UCLA PUBLICHEALTH SPRING 2000 - UCLA School of Public Health

8
FACULTY
Q & A:
DR. FRANK
SORVILLO
ON THE FUTURE
FOR
INFECTIOUS
DISEASES
Particularly in developed countries,
attention has shifted somewhat from
infectious diseases to other public
health concerns. But the problem is
still considerable, isn’t it?
Definitely. Infections remain the leading
cause of death worldwide. There are
roughly 17 million infectious diseaserelated
deaths each year, the majority
in children and the majority entirely
preventable. Over the past 20 years or
so, probably more than 50 new infectious
agents have been identified. We’re
also seeing a resurgence of infectious
diseases that had appeared to be under
control. As the world’s population increases
and living space shrinks, people
increasingly end up in areas inhabited
by animals, and such exposure puts us
at risk for new zoonotic infections.
Where is progress being made, and
where is more progress needed?
Immunizations continue to be very important,
and one of the problems continues
to be under-utilization of effective
vaccines. We need to develop vaccines
for some of the important infections for
which we don’t have vaccines. Clearly
there have been developments in terms
of antiviral therapies that we didn’t
have a few years ago. There are new and
FACULTY UPDATES
DEAN ABDELMONEM A. AFIFI was the keynote
speaker at a national German conference sponsored
by the School of Public Health in Bielefeld,
Germany in March. The conference was devoted
to empowering the patient. Afifi spoke on “Public
Health as Community Empowerment.”
DR. CAROL ANESHENSEL co-edited the Handbook
on the Sociology of Mental Health with Jo C.
Phelan (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers,
1999). She received a grant from the National
Institute of Mental Health to examine
the impact of neighborhood on the mental health of
adolescents using a national, longitudinal data set.
▲ DR. ROSHAN BASTANI (above, seated, second
from right) received funding from the National
Cancer Institute for “Asian American Network
for Cancer Awareness, Research and
Training.” The five-year project is designed to increase
the capacity for conducting cancer prevention
and control research among Asian populations
in the Los Angeles area. Bastani will
collaborate with approximately eight community-based
organizations as well as UCLA’s Asian
American Studies Center.
DR. LINDA BOURQUE and Center for Public
Health and Disaster Relief colleagues Moira
Inkelas, Laurie Loux, Mel Widawski and Loc
Nguyen co-authored “Dimensionality and reliability
of the civilian Mississippi scale for PTSD
in a post-earthquake community” for the Journal
of Traumatic Stress. Bourque also coauthored
“Prevalence of assault and perception
of risk of assault in urban public service employment
settings” for the International Journal of
Occupational Health 2000 with Southern California
Injury Prevention Research Center colleagues
Deborah Riopelle, Maggie Robbins,
Kim Shoaf and Jess Kraus.
DR. E. RICHARD BROWN is
the principal investigator on
three grants for the California
Health Interview Survey: from
the State of California, the National
Cancer Institute, and the
California Commission on
Children and Families.
DRS. WILLIAM COMANOR
and STUART SCHWEITZER
are offering a new option for
Ph.D. students in the Department
of Health Services. The
Research Program in Pharmaceutical
Economics will coordinate
a new cognate in Pharmaceutical
Economics and
Policy, enabling students to
emphasize these issues as
part of their doctoral studies.
Both Comanor and Schweitzer have recently presented
in the United States and abroad on topics
related to pharmaceutical economics —
Schweitzer at the National Governors’ Assn.
meeting in San Diego and at a major managed
care conference in Washington, D.C.; and Comanor
at the International Health Economics
Assn. meetings in Rotterdam, at Aventis Pharmaceuticals
in Bridgewater, N.J., at a conference
in Paris, and at a conference in Beijing organized
by the Chinese Ministry of Health.
DR. WILLIAM CUMBERLAND has been elected
fellow of the American Statistical Association, the
highest honor that can be paid to an American
statistician.
DR. WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM was the first or
second author on three recent publications
resulting from the ongoing HIV Cost and Services
Utilization Study: one on competing subsistence
needs that act as barriers to receipt of HIV care;
a second on the role of case-management in
overcoming the need for supportive services
such as health insurance benefits, employment,
substance abuse and emotional counseling; and a
third on the prevalence of domestic violence
among HIV-positive persons in the United States.
SUSAN B. EDELSTEIN won the 2000 Daniel E.
Koshland Award in Social Welfare and was named
Outstanding Practitioner of the Year by the National
Association of Social Workers, California
Chapter.
DR. JONATHAN FIELDING received the Distinguished
Service Award from the American
College of Preventive Medicine. He chaired the
Project Advisory Committee for the Partnership
for Prevention’s “Priority Recommendation to the
Congressional Prevention Coalition” and
announced the release of the report, which outlined
nine national policies that, if enacted by
Congress, would prevent a minimum of 160,000
premature deaths each year.
DRS. ERIC HURWITZ and HAL MORGENSTERN
analyzed data from the Third National Health and
Nutrition Examination Survey and concluded that
“DTP or tetanus vaccination appears to increase
the risk of allergies and related respiratory symptoms
in children and adolescents.” In the article,
published in the February 2000 issue of the Journal
of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics,
they noted that the public health benefits of
these vaccines are well documented, but little is
known about potential long-term risks.
DR. SNEHENDU KAR authored a background
paper titled “Women’s Health Development: Im-