Depending on where Marylanders live, their assurance of safe drinking water isn’t always crystal clear. In some Baltimore neighborhoods, it can be brown. While the city’s drinking water meets federal safety standards when it leaves municipal treatment plants, it might pick up lead, E. coli and other contaminants while flowing through a network of aging pipes before reaching a drinking glass. 

It can be as simple as a high-five from a kid while prepping an anti-bullying workshop in Prince George’s County. Or seeing a family equipped with tools like mosquito nets to reduce their malaria risk in Sierra Leone.

“It’s so rewarding to volunteer in these communities,” said biological sciences major Meghna Pandey ’24, co-president of the University of Maryland’s Public Health Beyond Borders—the first organization of its kind at an American college.

LGBTQ+ as well as Black and Latinx populations are at increased risk for using tobacco products, so youths of color who are LGBTQ+ are squarely in the sights of Big Tobacco. As a result, they experience greater tobacco-related health burdens than their non-LGBTQ+ and white peers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Black barbershops and beauty salons often serve as virtual community centers, improving not only the hairstyles but the well-being of their clients by hosting vaccine clinics health outreach activities, according to Professor Stephen B. Thomas, founding director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Health Equity and originator of the barbershop initiative known as HAIR (Health Advocates In-Reach and Research).

After a dreary winter—and brutal flu and cold season—most of us are welcoming a new kind of affliction: spring fever. Coma-like weeks on the couch, whether brought on by a super virus or the new season of “Vanderpump Rules,” may have you itching to resuscitate your fitness routine—or reluctant to emerge from hibernation.

A surplus of millions of apples going to waste last fall was more than enough to make mid-Atlantic farmers’ stomachs sink.

But for Megan Joe ’19, it was an opportunity to fill stomachs.

It’s hard to imagine the world of science without trailblazing environmental microbiologist Rita Colwell. An expert in global infectious disease and the first female director of the National Science Foundation, Colwell has conducted seminal research on cholera that transformed our understanding of how the deadly disease behaves and spreads.

Even on the roof of the world, climate change is melting the snow. The loss of a third of the ice of Himalayan mountains in the past 30 years has translated into water and food shortages and variable water quality in the villages below.

A University of Maryland team traveled there this month to see how communities there are tackling these insecurities and to apply its expertise in water sampling and analysis to inform solutions to citizens in Namobuddha Municipality.

The School of Public Health continued to move fearlessly forward this year, tackling pressing issues at the local, national and global level, while educating the next generation of public health practitioners. Here's a look back at some of the school’s achievements in 2023.