News from the School of Public Health

For Susan Topping, pursuing a master’s degree was a long-held dream – but only a dream. She didn't think she could afford it while she and her wife tried to save for their children’s education. Topping also worried that pursuing this degree would simply pull her attention away from her family. 

Charles “Peewee” Hall III pauses, a pair of buzzing clippers in one hand, his other tilting his customer’s head to the correct angle. 

“It’s just a good idea,” he shrugs. “I want to make sure the youth, the adults and especially the parents who sit in this chair and get their hair cut, get the message about cannabis.” 

Going to prison or even just getting arrested negatively affects a person’s health long after the experience, worsening age-related health problems such as chronic pain, sleep quality and memory.

The best collaborations sometimes start by accident—and the strongest ones end with new friendships. Professor Kerry W. Tripp, who teaches family public health and law at University of Maryland's School of Public Health, created a Global Classrooms partnership that connects students across languages and hemispheres—and it all began with a single call to a professor she’d never met. 

About 5,000 miles from the University of Maryland, across the North Atlantic Ocean, Ella Sanvee, a first-generation student getting her master’s degree in health policy and evaluation, spent her summer in Ghana studying the cost effectiveness of two treatment regimens of breast cancer chemotherapy. 

A University of Maryland study of Baltimore houses with recent sewage backups revealed that most had toxic bacteria that could potentially infect residents who touch a contaminated surface or breathe contaminated air.