The School of Public Health community has lost a devoted alumna whose engagement with the University of Maryland has spanned decades and included many roles, most recently as an advisor to Dean Boris Lushniak as a member of the school’s Dean’s Council. Ayne Furman ’77 died on September 26, 2021 after a struggle with cancer. She was 64 years old.

Julia Chen-Sankey, PhD ‘18, recently landed her first faculty position as an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Public Health. She also joins the Rutgers Center for Tobacco Studies.

Deliya Banda Wesley, PhD ’11, was appointed last month to the newly created position of senior director of health equity at Mathematica. The company works with healthcare stakeholders in the public and private sectors to adapt health information technologies to better address the needs of underserved communities. Dr. Wesley will lead the development of a robust health equity practice and a diverse portfolio of government and philanthropic clients.

Clark J. Lee '14, a current PhD candidate in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland School of Public Health (SPH), was appointed to a four-year term as vice-chair of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) for the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) on July 1, 2021. Clark has served as a member of the MDH IRB since 2007 and looks forward to using his graduate training at SPH to inform his continuing work on the IRB. 

Travis Hyams, PhD '20 in Behavioral and Community Health, has been selected as Presidential Management Fellow with the All of Us Research Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Hyams will help the program reach an ambitious goal, to recruit more than one million people nationwide to be a part of one of the most diverse medical databases in history.

Amid the Black Lives Matter movement, COVID-19 and the climate crisis, Deirdre Quinn, PhD ‘17, and Samuel Allen, PhD ‘20, have spotlighted another public health epidemic, gun violence in the U.S. 

Last week, the University of Maryland School of Public Health virtually inducted 23 members into the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health. Inductees included students, faculty, alumni and this year's honorary inductee, Dr. Carlton Green, the director of diversity training and education in the University of Maryland Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Maryland has one of the largest and most innovative alternative payment models for hospitals in the country, known as the Global Budget Revenue (GBR) program. A research team at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, led by Liyang Xie, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, explored the program’s impact on pediatric hospital use and health outcomes.

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. 

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.