Kaelah Tristani, and Morgan Zalot received the Academic Excellence Award, which recognizes graduating students in the department for academic achievement and is given to stud...

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Faculty

Students

Awards

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

Can Coronavirus spread through defective bathroom sewage pipes?

As part of the college's coverage of the ongoing outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), we're reprinting a recent article written for the Water Quality & Health Council by Heather Murphy, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Barbara Soule, an infection preventionist consultant, that discusses the potential spread of COVID-19 through improperly connected bathroom sewage pipes. On February 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the official name for the disease that is causing the 2019 coronavirus epidemic, COVID-1...

Coronavirus

Water

Environment

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

WET Trial explores rates of illness from drinking untreated private well water

Nationwide, approximately 48 million people use private wells, including nearly 3 million in Pennsylvania. The water quality from these largely untreated wells is not federally regulated, and there have been few studies on both the extent and the source of microbial contamination in private wells. In a new randomized controlled trial, Heather Murphy, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, will research the effects of drinking untreated well water on children ages three or under—effects that include gastrointestinal and respiratory symptoms from norovirus, Gi...

Water

Environment

Community

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

NCI-funded study looks at impact of mobile devices on collecting treatment data

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...

Smoking cessation

Data

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

College to study local PFAS contamination, cancer data

Temple University’s College of Public Health will examine possible associations between PFAS-contaminated drinking water and cancer as part of a federally funded multisite health study to understand the health effects of exposure to PFAS chemicals in drinking water. Temple’s study of PFAS and cancer expands upon its participation in a broader study that is in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and RTI International and focused in Bucks and Montgomery counties. This work is part of a national effort newly announced by the Centers for Disease Control an...

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Water

Social relationships could be key to overdose prevention in rural areas

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...

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Opioids

On the news: Complications from a rising premature birth rate

Premature birth, when a mother gives birth before the 37th week of pregnancy, is a leading cause of infant mortality and can have significant, long-term health consequences for the newborn infant. Between the years 2007 and 2014, the rate of premature or “preterm” birth in the United States steadily declined. However, according to recent statistics, the United States’ premature birth rate increased to 9.93 percent of all births in 2017, marking the third year in a row the national premature birth rate has risen. According to research from the Centers for Disease Control...

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Health and Rehabilitation Sciences

Maternal health

Resa Jones, alumna receive Water Foundation grant to study contamination in local communities

Resa M. Jones, chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, was awarded a grant from the California-based Water Foundation to study the effects of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) water contamination in partnership with the Buxmont Coalition for Safer Water. The coalition’s vision is for residents of Buck and Montgomery Counties to have clean and safe drinking water and for residents affected by local water contamination to have access to preventive health care, including blood testing and biomonitoring. The coalition is a grassroots community organi...

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

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