UGA College of Public Health news and media mentions for the month of February 2019:

Dr. Andrea Swartzendruber, an assistant professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, was quoted in a Cosmopolitan article which examined tactics that pro-life health centers, or crisis pregnancy centers, use to attract high school and college-age students to their services.

Dr. Sarah DeYoung, an assistant professor in the Institute for Disaster Management and Department of Health Policy and Management, was quoted in a recent article in Gizmodo’s Earther that explored why people choose to live near active volcanoes. “People live near volcanoes not just ‘by accident’ but because of the resources near those volcanoes that were historically important for transit, trade, and farming,” she said.   In a follow-up piece on the U.S. effort to create an early warning system for volcanoes,  Dr. DeYoung, told Earther that this seems like the new National Volcano Early Warning and Monitoring System (NVEWS) “would improve times for warnings that might require evacuations.”

In a recent interview with the news site Next Avenue, Dr. Toni Miles, a professor the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, shared her thoughts on bereavement care becoming a significant public health issue. Miles outlined past research that shows the significant effects of grief, and provides effective strategies to support those dealing with loss. “We need bereavement care for the grief-stricken. We need to take care of the people around the deathbed, not just the person in it. Bereavement care is a therapeutic strategy that can build resilience,” she said.

Dr. Timothy Heckman, professor and associate dean for research at the College of Public Health, was recently profiled by the Journal of Rural Mental Health. Dr. Heckman, who now serves as the Journal’s editor, shared his plans to feature cutting-edge research of interest to rural mental health researchers and practitioners, both domestic and global.

Posted February 28, 2019.