Faculty Accomplishments

Ayaga A. Bawah, PhD, has been nominated by the President of Ghana to serve on the board of the Tamale Teaching Hospital of the University of Development Studies (UDS) in northern Ghana. The UDS is developing a School of Medicine and a School of Public Health. The UDS Board will have responsibility for developing and implementing policies for these new health training institutions.

Marina Catallozzi, MD, MSCE, recently presented two posters at the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) Annual Meeting. The first poster, “Exploring Attitudes towards Expedited Partner Therapy (EPT) for Adolescents in an Urban Pediatric Emergency Department: A Mixed-Methods Study,” included survey and interview results about whether adolescents in a pediatric ER are receptive to using EPT for partners and barriers and enablers that exist for using EPT for partner treatment. The second poster, presented in a symposium, focused on her recent research on “Adolescent Willingness to Participate in Reproductive Health Clinical Trials.”

Lynn Freedman, JD, recently joined faculty from ICAP, the Mailman School of Public Health (MSPH), and scholars from Turkey for an event commemorating International Women’s Day. Professor Freedman participated in a panel discussion, Adapting Refugee Health Services for 21st-Century Health Challenges: Prioritizing Women, which explored the intersections between gender rights, public health, and forced migration. Hosted by the Columbia Global CenterTurkey and Studio X Istanbul, panelists also included the MSPH’s Miriam Rabkin and Wafaa El-Sadr, and two faculty from Istanbul University: Zeynep Kıvılcım and Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu.

John Santelli, MD, MPH recently moderated a plenary talk at the SAHM Annual Meeting. The plenary, “Meeting the Challenge of Transitions in Global Adolescent Health,” explored strategies to improve adolescent health globally from members of The Lancet’s Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing, of which Dr. Santelli is a member. The session drew on some of the Commission’s work with presentations from three of the Commissioners, George Patton, MD and Susan Sawyer, MD, FSAHM from the University of Melbourne and Russell Viner, MD, PhD from University College London.

John Santelli, MD, MPH, Marina Catallozzi, MD,

MSCE, Jennifer Heitel, MPH ’14, and Chelsea Kolff, MPH ’15 recently presented a professional development session at the SAHM Annual Meeting. Their session shared  results of the Youth Providers 2.0 (YP2.0) initiative’s formative research, as well as current and future grant activities.  YP2.0 is a joint project of SAHM and PopFam that focuses on improving the use of evidence-based practices among health care providers caring for adolescents and young adults. The research explored the training needs of adolescent health and medicine providers, the use of new technologies in training providers, and the dissemination of patient-centered outcomes research.