News
- 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
- IN THE NEWS: “Mistreatment of Michigan farmworkers: U-M researchers document abuses, push for change” with Center Core Faculty Alexis Handal, PhD, MPH and Lisbeth Iglesias-Ríos, PhD, MPH, MA
“There are multisystem failures in the protection of farmworkers in Michigan,” said Iglesias-Rios, a research investigator at the U-M School of Public Health. “We identified dimensions of precarious employment and labor exploitation that involve lacking access to fundamental labor and social rights, including dehumanization, discriminatory occupational practices and insufficient access to health care and social benefits.”
- More at Michigan News (English / Inglés)
- More at Michigan News (Spanish / Español)
- October 27 2023
- IN THE NEWS: “Yes, VMS Affects Races Differently, But More Research Still Needs to Be Done” in Newswires, featuring Center Core Faculty Siobán D. Harlow, PhD
- Siobán Harlow, PhD
“It is clear that discrimination and structural racism play an important role in health broadly but getting the full story is difficult. It’s putting each of the little pieces together and understanding the overall picture — how do we integrate and understand the difference in the experience of the menopausal transition as a whole?”
- More at SheKnows
- October 06 2023
- IN THE NEWS: “Researchers Devise Scoring System to Forecast Future Health Risks for Women Ages 55-65” in Newswires, featuring SWAN Study research
Daniel H. Solomon, MD, MPHResearch yielding a prototype tool for predicting risk for significant decline in future health for women ages 55-65 developed by the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) has been published in the British medical journal BMJ Open. The prototype is based on a scoring system proven to be the first known method to predict health and physical function up to a decade in advance for women in the midlife when problems tend to accelerate, said lead author of the study Daniel H. Solomon, MD, MPH, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School.
- More at Newswires
- October 05 2023
- IN THE NEWS: “Menopause Is Different for Women of Color” in the New York Times, featuring SWAN Study research and comments from SWAN Study Leadership
Sherri-Ann Burnett-Bowie, MD, MPHIn a paper published last February, researchers concluded that the menopause symptom disparities between Black and white women might be explained by “structural racism” that led to “a greater disease burden” for Black women. The Black women in SWAN, the study notes, were more likely than white women to report financial instability, instances of discrimination, “trouble with the police, experiences of violence, as well as illness or death of close family members.” Those kinds of experiences can erode a person’s overall health and accelerate aging, said Dr. Sherri-Ann Burnett-Bowie, a co-author of the paper — a process known as “weathering”.
- More at New York Times
- August 25 2023
- ON THE RADIO: Center affiliate Alexis N. Reeves, PhD, MPH discusses menopause, research and the differing experiences of Black and Hispanic women
Alexis N. Reeves, PhD, MPH“We all wanted to understand ‘What is the impact of systematically leaving these women out? What is the impact on the results within the study? What are we missing within the study for understanding Black and Hispanic women’s health through the menopausal transition?’”
- More at Stateside (interview with Dr. Reeves begins at 13:00)
- August 22 2023
- FEATURED PUBLICATION: “Phthalates and Incident Diabetes in Midlife Women: The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN)” with lead author and former Center Doctoral Student Mia Q. Peng, PhD, MPH
Mia Q. Peng, PhD, MPHFeatured Publication of the Week for the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (August 2023), with lead author and former Center Doctoral Student Mia Q. Peng, PhD, MPH; additional authors include Center co-director Carrie A. Karvonen-Gutierrez, PhD, MPH, Center Core Faculty member Sung Kyun Park, ScD, MPH and Center Affiliate Faculty William H. Herman, MD, MPH.
- More at Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
- August 09 2023