News from the School of Public Health

Dr. Carson Smith, associate professor in the School of Public Health’s Department of Kinesiology, has been awarded an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to serve as Principal Investigator on his project titled "Exercise for Brain Health with Increased Genetic Risk for Alzheimer's Disease." Dr. Smith and his co-researchers will conduct a clinical trial to determine the influence and possible benefits of exercise on the brain and cognitive function in healthy older adults at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

Food insecurity – the lack of reliable access to sufficient quantities of affordable, safe, nutritious food – is a serious problem for many Americans, including young adults at college campuses across the country. The potential negative impact on educational success may be significant, yet the scope of the problem has not been well documented or understood.

Dr. Jie Chen, an associate professor in the School of Public Health’s Department of Health Services Administration, has received a $2.25 million National Institutes of Health RO1 grant to examine system-level care coordination and estimate how it impacts African American and Latino patients with mental illness.

The project, called "Effects of Hospital-Community-Public Health Integration on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Mental Health," will run between July 2017 and February 2022. 

Rising Family Science senior Erin Sullivan was recently chosen as a 2017-2018 UMD Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar. This scholar program recognizes the academic excellence of a select few University of Maryland seniors, as well as the instructors these students identify as mentors who had the greatest impact on their academic achievement.

College Park, Md. – People living near natural gas compressor stations may be subject to high environmental noise exposures, according to a study published in PLOS ONE by environmental health researchers at the University of Maryland School of Public Health (UMD SPH). Compressor stations are necessary to concentrate and move pressurized natural gas, which has been extracted through hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), along gas pipelines.

Could the initiation of a simple walking exercise program help older adults to reverse declines in key brain regions? A new study led by the University of Maryland School of Public Health researchers adds more information about how physical activity impacts brain physiology and offers hope that it may be possible to reestablish some protective neuronal connections.