Over 30 presentations will be made by NYU faculty, students and staff at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association November 7 - 11th in Philadelphia. This year, approximately 60 faculty and researchers as well as 13 students from the NYU Master's Program in Global Public Health will present their work. For detailed information and abstracts, visit the conference website.

Global MPH student Ivana Chapcakova contributed to the recent report "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Domestic Violence in the United States in 2008" published by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Ivana's contributions focused on the New York City data and the entire report can be accessed here.

Global MPH student Segufta Dilshad presented at the 20th World Diabetes Congress this past week in Montreal. Her presentation, "Need Assessment for Financial Support of People with Diabetes: A Case Study of a Developing Country like Bangladesh" described resent rsearch to identify the need for and sources of financial support for persons with diabetes who have low-incomes. The complete abstract can be found online (P-1710).

NYU Master's Program in Global Public Health student Ikenna Umechukwu has been elected to the position of Career Development Officer for the NYU Global Health Alliance.

Ikenna received his MBBS degree from the University of Nigeria in 1998. Following some years of clinical practice in public and private hospitals with a keen interest in public health, Dr. Umechukwu joined the EPI unit of World Health Organization (WHO) in Nigeria. While with WHO; he worked in various capacities, the most recent being National Surveillance Officer. Ikenna was also involved in setting‐up an NGO that provided health knowledge, care and support for the disadvantaged populations of Adamawa State of Nigeria, where he volunteered in the management capacity. His interest is in health management and policy research. Ikenna plans to return to Africa where wants to support healthcare strengthening through provision of quality leadership.

Global MPH students Carlos Cunningham and Reynolds Fellow Alexandre Carvalho have been accepted to Unite for Sight's Global Health & Social Entrepreneurship Idea Incubator workshop taking place on November 6th in New Haven, CT. The workshop will focus on effective healthcare delivery and the importance of best practices in global health, successful strategies of social innovation and social entrepreneurship, and mentoring and guidance on how to establish new initiatives and organizations. The workshop is a small, intimate forum with a limited capacity of no more than 9 participants. For more information on the workshop, click here.

The online admissions application for September 2010 admissions is now available. We encourage all prospective students to visit the Admissions section of our website for additional detail and instructions. Please also visit our Events page for information on our upcoming Open Houses.

New York University’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Health has announced the recipients of the 2009-1010 Global Public Health Research Challenge Grants, which support faculty-initiated public health research on a global scale.

The five proposals, selected by a faculty review committee through a competitive process, include:

- The link between periodontal disease and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in Thailand (Ananda P. Dasanayake, College of Dentistry);
- Educational disruption as a risk factor for infectious disease among young refugees from Zimbabwe (Sally Guttmacher, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development);
- The effect of antiretroviral therapy on malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa (Photini Sinnis, School of Medicine);
- Establishing a comprehensive health system performance monitoring system in Ghana (Karen A. Grepin, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service);
- Effectiveness of a train-the-trainer program for increasing poisoning prevention awareness in Ghana (Lewis Goldfrank, School of Medicine).

Click here for more information.

Global MPH Program Director James Macinko is co-author of a new article in the journal Health Affairs.

The article, "The Health Effects of Decentralizing Primary Care in Brazil", proposes that a renewed focus on primary health care could lead to improved health outcomes in developing countries. Moving more control to local authorities, or decentralization, is one approach to expanding primary care’s reach. While proponents argue that it increases responsiveness to local needs and helps local resources reach those in need, critics counter that it might increase fragmentation and disparities and provide opportunities for local economic and political gains that do not improve population health. Dr. Macinko and his co-author explore questions surrounding decentralization using the example of infant mortality in Brazil, and their study finds positive effects on health outcomes in that context.

The article is available online here.

Global MPH Program Director James Macinko is the lead author of a newly published study which shows that two-thirds of the difference between death rates among African Americans and Caucasians are now due to causes that could be prevented or cured. The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The major reason for the black-white mortality gap - representing about 30 percent of the gap for men and 42 percent for women - is due to conditions that have effective treatments, the study found. Disparities were most pronounced for conditions or diseases for which deaths can be prevented, such as diabetes, stroke, infectious and respiratory diseases, preventable cancers, and circulatory diseases like hypertension.

Dr. Macinko co-authored the report with Irma T. Elo, Ph.D. The report can be accessed online here.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) has elected Robert Berne, NYU senior vice president for health and a professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, as a new fellow. Senior VP Berne, who has been instrumental in the founding, development and continuing oversight of the Global MPH program, is one of five fellows from NYU elected to the AAAS this year. AAAS will welcome this year's fellows at an induction ceremony on Oct. 10 at the academy headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A complete list of the new members is available here.

Senior VP Berne, a scholar of public education policy and financing, furnished expert analysis and testimony in the landmark school finance case, CFE v. the State of New York. He has authored The Relationships Between Financial Reporting and the Measurement of Financial Condition and co-authored The Measurement of Equity in School Finance, Hard Lessons: Public Schools and Privatization, and The Financial Analysis of Governments. As senior vice president for health, Berne is responsible for working with deans and other university leaders on long-term academic, financial, and operational strategies for the wide range of health activities at NYU.