News
- IN THE NEWS: “What Do We Know About Environment, Climate, And Menopause? Not Enough” with Center Core Faculty Sung Kyun Park, ScD, MPH
Sung Kyun Park, ScD, MPH“Our data suggests that women with higher blood concentrations of PFOA and PFOS reached menopause earlier … than those with low exposure. This is equivalent to the effect of cigarette smoke, a known reproductive toxicant, where we compared current smokers and nonsmokers.”
- More at Moms Clean Air Force
- November 15 2024
- IN THE NEWS: “Discrimination Could Be Making People of Color Age Faster” with Center affiliate Alexis N. Reeves, PhD, MPH on Scientific American podcast (AUDIO 🔊)
Alexis N. Reeves, PhD, MPH“We found that Black and Hispanic women had a higher risk of having surgical menopause... and we found that hypertension occurred about five years earlier, and metabolic outcomes such as diabetes and insulin resistance about 11 years earlier for Black and Hispanic women versus white women.’”
- More at Scientific American’s Science Quickly podcast
- September 09 2024
- VIDEO: Center student Shichi Dhar featured in “We Are Michigan Public Health”
Shichi Dhar“It’s really important to advocate for Health Equity and advocate for your community because what impacts one person's health impacts everyone else’s.”
- More at We Are Michigan Public Health
- July 09 2024
- IN THE NEWS: “Your Doctor Retired — Now What? ” in CoveyClub, with comments from Center Core Faculty Siobán D. Harlow, PhD
Siobán Harlow, PhD“Many women entering their 40s have a pretty heavy symptom burden. Not just menopausal symptoms, but a range of physical and mental health symptoms that really deserve attention and attending to in the 40s and 50s in order to optimize healthy aging.”
“It’s a time that women have to advocate very strongly for themselves so that their symptoms are not ignored. What’s important is that you feel that your doctor is listening to you and addressing your concerns — not just doing a checklist.”
- More at CoveyClub
- March 25 2024
- IN THE NEWS: Center Core Faculty Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos featured on “Agents of Change in Environmental Justice” podcast (AUDIO 🔊)
Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MADr. Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos joins the Agents of Change in Environmental Justice podcast to discuss her recent research on the dehumanizing work conditions for farmworkers in Michigan and what we can do to address these injustices. Iglesias-Ríos, a research investigator at the department of epidemiology in the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health and lead investigator of the Michigan Farmworker Project, also discusses how a lack of health care and other social resources impact the farmworkers, as well as policies that would help to mitigate some of these workplace harms.
- More at Environmental Health News
- March 20 2024
- IN THE NEWS: Michigan Farmworker Project featured on “Population Healthy” podcast (AUDIO 🔊)
Alexis Handal, PhD, MPH and Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MA“There’s very little research, formal research that has been done with this population in the state. We want to understand how precarious employment and labor exploitation affect the health of workers within the context of occupational and environmental epidemiology and look at more structural factors that drive these issues of precarity and labor exploitation.” — Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MA
“The underlying theme of the work that we’ve been doing is that data is needed, evidence is needed to be able to inform policy changes, to inform programmatic changes that can make service provision more efficient and better for the farmworker community. And so the way we see it as researchers, as epidemiologists, is that we want to contribute by conducting rigorous, high quality epidemiologic studies.” — Alexis J. Handal, PhD, MPH
- More at Population Healthy
- March 01 2024
- PUBLISHED: “The association between incarceration and housing insecurity and advanced immune age during late life” with lead author and Center Doctoral Student Lauren MacConnachie, MS
Lauren MacConnachie, MSCongratulations to Center Doctoral Student Lauren MacConnachie, MS, on her first publication as a lead author in Social Science & Medicine.
“Incarceration and housing insecurity represent severe and complex experiences of a multitude of psychosocial stressors, including discrimination, violence, and poverty. In this study, we investigated the association between incarceration and/or housing insecurity and advanced immune age in adults aged 55 and older.”
- More at Social Science & Medicine
- February 27 2024
- IN THE NEWS: “Heavy metals are toxic to ovaries, may lead to earlier menopause”; interview with study co-author and Center Core Faculty Sung Kyun Park, ScD, MPH
Sung Kyun Park, ScD, MPH“Widespread exposure to toxins in heavy metals may have a big impact on health problems linked to earlier aging of the ovaries in middle-aged women, such as hot flashes, bone weakening and osteoporosis, higher chances of heart disease, and cognitive decline.”
Additional authors include lead author and Center Alumni Ning Ding, Center Core Faculty Xin Wang and John F Randolph, and Center Core Faculty and former Center Director Siobán D Harlow.
- More at Michigan News
- Original study at the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
- February 07 2024
- IN THE NEWS: Siobán D. Harlow, PhD honored with a new named professorship
- Siobán Harlow, Center Core Faculty and former Center Director, has been honored by the creation of a named professorship after her. Effective December 1, 2023 and through November 30, 2025, Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, Department of Biostatistics Chair, is the Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health. Dr. Harlow is only the second woman in the history of the School of Public Health to have a professorship named after her.
Bhramar Mukherjee, PhD and Siobán D. Harlow, PhD - » More about Dr. Harlow
» More about Dr. Mukherjee - January 29 2024
- ALUMNI UPDATE: Center Alumni Lauren Hertzer accepted to the Women’s Health Program at University of Cincinnati
Lauren Hertzer“I recently applied and was accepted to the Women's Health Medical Student Scholars Program, a choice inspired by my work with SWAN and women's midlife science. This program offers an opportunity for medical students to participate in didactic, service, clinical and research experiences that center on women’s health. My project will likely be related to the intersection of public health and women’s health and access to care. I have found myself using many of the skills I gained from conversations with SWAN participants.”
- Learn more about the SWAN Study at the Center for Midlife Science
- January 24 2024
- IN THE NEWS: Michigan Farmworker Project featured on Michigan Public’s “Stateside” (AUDIO 🔊)
- Alexis Handal, PhD, MPH and Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MA
“The exploitation of the workers often is threaded through their environment, their working, and their living environment. We have to look at the whole context and the whole picture to really try to understand how this type of work impacts worker health, as well as the health of their families and their communities.” — Alexis J. Handal, PhD, MPH
“Most research in public health has captured occupational and environmental exposures like injuries, falls, or exposure to pesticides in the workers, but we see the importance of contextualizing why farmworkers suffer from occupational and environmental exposures, the dynamics of the working environment, and fundamentally the social vulnerability of workers.” — Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MA
- More at Michigan Public
- December 11 2023
- IN THE NEWS: Center student Shichi Dhar featured in “We Are Michigan Public Health”
- Shichi Dhar
“I realized that so much of your health is impacted by what job you have, your access to nutritious food and your access to a healthcare system. Being aware about these factors is important if you want to deliver authentic and accurate patient-centered care.”
- More at We Are Michigan Public Health
- December 01 2023