A group of six University of Maryland students, accompanied by Behavioral and Community Health Research Professor Dina Borzekowski and UMD affiliate and master educator Tina Lipscomb, traveled to Sierra Leone in June to continue the work that the UMD Public Health Without Borders group began back in 2014. The ten-day trip was the fourth visit of UMD students to Calaba Town, a community on the Western coast near the country’s capital of Freetown.

Throughout the School of Public Health’s first 10 years, faculty and students have actively engaged in research, service and education activities aimed at improving health across the globe and partnering with communities to accomplish these goals.

While much kinesiology research is conducted in labs, on treadmills, in highly controlled settings, the opportunity to study an extraordinary athlete on the playing field can yield some novel results. The School of Public Health’s Dr. James Hagberg and colleagues had the good fortune of studying a two-season winner of the MAC Hermann Trophy—the top player in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I soccer. The player (referred to as “Player A”) now plays professionally with the D.C.

University of Maryland Professor Emeritus Robin Sawyer died on Jan. 21 in Charleston, S.C., following a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. The UMD community will celebrate his life and legacy at a memorial service Friday, Feb. 1 at 1 pm in the Memorial Chapel on the College Park campus.

Dr. Sawyer, who taught tens of thousands of students in his popular human sexuality course over the years, was known for his quick wit and compassion. UMD alumni from several generations recognize him as one of their most important mentors and favorite professors.

Since the 1980s, Black Americans have been overrepresented among the U.S. homeless population, and this enduring reality (Blacks comprise roughly 40.4 percent of the total U.S. homeless population, but only 12.5 percent of the overall population) has serious implications for population health and health disparities, according to Dr. Marian Moser Jones, associate professor in the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

When it comes to health officials and experts evaluating environmental health risks among populations, what has been the norm isn’t enough, and a shift is needed to better protect children and other vulnerable groups, according to Devon Payne-Sturges, an assistant professor of Applied Environmental Health in the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

Assistant Professor Devon Payne-Sturges has been awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) K01 Career Development Award for a project focused on how combined exposure to environmental and social stressors affects child neurological development. The three-year grant from the NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences totals more than $400,000.

The School of Public Health (SPH) Alumni Network awarded its newest honor, the Public Health Emerging and Engaging Leaders (PHEEL) Award, to five outstanding recent graduates in March 2021. Each honoree was selected for their excellence in their career progression, service and leadership.

The honorees include Martin Gesheff ‘10, Ayana L. Langston ‘13, Mariano Kanamori, PhD ‘13, Rebecca Rehr, MPH ‘12 and Maya Walker ‘13.

The PHEEL Award recognizes outstanding graduates who have received any degree from SPH within the last 10 years. 

Congratulations to two University of Maryland School of Public Health students who are among the finalists for this year’s virtual Do Good Challenge: Sara Hatfield, a double major in behavioral and community health and family science, and Veeraj Shah, who is pursuing dual degrees in biological sciences and individual studies majoring in health policy and technology. 

Over 24 hours on Wednesday, March 3, 2021, the University of Maryland School of Public Health community came together virtually to support our research initiatives, scholarships and educational programs. 278 donors—alumni, friends, faculty, staff and students—gave a total of $220,724, an increase of more than 137 percent from the previous year. That placed the School of Public Health at #2 on the leaderboard after Athletics for most funds raised during Giving Day.