Health Beat
College of Health newsletter
January 2024
All the news that fit to print
We encourage you to scroll through the whole page, but if you want to skip ahead to a particular section, select from the following.
Visibility
In the news
These stories are predominately made up from the college's alumni magazine, press releases from OSU News and Research Communications, and media mentions.
How Oregon State’s Online MPH program helped Carter Michell level up
Online MPH program yields immediate results for Oregon State grad
Veterans’ PTSD symptoms are affected by factors like service appraisal, social support
Oregon State study finds veterans’ personal views of combat experiences and the support they get upon returning home are stronger predictors of PTSD symptoms than the specific conflict in which they served.
Students and Alumni
Dean's Health Heroes
Health Heroes stand out among their fellow students and alumni.
They are doing incredible and impactful work in our community, exemplifying our vision to bring health and well-being within reach for all.
Meet all of the Dean's Health Heroes.
Dietetic intern bridges passions for nutrition and helping others
Seeing public health through an environmental lens
Former collegiate gymnast explores intersection of sport and positive youth development
Former nursing student discovers a passion for public health
Congrats!
Good News for January 2024
Our faculty and staff do amazing things! They receive national, university and college honors; publish books and articles; serve on editorial boards and much more!
Ines de Pierola, a doctoral student in human development and family sciences, has been selected to be part of the 2024 cohort of doctoral research scholars at the Social Policy Institute (SPI) at Washington University in St. Louis. During this period, Ines will learn multidisciplinary research content and methods about paid leave, while expanding her scholarly network. Her current research evaluates the financial outcomes of paid leave programs for families. Congratulations, Ines!
Three College of Health students earned awards at the 2024 Cascadia Occupational, Environmental, and Public Health Conference held in January in Blaine, Wash. Carson Mowrer (MPH, Epidemiology) won best Best Student Oral Presentation; Sigride Asseko (PhD, Environmental and Occupational Health) won Best Ignite Presentation; and Brad Longman (PhD, Global Health) won Best Poster.
David Rothwell, Barbara E. Knudson chair in family policy and associate professor of HDFS, was recently inducted into the 2024 class of Fellows of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). Congratulations, David!
College faculty, students and alumni presented at the 16th Annual Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health, co-hosted by NIH and AcademyHealth in December in Virginia. The preeminent meeting in the field provided an opportunity to share work widely and network. Presenters included faculty members Peggy Dolcini, Denise Hynes and Veronica Irvin; doctoral students Eiman AlEissa and Ashley Schuyler; and alumni Virginia McKay (Washington University) and Ryan Singh (Oregon Social Learning Center; Chestnut Health Systems).
Professor and Extension specialist Deborah John was part of a WalletHub article on the best and worst cities for an active lifestyle in 2024. (Portland ranks 18th.) She discussed how local communities can encourage and support physical activity, how access and use of gyms and recreational facilities could be increased, how to get active while on a budget, and how parents can encourage physical activity in children. Read the article on WalletHub.
Congratulations to the Kinesiology Program faculty and staff on a successful Kinesiology Program Undergraduate Curriculum Retreat.
Research
Healthy Discoveries
The Healthy Discoveries program gives undergraduates the support they need to start conducting research projects early in their college careers. This valuable program is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Patricia Valian Reser Fund for Experiential Learning.
Let's meet some of our previous 2023 cohort undergraduate student researchers! We'll be highlighting a few of them each month.
First-year, Nutrition
First-year, Human development and family sciences
First-year, Kinesiology Pre-therapy and allied health option
Publications for the month of January
Check out the recent publications from researchers across the college over the past month. See if you can guess the researcher(s) based solely on publication titles:
This study describes the reference accuracy of 105 peer-reviewed primary studies on the topic, revealing an overall error rate of 21.2%, with author names and article titles being the most common errors. This error rate is lower than the 32.7% found in general reference accuracy literature, highlighting ongoing challenges in citation accuracy even among researchers in the field. Future research is needed to explore the reasons behind these inaccuracies and potential solutions.
Prenatal exposures to fine particular matter (PM2.5) increased the risk of severe respiratory distress among term newborns and support the development and prioritization of public health and prenatal care strategies to increase awareness and minimize prenatal exposures to air pollution.
Overall, HTKS-Kids has the potential to provide a more equitable and comprehensive assessment of self-regulation in young children.
Social network research can contribute to a deeper understanding of the principle of "linked lives" in life course research, by studying how networks evolve through life events and analyzing broader networks beyond intimate or family ties.
This study's findings underscore the importance of considering individual characteristics such as race, ethnicity, and income level, as well as personal appraisals of military service and the availability of social support, in understanding and treating PTSD among veterans.
By adopting a life course perspective, the study suggests that interventions should be tailored to the individual experiences of veterans rather than focusing solely on the context of the war zone served.
The cycle whereby optimism and sleep enhance one another could improve physical health and psychological well-being among aging adults and play an important role in maintaining optimism.
This study reveals important associations between motor skills and executive functions in young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that are consistent across Eastern and Western cultures.
The findings suggest that early assessment and intervention focused on motor skill development may have cascading benefits for cognitive development in children with ASD.
This has significant real-world applications for early screening and the design of targeted interventions to support the developmental needs of young children on the autism spectrum.
The findings of this study can help identify individuals at risk of high levels of PAH exposure and inform the development of targeted interventions based on the source of exposure.
This major update expands the utility and accuracy of this widely-used tool for converting reported physical activities into standardized intensity values.
The age-specific focus and addition of new activities enhance its real-world relevance for researchers and practitioners aiming to quantify physical activity and its health impacts in different populations.
Maintaining the Compendium as a "living document" allows it to remain a vital resource as new science emerges.
Exposure to organophosphate ester flame retardants and plasticizers (OPEs) in house dust may increase the risk of stress in Canadian mothers during pregnancy and early postpartum. However, there is no significant association between OPEs and depression. Further research is needed to fully understand the impact of OPEs on maternal mental health.
The development of the Older Adult Compendium fills an important gap by providing an older adult-specific system for quantifying the energy costs of physical activities, which will enhance research and practice to promote physical activity in aging populations.
The standardized MET60+ values enable more accurate comparisons and tailoring of physical activity for older adults.
This study found that stricter state alcohol policies are associated with lower rates of alcohol-related arrests, disciplinary actions, and rape offenses on college campuses. These findings suggest that implementing more restrictive alcohol policies may help reduce these issues among college students.
This research study's findings contribute to the ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of traffic congestion reduction projects and their potential co-benefits for public health.
Despite the theoretical benefits of reducing traffic congestion on air quality and, by extension, public health, this study suggests that the implementation of electronic tolling systems in Texas did not lead to measurable improvements in infant health outcomes over the study period.