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...

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...

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...

Last winter saw one of the most severe flu seasons in recent memory. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1 million were hospitalized due to influenza-related symptoms and an estimated 80,000 people died — making the 2017–2018 season the deadliest in over a decade. CDC reports found that only 37 percent of Americans got vaccinated in 2017, a six percent drop from the previous year. With peak flu season approaching, two faculty members from the College of Public Health share insights from their research experience and weigh in on the import...