This Women's History Month, we asked a few of our stellar women faculty members to talk about women in their professional and personal lives who have been inspiring to them, and to offer advice to women currently in the public health field.

As a professor of family science at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Dr. Smith-Bynum has spent her career studying African American mental health, family interaction and communication in ethnic minority families, parenting and racial identity.

With a new National Institutes of Health Career Development Award (K01), Dr. Rodman Turpin, assistant research professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, will work to optimize HIV prevention efforts among Black sexual minority men (BSMM).

Devon Payne-Sturges, an associate professor with the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, was recognized as having one of the top papers of 2021 by Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). 

This semester, Dr. Kathleen (Kate) McPhaul will leverage her expertise and experience protecting workers to teach the School of Public Health's first undergraduate course on occupational health in six years. The class, which is open to Public Health Science majors, introduces students to the field of occupational health and safety and emphasizes that workers' health should be considered in all public health practices and policies.

Family Science PhD candidate and UMD-PRC Investigator Natasha D. Williams (she/her) was recently selected for a dissertation award through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars program. Her dissertation, titled: Mental health among Black lesbian, gay, and bisexual people: Examining patterns of risk, treatment utilization, and mental health management strategies will use quantitative analyses of population-level data and interview-based grounded theory methods to elucidate the mental health challenges Black LGB adults face and the ways in which they manage their mental health.  

Michael Brown PhD ’95 joined the School of Public Health as the new chair of the Department of Kinesiology on January 3, 2022. 

The Society of Health and Physical Education (SHAPE) has awarded Dr. Cara Grant, program director of the master's certificate in physical education (PE-MCERT), with the SHAPE Maryland Presidential Citation. This award honors individuals for their work serving the Maryland SHAPE organization and the field of physical education. 

Tripp created the University of Maryland’s Virtual Global Internship Program which has allowed students to gain real world experience with international researchers, organizations and businesses throughout the global pandemic. Cognella, an academic publisher, recognized her contributions with The Cognella Innovation in Teaching Award for Family Science.

Feeling undervalued and overworked, many Americans are radically rethinking work, quitting jobs in record numbers or striking for better labor conditions amid the stresses brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 50 years after President Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) into law, work in the 21st century remains hazardous; according to an AFL-CIO report this year, more than 275 U.S. workers still die from hazardous working conditions each day.