New Study Links Child Sleep, TV Watching and Obesity

Does losing sleep make kids watch more TV? Does it make them overweight? A new study reported in Pediatric Obesity untangles the complex links between sleep, waking hours, inactivity, and obesity. And they aren’t quite as cut and dry as you might imagine. In the study, led by Chantelle N. Hart, an associate professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and a researcher at Temple’s Center for Obesity Research and Education, 37 children ages 8 to 11 years old were followed over three weeks. In the first week, each child slept their usual amount; then for each of the following t...

Keeping It Simple? That’s Smart.

Would you know what to do if a dirty bomb was detonated in your city? Would you trust disaster response authorities if they told you to stay inside (and not to go out looking for your family)? What is a dirty bomb, anyway? Associate Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences Sarah Bauerle Bass says that too few people know how to properly respond to disasters—both natural (like Hurricane Katrina) and manmade (such as a dirty bomb, an explosive device designed to spread radioactive material). And in a paper recently published in Health Security, she says that’s especially t...

Class of 2020 Starts Their Temple Journey

It’s always inspiring to meet someone smart, talented and driven. And when you meet hundreds of people like that in a single day, it’s worth celebrating. Today we marked the beginning of the academic year by welcoming more than 700 new undergraduate students to the College of Public Health at Temple’s 2016 Convocation. They join a diverse group of 167 faculty members and over 4000 current students, who together represent one of the most innovative institutions of public health education and research in the country. College of Public Health Dean Laura A. Siminoff officiall...

New CPH Program Reinvents Movement Research

A new direction in movement research How do we learn and control movement? That might sound like a basic question, but as the students graduating from the College of Public Health’s new neuromotor science program will tell you, the answers are anything but simple. The new graduate program brings together top faculty from across the college to uncover those answers—and in the process, it places Carole Tucker, an associate professor of physical therapy and the director of the neuromotor science program, says that it breaks from traditional ways of thinking about how we move...

A Different Kind of Summer Camp

Yoga classes. Granola-making. Scrapbooking. It might make you think of a childhood summer camp. But take a look around Camp Discovery and you’ll see that things are different. Each of the participants is an adult woman—and each is here because she is recovering from or living with cancer. Staying active is a powerful way to help people heal, adapt, and come together after illness or injury. That’s a fundamental understanding in the fields of rehabilitation sciences and occupational therapy, and it’s why Rochelle Mendonca, assistant professor of occupational therapy, cre...

"MSWs Are More Relevant Than Ever"

Never underestimate the power of a social work degree. That’s according to Chong-suk Han, an alumnus of Temple’s Master of Social Work program and associate professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont. Han’s roots in social work remain strong, and he says hardly a day goes by when he doesn’t use the skills he learned in his Temple MSW courses. “An MSW provides you with real skills in terms of how you deal with people, read a situation, learn to anticipate an environment and how people interact within that environment,” says Han. “It’s a phenomenally...

Temple Announces New Community Partnerships

College of Public Health and College of Liberal Arts researchers selected for pilot funding Temple University’s College of Public Health (CPH) has announced recipients of pilot grants related to Community Driven Research Day (CDRD), an annual event held this past February. For the past six years, CPH has participated in and twice hosted, CDRD. The event brings together researchers and community organizations, both looking for mutually beneficial relationships that can improve community health. This year’s participants included area non-profits, community groups, public se...

"Powerful beyond measure"

At The Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School (MCSCS) in Philadelphia, every student starts the morning with a pledge. In one colorful classroom, twenty third-graders stand and begin reciting. “I’m 100% committed to my education,” they say in unison. “I believe in myself and my ability to do my best at all times. I am powerful beyond measure. I will learn.” It’s not your average school pledge. But neither is this an average school. And that’s exactly what Veronica Joyner wanted. Joyner, an alumna of Temple’s School of Social Work with a minor in educat...

White House Initiative Includes Temple Researchers

Two Temple researchers are part of a White House effort to establish a national clearinghouse of educational resources about kidney transplant and living donation. Heather Traino, associate professor in the College of Public Health, and Avrum Gillespie, assistant professor in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine, are part of the initiative which will allow patients, living donors, and the interested public to access information that was previously privately-held, and which will help them make informed decisions about kidney transplants and donation. In an announcement made this w...

UNICEF Grant Helps Researcher Build Groundwork for Hygiene

For the first time ever, a Temple researcher has been awarded a grant by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). Heather Murphy, assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the College of Public Health, will use the funding to develop a costing model for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs at schools in developing countries. Murphy explains that schools in many countries have no latrines or running water. But before this critical infrastructure can be built, she says, governments need to be able to estimate costs and develop budgets. Tha...

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