Scholarly Work In the Spotlight

Health Equity

The COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on long-standing health and social inequities, including lack of access to affordable, high-speed broadband internet. In addition to the impact on education and economic activities, this isolation increases health and safety risks for rural communities. In Washington’s Yakima Valley, concern for missing Indigenous women-led community leaders to seek new answers to this crisis. Under the direction of the Yakima Community Foundation, MPH students Brandy Fuller and Courtney Cooper (now graduates) conducted a literature review to help guide the direction of the newly formed Broadband Action Team (BAT). A community survey was administered in rural areas and together with the mapping of disappearances overlayed with results of internet speed tests, a proposal was developed by BAT to expand broadband internet service to vulnerable and isolated populations. After encountering some hurdles, support from congressional representatives helped win federal funding for broadband infrastructure expansion. Not only was Yakima’s proposal approved, but the FCC also developed new transparency measures for small and rural communities to ensure fair practices by internet providers. The Yakima Community Foundation says that none of this would have been possible without the work of our USF students. Thousands of Indigenous and other rural families will now have access to affordable broadband!

Professor Callahan testified to the State Legislative Committee at a hearing on "Lessons Learned from COVID-19: Preparing California for the Next Pandemic."

Fiddian-Green, A., & Gubrium, A. (2021). Critical Narrative Intervention for Health Equity Research and Practice: Editorial Commentary Introducing the Health Promotion Practice Critical Narrative Intervention Special Collection. Health Promotion Practice.

Community Health

Professor Jo Loomis, DNP, FNP-C, CHSE, CLC, ANLC, NCMP, CNL, received Jesuit Grant funding for the Save the Children CHW Project. This Jesuit Grant will fund an academic partnership between USF faculty, DNP students, and the philanthropic community partner organization Save the Children. The project is designed to develop a large-scale public health quality improvement project with multiple components aimed at social change and long-term community health improvement.

MPH-Behavioral Health students, Erika Zuniga and Jazmin Jauregui, along with MPH and MSBH alumna Evelin Trejo and faculty member Kelly L’Engle, submitted the abstract “Latinas helping Latinas: Providing peer to peer digital health coaching to improve their health during the COVID-19 pandemic” to the American Public Health Professional Association (APHA). It was selected as one of five to be presented during the Student Award Winners for the Public Health Education and Health Promotion section of APHA.

Professor Marcianna (Meera) Nosek obtained the Jesuit Foundation Grant for her proposal “African Mothers Health Initiative (AMHI)/Joyful Motherhood (JM) Piloting of Mobile App for Electronic Health Records & Program Evaluation.”

The University of San Francisco Gains Official Designation as an Age-Friendly University. The USF Interdisciplinary Committee on Aging supported an assessment project to define USF’s strengths and challenges related to each of the ten age-friendly university principles. USF alumna Cameron Grant BSN ’16, MPH ’20, supervised by Professor Erin Grinshteyn, conducted the assessment, which now serves as the baseline for USF’s strategic planning framework and activities.

Global Health

Taryn Vian was a technical advisor on a recently released WHO report on Conflict of Interest Management Policies and Practices in the Public Pharmaceutical Sector in the WHO South-East Asia Region. The report summarizes policies and information from key informants in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Timor-Leste. The study documents many good practices as well as policy gaps. Pharmaceutical committee members are often required to declare relevant interests; however, systems to manage the declarations are lacking and processes for
preventing are not well developed. The report recommends policy guidance and capacity building to help countries identify, manage, and prevent conflicts of interest. This is important to build trust that decisions are being made in the public’s interest. 

The University of Tokyo faculty director, Dr. Midori Sato is participating in the Global Health Study Tour Program along with another faculty member, a Ph.D. student, and ten undergraduate students from Sept. 2-9, 2022.  The Global Health Study Tour program includes special sessions on global health topics, guest lectures, field trips to visit public health organizations, attending classes with USF students, and other events. We hope this can be the first step in a broader collaboration with the University of Tokyo, including teaching and learning exchanges and research activities.

Experiential and Civically-Engaged Education

Professors Marie-Claude Couture and Erin Grinshteyn were awarded $432K funding for their three-year NIH research project to determine the social and environmental predictors of high-risk alcohol drinking among college students. It's an R15 grant that will train graduate students in research.

Mary Lou De Natale and Lisa Sabatini presented “Integrating Self-Care for BSN Nursing Students: Guiding Practice and Professionalism During the COVID-19 Pandemic” at the SIGMA Region 1 Conference.

Professors Marie-Claude Couture, Erin Grinshteyn, MPH alumna Jee Eun Kang, and David Hemenway co-authored a new peer-reviewed article on "Associations between having been threatened or injured with a weapon and substance use and mental health among high school students in the United States" published in the International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion.

Grinshteyn, E., Couture, M. C, and Alumna Reid Whaley published online: "Fear of Bullying and Its Effects on Mental Health among College Students: An Emerging Public Health Issue" in the Taylor and Francis Online Journal. 

Nurse Practitioners Continue Long Wait for Independence as Nursing Board Deliberates / Gaps in care persist as regulators set terms of AB 890 implementation. California Health Care Foundation Blog (CHCF). This CHCF article highlights Professor Alexa Curtis, Charlotte Gullap Moore, DNP graduate, and Ron Ordona, DNP Preceptor.

Passion for Social and Environmental Justice

For five consecutive years, Angela D. Banks RN, PhD has been awarded the Health Access and Information (HCIA) Song Brown grant. This year, SONHP will receive $384,000 for scholarships for students who are underrepresented in the health professions.

Professor Mary Lou De Natale and Associate Professor Jo Loomis hosted a successful Poverty Simulation. The simulation promotes poverty awareness through the role-play of a month spent in poverty and experiencing the day-to-day lives of low-income families. The goal of the simulation is to shift the paradigm about poverty away from being seen as a personal failure and toward the understanding of poverty as a structural failure of society. 
SONHP and SOL, in partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health (MCAH) section with Public Health Nurses (PHN), received Jesuit Grant funding to access legal services, with an eventual objective of establishing an integrated medical-legal partnership (MLP).

Lead and Succeed: Change Makers

Financial and Business Management for the Doctor of Nursing Practice, 3rd ed. Mary Lynne Knighten and KT Waxman. This is the only text to focus on the financial and business skills needed by students in DNP programs. 
Professor Annette Regan was one of 75 individuals worldwide to be accepted into the 2022 ADVAC training program, an advanced vaccinology training program hosted by Fondation Mérieux & Université de Genève! The two-week training program provides participants with a comprehensive overview of the various aspects of vaccinology, including immunology, vaccine development, clinical trials, regulatory processes, vaccination strategies and policies, program implementation, social-economic and ethical issues, and financing. As a graduate of ADVAC, she joins the ADVAC alumni global network of vaccine experts and will share insights with the university and our students.

Professors Brent Ferm and Dhara Meghani presented at the January 2022 MidWinter Meeting (MWM) of the Council of University Directors of Clinical Psychology (CUDCP) based on their 2019 publication in Training and Education in Professional Psychology titled "Development of a standardized patient evaluation exam: An innovative model for health service psychology programs."

Professor Alette Coble-Temple was awarded the National Council of Schools in Professional Psychology (NCSPP) Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Advocacy in January 2022. Dr. Coble-Temple can be credited with establishing the NCSPP Disability Committee, which in a short time has promoted accessibility guidelines for NCSPP conferences, organized a variety of training opportunities, conducted surveys regarding disability, and collaborated with other organizations to increase conference programming related to disability. 

Professors Annette Regan and Marie-Claude Couture received the NIH/NICHD award of $366K for a two-year study to examine teen-parent COVID-19 vaccine decision-making.

Professor Annette Regan received a $1.27 million award from the National Institutes of Health, with co-investigators from UCLA and Baylor College of Medicine to conduct research on the "Uptake, Safety, and Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines During Pregnancy." The research will be integral to supporting informed vaccine decision-making during pregnancy and documenting the health effects of maternal vaccination for infants. 

Couture, M. C, Kang, J. E., Hemenway, D., & Grinshteyn, E. (2021). Associations between having been threatened or injured with a weapon and substance use and mental health among high school students in the United States. International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, 1-10.