Program Details

To provide students with a rigorous public health education that enables them to attain knowledge, skills, abilities and values in the core disciplines of public health so that they can address the public health needs of communities.

To involve students in high quality, interdisciplinary scholarly activities using qualitative and quantitative methods to foster critical reflection on the application of the public health paradigm, as well as skill acquisition and competency in key areas of public health practice and research.

To provide meaningful opportunities for students and faculty to collaborate with local, regional, state, national and international organizations on projects and activities that improves the health and well-being of diverse populations.

MPH 231 August 2021 Selected ILE Abstracts

Kieran Feeley - Primary Care Physician Adherence to Screening Guidelines for Copper Deficiency in Post-Surgical Bariatric Patients

Bariatric surgery is increasingly utilized to manage obesity and the associated comorbidities, but complications can occur, and micronutrient deficiencies such as copper are increasingly recognized in patients who have undergone a malabsorptive procedure. Guidelines have evolved over the past decade that now recommend annual screening of bariatric patients who have undergone a malabsorptive procedure, and while ideally this would fall under the responsibility of the bariatric surgeon to follow, many patients do not continue to have follow-up appointments with their surgeon indefinitely. It is increasingly important that internists and primary care physicians recognize the risks associated with this growing population of patients. We designed a study with the goal of determining the frequency that bariatric patients were screened for copper deficiency in a year to determine if there is a need for an intervention to improve screening rates. Our hypothesis that the screening rate for copper deficiency in bariatric patients by internal medicine primary care physicians turned out to be correct, with a screening rate of just 4.61%. Although demographics such as being white, female, and English speaking were more likely to be screened, these results were not statistically significant. There was a statistically significant age difference in those who were screened being 5 years younger than those who were not. This study demonstrated that there is a significant lack of screening for copper deficiency in this high risk population.

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Yu He - Risk predictors associated with concerns of children during the COVID-19 pandemic in Long Island, New York

The Covid-19 pandemic is a major threat to the vulnerable population. Nassau County and Suffolk County were seriously impacted by economic and health fields, which raised the concerns of the vulnerable, especially the children. This study's objective is to explore the risk predictor of children with social, emotional, and development concerns connected to service through Help Me Grow – Long Island (HMG-LI). This retrospective cohort study collected and reviewed the administrative records of 1740 children connected to service through HMG-LI between March 1, 2020, and March 1, 2021. Data were analyzed by univariable and multivariable Poisson regression. The results found that the incidence of children with social, emotional, and development concerns is 40.5 % among all kinds of concerns. In addition, we identified risk predictors associated with children's social, emotional, and development concerns, including medical insurance, child health issue, service barriers, and age of children. If children have risk predictors listed in the result section, they have an increased risk of developing social, emotional, and development concerns. Therefore, they should gain more attention from the healthcare profession, social workers, and caregivers. Our finding can establish the basis of a simple, fast, low-cost screening method in identifying children at increased risk of developing social, emotional, and development concerns.

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Hina Mir - Identifying and Comparing 2019 and 2020 Crime Trends in New York City

The objective of this paper is to identify crime trends in 2020 and compare it to those already known in 2019, to find out how crime has changed over time, what demographics are most affected, and how the pandemic has impacted crime. Offenders’ data was obtained from NYC OpenData and analyzed to measure the frequency of reasons of arrests, gender, and race. Arrest rates decreased in 2020 by 21%. However, crimes such as violent felonies (rape, homicide, and murder), assault, and burglary all increased by at least 3% in 2020. This is on trend from what has been shown in 2019 and earlier. Males and people who identify as Black were arrested the most in both years, but in 2020, it was more skewed. More research needs to be done to investigate the impact of social events that occurred in 2020 and how it impacted crime and trend analysis.

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Meera Mota - Social Influences on Health Behavior Related to COVID-19

Background: On March 12th 2020 World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a global pandemic. Immediately CDC had some recommendations about curtailing the disease. Lockdown, and other measures like mask wearing, social distancing, hand washing. It is important to understand the factors that make people more or less likely to comply with these recommendations. People can follow recommendations by themselves or can get influenced by someone in their close social circle. Influence within close relationships occurs consciously or subconsciously. However, sometimes in relationships, people intentionally try to influence others, trying to make them follow the rules, which is called social control or social influence. The purpose of this study is to understand how social control can affect behavior of people during a crisis, like in a pandemic.

Methods: Almost 400 participants who were older than 18 years of age were recruited to do the online survey. The survey asked questions about the ways people got influenced by their family, friends and others in their close circle during the pandemic. The questions mainly focused on how social control affected the preventative behavior during the early phase of the pandemic. The survey questionnaires were qualitatively transcribed and analyzed to create codes of small section of texts which were grouped based on similarities to identify themes.

Results: Of all the 427 participants, 181 in the welcome and 119 in the unwelcome category said someone in their close social circle influenced them during the early phase of the pandemic. 50.8%, in the gentle tactic,12.15% in the forceful tactic and 19.33% in gentle tactic said they changed their behavior towards what the person wanted them to do.

Conclusions: Neutral tactic showed the maximum change in the behavior however forceful tactic worked towards the behavior change, which was an interesting finding in this study. But since neutral tactic showed the maximum change, communication becomes the key between the influencer and the target.