HAPPENINGS

CPH Names Outstanding Alumni Award Recipients

The University of Iowa College of Public Health has named Ty Borders and Kari Harland the recipients of its 2020 Outstanding Alumni Awards.

Borders earned a Master of Arts degree (1995) and a doctoral degree (1999) in hospital and health administration, and a Master of Science degree (2001) in epidemiology. He is currently a professor and the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky Endowed Chair in Rural Health Policy and director of the Rural and Underserved Health Research Center at the University of Kentucky.

Harland earned a Master of Public Health degree (2004) and a doctoral degree (2010) in epidemiology, and is now director of research operations in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the UI Carver College of Medicine and adjunct assistant professor with the Department of Epidemiology at the UI College of Public Health.

The award recognizes College of Public Health alumni who have made distinguished contributions to the field of public health and demonstrated a strong interest and commitment to the mission, vision, and values of the college. Read more about this year’s recipients at: cph.uiowa.edu/alumni/.

Iowa Superfund Research Program Receives $11.4M to Continue Study of PCBs

The Iowa Superfund Research Program (ISRP), a University of Iowa research group started in 2006 that is a leader in the study of human exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), has received a highly competitive five-year, $11.4 million grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced in March 2020. ISRP will receive $2.4 million for the first year of the renewal.

“Airborne PCBs: Sources, Exposures, Toxicities, Remediation” is the latest phase of the project, which focuses on the airborne threats posed by PCBs by identifying the ways in which people are exposed, analyzing measurable levels of toxicity, and developing efforts to remediate PCBs already present in natural environments and manufactured structures.

“The Iowa Superfund Research Program is the only program funded by the NIH that focuses on airborne PCBs,” says Keri Hornbuckle, the Donald E. Bently Professor of Engineering in the UI Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the project’s principal investigator. “Our research is the result of interdisciplinary collaborations that cover the breadth of the PCB problem— toxicologists and pharmacologists who study exposure; engineers who focus on identifying PCB sources and stopping continued release; and chemists who develop the compounds that can be used to remediate spaces and surfaces.”

The research team includes CPH faculty members Brandi Janssen, Michael Jones, Hans Lehmler, Gabriele Ludewig, Peter Thorne, and Kai Wang.

Study Finds Most High School E-Cigarette Users Report Other Substance Use

Nearly all U.S. high school students who use e-cigarettes also use other substances, including alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco products, according to a recent study published in Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

The study assessed the risk of e-cigarette poly-substance use (using an e-cigarette plus at least one other substance in the past 30 days) among adolescents overall and by socio-demographic characteristics.

The researchers used data from the 2017 Youth Behavioral Factor Surveillance System survey. Based on responses from 11,244 adolescents, the researchers found that approximately 12% of high school students reported using e-cigarettes in the past 30 days. Almost all (93%) e-cigarette users also reported using another substance in the past 30 days, with alcohol being the most common. Nearly half reported past 30-day use of all four substances: e-cigarettes, alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco. In addition, adolescents who used e-cigarettes more frequently were also more likely to use other substances than their counterparts who used e-cigarettes only 1-2 days per month.

The investigators also identified several socio-demographic factors associated with e-cigarette poly-substance use. Being male, being in grades 11 and 12, reporting lower academic achievement, and self-identifying as bisexual were each associated with significantly higher odds of e-cigarette poly-substance use. In contrast,

minority race/ethnicity was associated with lower odds of e-cigarette poly-substance use compared to white peers.

The research team included CPH faculty members Paul Gilbert and Rima Afifi in the Department of Community and Behavioral Health, along with CPH alumna Christine Kava (17PhD) with the Health Promotion Research Center, Department of Health Services, University of Washington.

Romitti Honored for Lifetime Contributions to Birth Defects Research

The National Birth Defects Prevention Network (NBDPN), an organization dedicated to birth defects surveillance, research, and prevention, recently recognized University of Iowa Professor of Epidemiology Paul Romitti with the organization’s prestigious Godfrey P. Oakley, Jr. Award. The award is given to an individual who has made significant lifetime contributions to the field of birth defects.

Romitti directs the Iowa Registry for Congenital and Inherited Disorders, a collaborative program of the UI College of Public Health and the Iowa Department of Public Health. He previously served NBDPN as data committee chair, executive committee member, and president for the organization.

IPRC Report Identifies Five Priorities for Addressing Overdoses

The University of Iowa’s Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) has released a new report highlighting policy and program recommendations to reduce opioid overdose deaths in rural Iowa. In 2017, the IPRC convened a group of stakeholders to consider actions to address the opioid crisis. Health care providers, law enforcement officers, public health officials, and others developed a list of priorities that lawmakers and policy makers could consider.

Some of those priorities were included in a new law passed in 2018. Among them are a requirement that practitioners check the state’s prescription monitoring program before prescribing an opioid to a patient, and strengthened prescriber education requirements on prescribing medications for chronic pain.

In the fall of 2019, the IPRC convened a second group of stakeholders to consider important next steps the state and communities can take in response to the latest developments. The report, Policy and Program Recommendations to Reduce Overdose Deaths in Rural Iowa, identified the five most important priorities:

Develop programs that take a holistic view of treatment and recovery, incorporating support for employment, housing, and other social needs rather than focusing on medication-assisted treatment alone.

Develop timely communication networks between pharmacists, law enforcement officials, employers, and other stakeholders.

Provide funding for naloxone access and distribution.

Naloxone is a drug that has proved effective at helping people who have overdosed on opioids, but it’s expensive and not widely available.

Combat stigma around opioid use disorder. People with substance use disorders are often stigmatized by language used to describe them or their disorder, or the reluctance of medical providers to offer services.

Consider polysubstance drug use in surveillance, prevention, and treatment efforts. The full report is available at iprc.public-health.uiowa.edu/.

Reports Focus on Rural Communities and COVID-19

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread across the country, concern has grown about the availability of health resources in rural communities to meet a potential rapidly increasing need.

The RUPRI Center for Rural Health Policy Analysis has produced a number of reports looking at these issues, including briefs on confirmed cases of COVID-19 in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas, an animated map illustrating the progression of cases throughout the country, county-level 14-day trajectories for new confirmed COVID-19 cases, and the availability of hospital and ICU beds in nonmetropolitan areas.

Links to RUPRI’s COVID-19 projects can be found at rupri.public-health.uiowa.edu/.

UI Research Suggests Toilet Flushing Spreads C. Diff in Hospital Bathrooms

Recent University of Iowa research suggests that an everyday occurrence—flushing a toilet—may play an important role in the spread of the most common hospital-acquired infection in the United States.

Clostridioides difficile infection affects nearly half a million people and causes about 15,000 deaths annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The UI researchers, led by former epidemiology doctoral student Geneva Wilson (19PhD), collected samples from the bathrooms of 24 patients with C. difficile infections at the UI Hospitals & Clinics. Air samples were collected for 20 minutes before and 20 minutes after flushing.

Of 72 samples collected before toilet flushing, 13% tested positive for health care-associated bacteria, such as Enterococcus faecalis, Enterococcus faecium, and C. difficile. After flushing, 26% of samples tested positive.

“We concluded that bioaerosols produced by toilet flushing potentially contribute to hospital environmental contamination,” says Wilson, now a researcher at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Illinois. “Further work is needed to determine the potential risk for infection this contamination presents to patients.” The findings were published in the journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. The UI team included CPH researchers Virgil Jackson, Christine Petersen, Patrick Breheny, and Matthew Nonnenmann, along with Linda Boyken, Marin Schweizer, Daniel Diekema, and Eli Perencevich from the Carver College of Medicine. This study was supported by grants from the CDC Epicenters Program as well as the University of Iowa Heartland Center for Occupational Health and Safety.

CPH to Establish Maternal and Child Health Training Program

The College of Public Health has been awarded a new federal grant to build a maternal and child health (MCH) curriculum and provide resources for recruiting a diverse student body interested in MCH research and education.

The grant, funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), addresses a growing and urgent need for a well-trained and diverse MCH workforce, particularly in states with large rural-urban and/or racial disparities.

The project will be directed by Kelli Ryckman, associate professor of epidemiology, with support from William Story, assistant professor of community and behavioral health. The program will include partnerships with the Iowa Department of Public Health and other HRSA-funded initiatives at the University of Iowa.