Northwestern University Program in Public Health celebrates its 10th anniversary!

The Northwestern University Program in Public Health (PPH) educates students in a wide variety of graduate programs (medicine and law, and PhD programs in biological sciences, anthropology, and sociology, among others), as well as current health professionals, to span the boundaries between public health and their other fields of endeavor.

The program capitalizes on and emphasizes the unique resources available through Northwestern University, including the Feinberg School of Medicine. Although the NU PPH is housed in the Department of Preventive Medicine, a pioneering home of cardiovascular epidemiology, on the Chicago medical campus, some classes are offered on Northwestern’s Evanston campus, including courses at the Kellogg School of Management.The NU PPH has many ties to the public health community in the Chicago area, throughout the country, and internationally, and maintains on-going relationships with numerous sites for student field and culminating experiences.

South Texas Environmental Education and Research (STEER) Program of the University of Texas School of Medicine

The South Texas Environmental Education and Research (STEER) Program of the University of Texas School of Medicine-San Antonio (UTSOMSA) provides in vivo training experiences at the US-Mexico Border for medical students, residents and other health professionals in an unusual and informative setting, one that distinguishes it from other programs in the Nation. H1N1 influenza, drug-resistant tuberculosis, rabies, pesticides, and air and water pollutants do not respect borders and have the potential to affect the entire US population. Mosquitoes don’t carry green cards, as public health officials in this region sometimes say. Offered by the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio at two sites along the US-Mexico Border in Texas – Laredo and Harlingen – STEER was the first, and is still the only, 4-week course in the Nation that teaches health professions students and professionals about these and many other crucial environmental and public health concerns. Over the past 14 years, STEER has hosted over 500 full-time students and thousands of part-time students and health professionals from more than half the states in the US. What attracts these students to STEER are the memorable learning experiences the Border offers­experiences that engage all of the senses and cannot be found in any textbook or duplicated in the classroom. Depending on their home institutions, students may receive elective, practicum, or even core credit for STEER.

The Program invites students to step outside a treatment-based medicine paradigm into a preventive one. STEER’s vision is to reunite medicine and public health in a way that educates, engages and empowers students. To this day, public health and environmental health are not required subjects in most medical schools. Concern about the lack of well-trained public health physicians led the U.S. Congress to direct the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to find ways to reduce this shortage. IOM’s study (2007), entitled “Training Physicians for Public Health Careers,” recommended that physicians receive environmental health and public health education, as well as cultural competency training. STEER has been doing just this since 1996. Further, longstanding partnerships between STEER and the University of Texas School of Public Health paved the way for development of Texas’s first 4-year MD/MPH dual degree program in 2007. STEER Director Dr. Claudia Miller serves as Assistant Dean for the MD/MPH program. MD/MPH students from UTSOMSA who take STEER earn 3 semester credit hours for their MPH-required practicum experience and 4 senior year elective didactic credits in the School of Medicine.

STEER engages nearly 100 instructors, most of them volunteers, including health department leaders, community healthcare workers, and  professors, to teach the dozens of ½ to 1-day segments that make up the 4-week program. Among the segments our students find especially memorable are:

• Hiking with a local herbal expert who was featured on NPR for
  his encyclopedic knowledge of herbal medicine and traditional folk healing (curanderismo) and their importance for Hispanic populations.
• Visiting homes of children with asthma to identify sources of indoor air pollutants and help their families reduce these exposures (environmental house calls).
• Touring a local landfill to learn the importance of proper sanitary waste disposal to human health.
• Water sampling, with students wearing hip waders in the Rio Grande River to learn about the importance of protecting the Rio Grande River, the community’s sole drinking water source and formerly one of the Nation’s most polluted bodies of water.
• Visiting colonias to learn about the unique healthcare challenges faced by low-income, underserved communities that lack one or more basic services, including water, electricity and sewage disposal.

Our program is offered as an elective during the below mentioned dates in both Laredo and Harlingen, TX.

There are no tuition fees. Housing is provided at no cost to students from the University of Texas Health Science Center. Housing for visiting students is $600 for the month. Students are responsible for their own travel to/from Laredo or Harlingen, meals, personal daily expenses and after-hours transportation and activities.

LAREDO, TX / NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO
HARLINGEN, TX / MATAMOROS, MEXICO
January 4, 2010 – January 29, 2010
February 8, 2010 – March 5, 2010
April 5, 2010 – April 30, 2010
July 5, 2010 – July 30, 2010
July 5, 2010 – July 30, 2010
August 2, 2010 – August 27, 2010
September 20, 2010 – October 15, 2010
October 25, 2010 – November 19, 2010

STEER program is offered if there are at least three qualified
applicants. Limit of 10 students per rotation.

See our website for information and a downloadable application, or contact us directly at steer@uthscsa.edu.
STEER is directed by Claudia S. Miller, M.D., M.S., Professor, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Vice Chair for Community Medicine in the Department of Family & Community Medicine, UTHSCSA.
To see the latest article published by the Academic
Physician and Scientist On-line Magazine featuring STEER,
visit http://www.acphysci.com/aps/resources/PDFs/APS_0809_Complete%20Magazine.pdf

PPH 2010 Self-study report is available on the News page.

Novel Analytical Techniques to Process Physical Activity Accelerometer Data: A New Solution to an Old Problem

Patty Freedson, Ph.D.
Department of Kinesiology
School of Public Health and Health Sciences
University of Massachusetts Amherst