I found inspiration this past year through engaging with and seeing our students succeed! We had students receive university and national awards and scholarships, attend conferences, and represent SDSU proudly. Our students are quickly turning into future public health leaders.
We are excited about our new Doctorate in Public Health (DrPH) degree and the new BSPH in Imperial Valley. Faculty are bringing in multiple research awards for HIV, cancer, obesity, and mental health. I’m also excited about our college and HHSA partnership with the Live Well Center for Innovation and Leadership.
Philanthropy has been critical in providing our students with scholarship opportunities. Some of these have come in the form of mentored research experiences, experiences abroad, and in providing tuition ofsets. Philanthropy is also critical in extending opportunities for faculty through research opportunities and endowed professorships.
Eyal Oren, Ph.D., MS Professor and Director School of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Changing Lives through Program Support
Community Health Group Public Health Endowed Scholarship
The Community Health Group Public Health Endowed Scholarship will provide scholarship support to students in the School of Public Health in the College of Health and Human Services.
QuidelOrtho
QuidelOrtho provided a gift-in-kind donation of test kits to the School of Public Health in the College of Health and Human Services. SDSU Faculty who have relationships with community partners were able to provide meaningful access to COVID testing kits.
Global Health Legacy Endowed Scholarship
The Global Health Legacy Endowed Scholarship supports upper-division and graduate students at San Diego State University. It is open to all majors, who are active in SDSU’s Chinese Cultural Center.
This scholarship fnancially supports students who have demonstrated a commitment to global health through academic achievements and community engagement. It seeks to empower students to actively contribute to eforts that address health disparities and improve health outcomes in underserved populations.
Jovanny Perez, Director of Development, Mary Darling, AVP University Development & Joseph Garcia, Chief Operating Ofcer, Community Health Group
Living the Aztec Experience
Elizabeth Valocchi, Class of 2024
Class Level: Graduate Student
College: College of Health & Human Services, School of Public Health
Major: Epidemiology
SDSU’s Epidemiology and Biostatistics faculty and lecturers are frst-class, and they have provided incredible learning opportunities and support.
I have the privilege of interning with the County of San Diego’s One Health Epidemiology program, where I have gained invaluable insight into zoonotic disease surveillance, investigation, and prevention. I have also had the opportunity to work with SDSU’s Dr. Tianying Wu, who has imparted some of her knowledge of investigating complicated, multifactorial diseases and taught me always to stay curious!
I am most excited to develop the skills that I have learned in graduate school and to contribute to public health research in San Diego.
I hope to work with multidisciplinary teams to investigate issues threatening the interconnected health of humans, animals, and the environment.
“
I am most excited to develop the skills that I have learned in graduate school and to contribute to public health research in San Diego.
Jocelyn C. Smith, Class of 2024
Class Level: Graduate Student College: College of Health and Human Services
Major: Dual MPH/MSW: Public Health (Health Management and Policy) and Social Work (Community Development and Administration)
Jocelyn's two opportunities to study abroad were her favorite experiences at SDSU. In the winter of 2024, she completed a global health and French seminar in Switzerland and PH550: Global Health in Vietnam.
She participated in and won the 3-Minute Thesis competition at the SDSU Research Symposium in March, then competed and was a fnalist in the state-wide CSU 3-minute Thesis Grand Slam.
During her time as a graduate student, she maintained a 3.98 GPA and continued to work part-time as a Registered Dietitian, as a Graduate Student Assistant at the Center for Excellence in Aging and Longevity (CEAL), and as an Instructional Student Assistant for Dr. Carleen Stoskopf in the School of Public Health.
"Public health and social work are about building stronger, healthier communities through equity and justice. For me, graduating means putting knowledge into action. My dual masters' degrees in public health and social work have provided me with lenses and frameworks to view and understand the world, and now I'm ready to do the work."
- Jocelyn C. Smith
Congratulations, Jocelyn, on winning the 3 Minute Thesis competition!
Celebrating Shared Success
Recent Rankings
The School of Public Health is No. 29 in the nation
Statistics of Interest
The only Academic Public Health and Human Services department in the nation: Live Well Center for Innovation and Leadership - a formal partnership between the County of San Diego and SDSU
$20-30M in Annual Research Funding
16 campus-based and online degree programs
5 academic disciplines
Four major research centers and institutes
71 Faculty
1000+ students served across degree programs and modalities
678 undergraduate students
293 graduate students
100% of graduate students get feld experience in Public Health
The School of Public Health is No. 29 in the nation
One of a Kind
The only Academic Public Health and Human Services department in the nation: Live Well Center for Innovation and Leadership
Helping to Build a Brighter Future
Noé C. Crespo, Ph.D.
Title: Professor of Public Health in Health Promotion and Behavioral Science College: College of Health and Human Services Achievement: Dr. Crespo recently received the School of Public Health’s 2024 Outstanding Faculty Research Award for his prolifc research activities.
He is the Principal Investigator of two large NIH R01s clinical trials funded by the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities. In collaboration with Family Health Centers of San Diego, the Covid Prevention Program (CPP) is a randomized clinical trial to test the short- and long-term efects of a tailored Promotora-led intervention to prevent household spread of COVID-19.
In addition, Dr. Crespo is collaborating with the City of Chula Vista Parks and Recreation Department and researchers from the Universidad Autonoma de Baja California (UABC— Mexicali) to implement and evaluate the Athletes for Life program in recreation centers. AFL is a family-based program that promotes ftness, physical activity, and healthy eating among underserved families.
Dr. Crespo serves as co-lead of the Outreach Core for the U54 CREATE cancer partnership between SDSU and UCSD, co-lead of the Cancer Control Program at UCSD’s Moores Cancer Center, and co-investigator and Training Champion of SDSU’s ACCEL cancer training program.
"Much of my research has focused on promoting changes to social and physical environments to promote healthy lifestyles and well-being among underserved communities. My work emphasizes the importance of collaborating with community partners to achieve meaningful and sustainable public health impacts. My research also actively involves undergraduate and graduate students from various programs and disciplines to provide them with opportunities for professional and personal growth."
- Noé C. Crespo, Ph.D.
Faculty Achievements
Penelope JE (Jenny) Quintana, Ph.D., MPH
Title: Professor, Division of Environmental Health and Graduate Advisor for the MPH and MS degrees College: College of Health and Human Services
Achievement: Dr. Quintana is the CHHS recipient of the 2024-25 SDSU Alumni Distinguished Faculty Award.
Dr. Quintana has a research focus on exposure to children and vulnerable populations at the US-Mexico border. She studies disparities in environmental exposures that lead to disparities in health. She has active grants assessing children’s exposure to toxicants in house dust and on surfaces, especially toxic tobacco chemical residue known as thirdhand smoke. She also investigates simple methods for measuring chemical pollutants, such as using the simple silicone wristband to absorb chemicals in children’s environments.
She is passionate about environmental justice, the concept that low-income and minority groups should not be disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards and should participate in planning for and mitigation of hazards in their communities. With faculty at Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, she has studied disproportionate exposures to toxic trafc pollutants inside vehicles and to pedestrians waiting in lines to cross the US-Mexico border. She supports US-Mexico border community eforts to monitor their air through the deployment of low-cost air sensors in the San Ysidro community air monitoring network, in partnership with Casa Familiar. She is part of the California Air Resources Board, a funded community-academic partnership between Comité Cívico del Valle and SDSU to determine community air pollution research priorities for the Imperial Valley, CA.
She just fnished a study to examine baseline air pollution associated with commercial trucks at Otay Mesa Port of Entry. She serves as the academic member of the AB 617 International Border Community, supporting communitybased eforts to determine solutions for border air pollution. She was appointed by then-Governor Brown to the Scientifc Guidance Panel of Biomonitoring California. She has chaired over a hundred master’s theses at SDSU and authored and co-authored over 90 publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Guadalupe X. “Suchi” Ayala, MA, Ph.D., MPH
Title: Distinguished Professor of Health Promotion and Behavioral Science College: College of Health and Human Services
Achievement: Dr. Ayala leads some of the largest research initiatives funded by the National Institutes of Health to SDSU to address health disparities and promote health equity among underserved communities in our region.
She began her career at SDSU in 2005 with a desire to improve the health and well-being of families in San Diego and Imperial Counties. Among the hallmarks of her career is the development of over 10 health promotion interventions, working with community clinics, schools, childcare centers, recreation centers, restaurants, and grocery stores to create environments that support healthy choices and healthy behaviors, with the long-term goal of preventing and controlling obesity, diabetes, and asthma.
She has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, including several papers on the development of parenting strategies measure scale that has now been translated into 6 languages and used to identify targets for intervening to promote healthy eating and physical activity among children.
In 2015, after receiving over 20 extramural funding awards from federal funding institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the American Cancer Society, among others, to promote health, she turned her attention to helping build the research infrastructure at SDSU and SDSU IV.
One of her goals was to create an environment conducive for other faculty and their students and community partners to engage in research with the potential to meaningfully impact the lives of families in our region. This efort has resulted in funding of over 20 research projects to faculty at SDSU and SDSU IV focused on addressing some of the most pressing health issues of our time, from the mental health of refugees and youth who identify as LGBTQ+ to using technology for the prevention of falls among older adults.
