Katarzyna Kordas, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health has published “COVID-19 and children’s health in the United States: Consideration of physical and social environments during the pandemic” in the journal “Environmental Research.”
Kordas and her co-authors note that public health measures combating the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in dramatic physical- and social-environment changes in children. Their article discusses pandemic-related threats to children’s health, such as environmental contaminants, changes in access to food and education, changes in social environments and more. Ultimately the authors recommend that, to protect child health, current and future pandemic policy decisions should take into consideration pandemic-related changes in these many environments.
An article on which Katia Noyes, professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, is a senior author, was featured in What’s New and Interesting in The Annals of Surgery on the journal’s website. This special section gives attention to work the journal’s editors believe will be important to readers based on the clinical and social impact that the work may have on the profession. Noyes’ and her co-authors looked at outcomes for patients who undergo robot-assisted surgery to remove their gall bladders in their article “The Early (2009-2017) Experience with Robot-Assisted Cholecystectomy in New York State.” They concluded that, while patients who have such surgery have higher rates of complications, several strategies (for instance, using new safe cholecystectomy techniques) might improve patient outcomes.
Epidemiology PhD candidate Sarah Quinones is first author on “Disability status and multi-dimensional personal well-being among adolescents in the Southern Highlands Region of Tanzania: results of a cross-sectional study,” published in BMJ Open. The study, conducted with Quinones’ advisor Assistant Professor Tia Palermo, PhD, highlights areas where adolescents with disabilities continue to fall behind in areas of their personal well-being--such as schooling, livelihoods, health, violence and psychosocial well-being--compared with their peers. The authors suggest that social programs and policies aiming to improve adolescent well-being and mental health, and prevent violence, might need to focus particularly on people with disabilities through strategies like training program managers so that they can more effectively include people with disabilities.