Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

As a new legislative session begins this week in the state of Missouri, a new study out of the Missouri Budget Project, co-authored by the Brown’s School Timothy McBride, PhD, is released. It examines the effects of potential boost in aid throughout the state but finds rural Missourians would benefit the most in 2014 if lawmakers approve more than $1 billion in new federal funding for Medicaid.

Lora Iannotti, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, was working in Haiti when an earthquake devastated that country three years ago this month. She has been back to Haiti 10 times since Jan. 12, 2010, and says the country is “literally aching for public health expertise, yet not one public health degree program exists anywhere.”

A groundbreaking study on young adults with autism, led by Washington University in St. Louis researcher Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School, has been chosen as one of the “Top Ten Autism Research Advances of 2012” by the advocacy organization Autism Speaks.​

There’s nothing wrong with a cookie or a glass of eggnog at the holidays, says Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD, director of the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research and the Center for Diabetes Translation Research at Washington University in St. Louis and associate dean for research at the Brown School. The key, Haire-Joshu says, is balance.

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton shares some final thoughts after returning from the Fourth International Symposium on Energy and Environment: ACCESS (Abundant Clean Cost-effective Energy Systems for Sustainability) India and a meeting with the university’s International Advisory Council for Asia.

The McDonnell Academy Global Energy and Environmental Partnership (MAGEEP) — a consortium of 28 international universities — met in Mumbai, India, last week. S. Parasuraman, director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, was a symposium co-host.

Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is director of the Center for Violence and Injury Protection, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is also a faculty scholar in WUSTL’s Institute for Public Health. She responds to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

A new study out of Washington University in St. Louis is one of the first to use technology to effectively measure the use of built environments — parks, greenways, trails and other man-made public areas — as a means to improve public health. The study, “Emerging Technologies: Webcams and Crowd-Sourcing to Identify Active Transportation,” is being published this week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Lead author is J. Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor of public health at the Brown School.

The second half of the trip to India brought together members of the university’s International Advisory Council for Asia (IACA) Dec. 12-15 in New Delhi. U.S. Embassy official Donald Lu addressed the IACA meeting.

The Brown School celebrated the holidays Dec. 12 by doing what it does best: Giving back to the community. School officials helped present toys collected at the Brown School during its annual Toys for Tots campaign to local Marines. Students from the KIPP: Inspire Academy also stopped by to thank the Brown School community for its help throughout the year by performing a holiday song and dance.