The Abstract: February 5, 2024
February 5, 2024
Whether you’re local or global, student or alumni, the Abstract’s weekly news digest will help you stay in the loop with our amazing Gillings School community.
Woods named to Governor Roy Cooper’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council
Dr. Courtney Woods
Courtney Woods, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering was appointed by Governor Roy Cooper to serve on the Governor’s Environmental Justice (EJ) Advisory Council.
The EJ consists of 22 members and is part of the Executive Order 292, “Advancing Environmental Justice for North Carolina. Woods will help address environmental injustices, specifically in marginalized communities in North Carolina.
Zhu leads artificial intelligence workshop in Abu Dhabi
Dr. Hongtu Zhu
Hongtu Zhu, PhD, professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the Gillings School organized an event for MBZUAI’s “AI Quorum on Statistics for the Future of AI,” which focused on how statistics and artificial intelligence have the potential to revolutionize health care.
“Our hope is that this workshop will set the stage for future innovations in artificial intelligence that will be driven by statistical insights,” said Zhu.
The workshop is part of the AI Quorum, a series of winter gatherings at MBZUAI aimed at spurring groundbreaking AI research and promoting a broader understanding of AI’s potential as a force for social good.
Stuebe to serve on the committee of National Academies
Committee on Understanding Breastfeeding Promotion, Initiation and Support Across the United States.
Dr. Alison Stuebe
Alison Stuebe, MD, professor and Distinguished Scholar in Infant and Young Child Feeding in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the Gillings School was appointed as a committee member for the National Academies Committee on Understanding Breastfeeding Promotion, Initiation and Support Across the United States.
Stuebe will assist with other committee member experts to identify existing knowledge gaps, needed research, and data collection challenges to better understand the landscape of breastfeeding with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The study will provide an evidence-based analysis of the macroeconomic, social and health costs and benefits of the United States’ current breastfeeding rates and goals; and will build on what is known about inequalities in breastfeeding rates and reducing racial, geographic and income-related breastfeeding disparities.
Health Policy and Management student receives first authorship in journal
Third-year doctoral student Mukesh Adhikari in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Gillings School is first author of a publication in Academic Medicine.
The study described how the characteristics of the hospitals and communities they serve vary across four hospital graduate medical education (GME) expense categories. It also identified that rurally located hospitals might be good candidates for new rural GME programs.
This study demonstrated that most hospitals in every category, but especially teaching hospitals, were concentrated in urban areas. Larger hospitals were more likely to report GME expenses.
Biostatistics doctoral students receive grants from NIH
Two doctoral students in the Department of Biostatistics, Kyle Grosser and Jesus Vazquez, received their first grant funding for a diversity supplement, funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). This award supports their research into Huntington’s disease research.
This award is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) administrative supplement to the grant “Developing a robust and efficient strategy for censored covariates to improve clinical trial design for neurodegenerative diseases,” led by Tanya Garcia, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics and principal investigator of the project.
This work will be jointly done with Claudia M. Testa, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology at the UNC School of Medicine and the Founding Director of the UNC Huntington Disease Program. This supplementary award aims to fund competitive diversity candidates to increase diversity in neuroscience.
