News

Center director Dr. Cynthia Baur co-moderated a panel on health misinformation as part of the Public Health at Maryland series.

Getting ready to ditch your mask as the percentage of the U.S. population vaccinated against COVID-19 steadily rises? Not so fast, warns Dr. Donald Milton, professor of applied environmental health at the University of Maryland and a leading expert on how viruses spread through the air.

The University of Maryland School of Public Health is ranked No. 10 among publicly funded Best Public Health Schools in the country by U.S. News & World Report for the first time. The school places No. 20 among all 188 schools and programs on the list.

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us have experienced varying degrees of depression or anxiety related to the challenges of this unusual and trying time. 

Yet some people have weathered the stressors better than others. What factors predicted better mental health during the pandemic and what can this teach us about protecting against depression and anxiety during other difficult times? 

As COVID-19 vaccine distribution ramps up nationwide, unanswered questions remain about the vaccine’s effectiveness: Can it prevent infection of SARS-CoV-2 and transmission to others?

That’s what the University of Maryland, along with over 20 universities, will attempt to answer for a newly-launched national study, Prevent COVID U. 

Deputy Director for Clinical Training and Intervention, Dr. Elizabeth Aparicio (she/her), is an integral member of the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center (UMD-PRC). As a community-engaged, clinically trained public health social work researcher and scholar, Dr. Aparicio specializes in addressing the mental, sexual and reproductive health needs of youth in and formerly in foster care and youth experiencing homelessness. She brings the important lenses of trauma-informed care and the reproductive justice framework to inform and test mental health and sexual and reproductive health interventions for trauma-affected and marginalized children, youth and families.