Deirdre Quinn, who has successfully defended her PhD dissertation, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper Award for a student paper from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) in the category of Religion, Spirituality and Family. The paper, “Family Religiosity, Parent Monitoring, and College Students’ Sexual Risk,” is based on her dissertation research examining family-level and individual-level influences on college students’ sexual risk and protective behaviors.

Deirdre Quinn, a fourth-year Family Science doctoral candidate, published an article through the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) on teenage mothers in Washington, DC. While teenage motherhood is associated with many negative outcomes for mothers and their children, teen mothers who live with and receive emotional support from their mothers are able to avoid some of these outcomes. In particular, Deirdre found that teenage mothers’ relationships with their own mothers predict contraceptive use.

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.

As a part of Graduate Student Appreciation Week, the Graduate Student Government (GSG) hosted the annual Graduate Research Appreciation Day (GRAD) on April 5, 2017. Graduate students from all programs and disciplines across campus presented their research and work. Below are the GRAD 2017 winners from the School of Public Health, who were selected as the best presentations from their respective subject-themed oral, poster, and elevator-speech presentation sessions.

A new “Fearless Ideas” course led by School of Public Health faculty is turning a group of 15 UMD undergraduate students into researchers, innovators and entrepreneurs tasked with reimagining our broken healthcare system.

Many faculty members, graduate students, and alum of the Family Science (FMSC) Department attended the 2016 National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Faculty members included Department Chair Dr. Elaine Anderson, Graduate Program Director Dr. Kevin Roy, and Professors Dr. Amy Lewin, Dr. Leigh Leslie, Dr. Ali Hurtado, Dr. Mona Mittal, and Dr. Patricia Barros-Gomes.

The Catholic Charities-Susan D. Mona Center, under construction in Temple Hills, Md., will provide a broad range of health and wellness services to the people of southern Prince George’s County. Informed by the best and latest scientific evidence about health promotion and disease prevention, the innovative center will serve those most at risk for premature illness and preventable death in a respectful and trusted setting.

During the fall 2014 semester, Diana Wang, Sama El Baz, Megan Keane, and Sarah Younan teamed up in HLTH 371: Communicating Safety and Health to design a health communication campaign for what they thought was just going to be another class project. Based on personal experiences abroad in Thailand, where children living in poverty were required to brush their teeth in school, Ms. El Baz and Ms. Wang suggested they craft their project around oral health.

On April 6, 2016, the University of Maryland’s Graduate School Government hosted Graduate Research Appreciation Day (GRAD). The event gave Master's and doctoral student investigators from all academic backgrounds an opportunity to share research, obtain feedback from faculty and peers, and hone conference presentation skills in a welcoming, on-campus setting.

Deirdre Quinn was recently accepted into the Population Reference Bureau (PRB) 2016-2017 U.S. Policy Communication Program, a program designed to improve understanding about the process by which research informs the policy environment, and to learn various ways to communicate research findings to diverse U.S. policy audiences. Funding for the program comes from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).