Student and Alumni Kudos

Below is a highlight of the recent outstanding undertakings of the SPHHS student and alumni. If you are a student or an alumnus and would like to share some news about your recent activities or share a sampling of your work with your cohorts, tell us about it here!

• Clarence H Hinnant - Alumni
  Chad Hinnant. Kindred River Pointe Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center. Appointed Virginia Health Care Association Health Quality Committee. The VHCA Health Quality Committee addresses issues and trends related to quality measurement and monitoring activities both Nationally and in Virginia. Suggests appropriate educational programs and other Association efforts to enhance quality of care efforts for Virginia long term care providers.
• Cyndi Lake and Amy Tarte - Student
  EOH MPH students Work for the Alexandria Health Department/Medical Reserve Corps and were both instrumental in staging a mass vaccination for seasonal flu last week, while also commemorating 9/11. Awesome job ladies!
• Clarence H Hinnant - Alumni
  September 2009: Awarded: Deficiency Free Accreditation Inspection by the National Veterans Administration in Medical Care and Servies to Veterans of the Armed Services. Awarded: Feature Nursing Care Program by Virginia Commonwealth University and Medical College of Virginia for Excellence in Wound Care.
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• Clarence H Hinnant - Alumni
  Healthcare A-MBA Alumni. Elected Member At Large to Board of Directors for the Eastern Virginia Care Consortium. Eastern Virginia Care Consortium Eastern Virginia Medical School The Eastern Virginia HIV CARE Consortium is the coordinator of Ryan White Part B-funded services in Eastern Virginia. The AIDS Resource Center at the Eastern Virginia Medical School serves as the Lead Agency for the Consortium. The mission of the Eastern Virginia HIV CARE Consortium is to facilitate an effective broad-based community response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to ensure the availability of high quality, comprehensive health and support services to individuals who are infected with or affected by HIV. The Virginia HIV/AIDS Resource and Consultation Center was founded in 1989 to respond to the need to expand medical care and support services for persons living with HIV infection and AIDS in Eastern Virginia. The Center links the resources of Eastern Virginia. The mission of the HIV/AIDS Resource Center is to provide training, education, and information to health-care industry professionals who care for people infected with HIV. The HIV/AIDS Resource Center offers a range of services to health care professionals, including: ? Media Materials: The latest technical, audiovisual, and educational materials for staff and patient education are available. Library services include database searches, interlibrary loans, current awareness information, and answers to reference questions. ? Resources: Information and referral services to multiple community resources are provided to persons infected with HIV. ? Consultation: Direct consultation between health care providers and consultants is available. ? Education: Training programs are developed for specific disciplines in the health care industry on a broad range of AIDS- related issues. ? The services of the Center are provided through a grant from Virginia Commonwealth University via the Virginia Department of Health.
• Vera Rosenthal - Alumni
  Vera Rosenthal is now at AHRQ as a Junior Service Fellow in healthcare IT.
• Clarence H Hinnant - Alumni
  Contact: Chad Hinnant Executive Director River Pointe Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center (757) 340-0620 GGU Healthcare MBA Alumni RIVER POINTE REHABILITATION AND HEALTHCARE CENTER NAMED RECIPIENT OF NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD Virginia Beach, VA (July 16, 2009) – River Pointe Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center has been recognized as one of the 2009 recipients of the Step I Quality Award presented by the American Health Care Association (AHCA) for demonstrating its commitment to continuous quality improvement. The AHCA Quality Award is modeled after criteria from the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s premier recognition for quality achievement. Recipients of this prestigious award have demonstrated a commitment to quality by employing systems and processes that lead to continuous improvement in the quality of care provided to residents. River Pointe Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center is a 145 licensed bed skilled nursing center. “The award demonstrates River Pointe’s commitment to teamwork in providing quality care to our residents,” said Chad Hinnant, Executive Director. “We are proud of this accomplishment. This is a great honor for the employees who work hard every day to take care of our residents.” River Pointe Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center is part of Kindred Healthcare, Inc., a healthcare services company, based in Louisville, Kentucky. At March 31, 2009, Kindred through its subsidiaries provided healthcare services in 661 locations in 40 states, including 82 long-term acute care hospitals, 228 skilled nursing centers and a contract rehabilitation services business, Peoplefirst rehabilitation services, which served 351 non-affiliated facilities. Ranked first in Fortune magazine’s Most Admired Companies “Health Care: Medical Facilities” category, Kindred’s mission is to promote healing, provide hope, preserve dignity and produce value for each patient, resident, family member, customer, employee and shareholder we serve. For more information, go to www.kindredhealthcare.com. - END -
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• Sara L Imershein, MD - Student
  Awarded the Volunteer Faculty Award for teaching. and was promoted to Associate Clinical Professor, Dept OBGYN, GWUSM
• Mariel Marlow and Aimee Palumbo - Student
  Mariel Marlow and Aimee Palumbo are the recipients of the Practicum Research Fellowship Awards for spring 2009! Mariel will be using her award to conduct her practicum at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh with the purpose of determining the baseline efficacy of artesunate monotherapy for the treatment of uncomplicated falciparum malaria in Bangladesh as well as defining the impact of varying doses of artesunate on treatment outcome. Aimee will be using her award to conduct her practicum at the DC site of the Women's Interagency HIV Study with the aim of studying the effect of chemokine receptor mutations on neurocognitive impairment among HIV-infected women.
• Stefanie Kirk, Allison Au, and Tashonda Frazier - Student
  Stefanie Kirk, Allison Au, and Tashonda Frazier in 2nd Place in the 13th Annual Everett V. Fox Student Case Competition in Atlanta, GA for the NAHSE (National Association of Health Services Executives) conference. The Case Competition is designed to give first and second year graduate students an educational experience to enhance their problem analysis and presentation skills. Students are charged with applying their creativity, knowledge, and experience to analyze the real and diverse issues facing a health care organization. Attached is a photo featuring from left to right: Allison Au, Renee Frazier, Charlotte Collins, Stefanie Kirk, Tashonda Frazier, and Angela Raphael
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• Zina Peters - Alumni
  Ms. Peters was recently awarded an ORISE Research Participant Fellowship. She will be working in the Division of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) Prevention at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• Jana Baldwin - Student
  Jana has created her own blog called NW to SE focusing on Public Health Issues/DC/Politics-Check it out- It's cool! http://nwtose.blogspot.com
• Yasir Shah, MPH, CHES - Alumni
  Yasir Shah recently accepted a position as the Adult Viral Hepatitis Prevention Coordinator for the DC Department of Health. For his special project he conducted qualitative research through focus groups with recovering and active injecting drug users in Washington DC to gather exploratory data on Hepatitis C transmission risks.
• Rabia H. Mir - Alumni
  Rabia, a recent graduate of the MPH Communication and Marketing track, recently published an article in The Washington Post on hookah smoking. This editorial was based on her Culminating Experience on hookah smoking among South Asians at GWU. To read the article please visit the following URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/29/AR2008082902713.html
• Tammie Kheocha’on - Student
  Ms. Kheocha’on, class of 2009, received a GW Dorothy Shapiro Public Service Award to support a summer public internship in epidemiology at the Rockland County Department of Public Health in Pomona, New York.
• Lindsay Wheeler - Alumni
  Ms. Wheeler, class of 2008, will spend ten months researching the community impact and response to neglected tropical disease control measures in Rwanda. She is the recipient of the Dorothy M. and Maurice C. Shapiro Traveling Scholarship.
• Amani Nuru-Jeter, Ph.D., M.P.H. - Alumni
  Dr. Amani Nuru-Jeter, who received her MPH in Maternal & Child Health in 1998 from SPHHS, is currently an Assistant Professor in Community Health and Human Development, and Epidemiology at the University of California at Berkley School of Public Health. She recently published two articles based on studies for which she served as the lead researcher/author. The papers are titled, “It’s The Skin You’re In’’: African-American Women Talk About Their experiences of Racism. An exploratory Study to Develop Measures of Racism for Birth Outcome Studies" and “A methodological note on modeling the effects of race: the case of psychological distress” published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal and Stress and Health, respectively. For additional information please see the attached articles, saved back-to-back.
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• Heather Pitorak, Katie Roberts, Lindsay Hallett and Nalini Padmanabhan - Alumni
  Public Health Communications and Marketing MPH students, Heather Pitorak, Katie Roberts, Lindsay Hallett and Nalini Padmanabhan, have been named the new student editors for Cases in Public Health Communication & Marketing for 2008-2009 (Volume 3). Professor Lynn Cook will serve as the managing editor of the Journal for the upcoming year.
• Maria Barhams - Student
  Ms. Barhams was recently accepted into the Administrative Fellows Program (sponsored by the NIH) as a Management Analyst at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. It is a two-year on the job training program that will lead to a permanent position.
• Jenny Birnbaum, Pamela Bravo, Mateyo Bonham - Student
  Jenny Birnbaum, Pamela Bravo and Mateyo Bonham will be conducting a summer social research project in the remote village of San Antonio de la Libertad, Honduras to assess common beliefs, concerns and practices related to hygiene and sanitation behaviors among women. This project is Pamela Bravo's Culminating Experience and Mateyo's practicum. Pamela will come to Honudras for the first 10 days to conduct some focus groups. Pamela Bravo received a Capital Connection Grant to help fund this project. Jenny, Mateyo and Pamela are working in collaboration with Engineers Without Borders and the Virginia Medical Health Brigade on this project.
• Laura Reimers - Alumni
  Laura has taken a job in NYC as a Research Coordinator/Epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Good going Laura!
• Daniela Resh - Student
  Daniela Resh, soon-to-be alumnus, received a fellowship this summer to study public health as it relates to Jainism. She will be doing her research in New Dehli and Jaipur, India, focusing on adolescent health and spirituality. COOL!
• Michelle Cho - Student
  Michelle (BSPH) will be working in South East DC with Unity Healthcare as a Health Educator Coordinator after graduation.Good Job Michelle!
• Ruba Omeira - Student
  Ruba Omeira, MPH candidate, is interning at ASTHO with fellow SPHHS alumnus Julia Pekarsky Schneider (MCH 'O3) on chronic disease prevention policy issues such as tobacco control, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes prevention. Good going Ruba and Julia!
• Athena Abdullah - Student
  Athena Abdullah has been selected to be a health panelist at the NAACP Leadership 500 Summit taking place in Scottsdale, AZ from May 22-25, 2008. Athena is currently a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Congressional Fellow in the office of Congressman Charles B. Rangel, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. When her fellowship ends in May, she will not have to go too far -- she will have the honor of joining the office of Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who sits on the Ways & Means Health Subcommittee, as her Health Care Counsel!
• Lindsay Wheeler - Student
  After graduation from the BSPH program, Lindsay will be working at the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Disesase At the end of summer 08, she leaves for a fellowship in Rwanda for 9-10 months to do research on an NTD implementation project. In Summer '09 Lindsay will return to DC in to start the MD/MPH program at GW with a focus in health policy. Awesome Lindsay!
• Dana Schlossberg - Student
  Dana is working with the CDC and MD State Health Deparment on a case-control study investigating predictors for vascular access hemorrhage among dialysis patients. Also, CONGRATS... she be getting married in September!
• BSPH Students - Student
  The students in the BSPH program have raised almost $400 to go to the repair of a Rwandan health clinic. A number of GWU students including 1 or 2 of our public health undergrad students will be working on site.
• Roksolana Gishta - Student
  Roksolana will attend SPHHS for MPH program next year.
• Trey Watkins - Alumni
  Trey recently accepted a position with YouthAIDS/PSI here in DC. Also, Trey's project from Argentina has been featured on FSD's new blog...pretty exciting! You can check it out at http://fsdinternational.wordpress.com/ Congrats!
• Deanna Olsen - Student
  Deanna has been awarded a scholarship to study Hindi in India this summer via the US Dept of State Critical Language Scholarship. Deanna is currently a first year MPH in the Global Health track. How cool is that?
• Malissa Winograd - Student
  Malissa has been offered an internship at GAO with the health care team! She will start in June.. After graduation. Kudos to you Malissa!
• Florencia Gonzalez - Alumni
  Florencia Gonzalez, recent alumni has left MFA to work for a non profit in Uganda. Kudos to you Florencia! Check out her newsletter below!
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