Rutgers School of Public Health

10/22/2026

⏪️ TBT to student excellence at !

🌎 MPH students Fithriyyah and Niki Tavallali, both in the Environmental Health Sciences concentration, represented the Rutgers School of Public Health at the Summer School in Sustainability Governance. Last month, they also led a climate workshop for the school community.

The Summer School brought together nearly 30 doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scholars, selected from more than 140 applicants.

Fithriyyah and Niki took part in workshops on topics including geospatial analysis, climate-related disasters, grant writing, and sustainability in research, and worked with fellow participants on a group proposal on health and climate change, which they presented to fellow participants and program organizers for feedback.

💬 Fithriyyah said the experience was especially valuable because it “allowed us to approach sustainability and climate change from perspectives beyond our own field, while also connecting these broader concepts to public health research.”

🌱 During Rutgers Climate Week 2026, Fithriyyah, Niki, and Nithilaa Kiritharan led the Public Health, Personal Footprint workshop at the school.

Organized in collaboration with students from the Rutgers Health Climate Action Group, it opened with a crash course on climate change and sustainability and closed with an ecological footprint exercise. The workshop underscored the connections among personal carbon footprint, climate action, and public health.

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10/21/2026

Federal funding cuts halted hundreds of public health studies. A new special issue keeps their findings from being lost.

“Disrupted Public Health Science,” a special issue of Behavioral Medicine, was developed by Assistant Professor Kristen D. Krause, PhD, MPH, and Dean Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH. It gives studies whose funding was terminated before completion a place in the peer-reviewed literature.

📊 A 2025 JAMA analysis found the National Institutes of Health (NIH) terminated 694 research grants totaling approximately $1.8 billion between February 28 and April 8, 2025.

Sharing this science is part of the Rutgers School of Public Health's mission to advance public health in New Jersey, the United States, and the world through innovative research. Even when funding ends, the questions researchers seek to answer and the needs of the communities their work serves remain.

A selection of articles is free to download for a limited time.

🔗 Learn more about the special issue: https://go.rutgers.edu/19fxrkvt

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10/19/2026

🏆 Congratulations to Elizabeth Suarez, PhD, MPH, on being named a 2026 Rutgers Health Chancellor Awardee!

Suarez received the Excellence in Health Sciences Research Award, which recognizes those who have made significant contributions to impactful clinical or health sciences research across Rutgers Health.

💬 “I’m honored to receive this award as an early-career faculty member,” said Suarez, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and a core member of the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science at the Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research.

“I’m incredibly grateful to be building my career in a supportive environment that recognizes the value of research on pregnant people and their children.”

Much of Suarez’s work uses large health care data sets, including insurance claims and electronic health records, to study medication use and safety during pregnancy.

🔗 Read more about her impact: https://go.rutgers.edu/yys7goq

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10/18/2026

A Rutgers-led study examined two years of participation data from ArtsRx, one of the nation’s largest arts prescription programs.

🔍 Researchers found that better tracking tools may help organizations understand who participates, where people lose interest, and what keeps them engaged.

💬 “Our findings show that technology can play a critical role in helping programs evaluate their impact, strengthen participation and support the integration of arts and culture into broader health and well-being efforts,” said Kristen D. Krause, PhD, MPH, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and lead author of the study. Krause is also deputy director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior and Prevention Studies.

ArtsRx, led by the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC), connects participants with free arts and cultural experiences throughout Newark and the surrounding area. The researchers examined records for 498 people referred to the program between 2023 and 2025 through a customer relationship management technology platform.

📊 KEY FINDINGS
→ People who completed the ArtsRx program attended 78.2% of the activities they registered for. Many participants who left never attended an event at all.

→ Participants referred through community organizations and educational institutions tended to stay engaged at higher rates than those referred through conventional health care channels.

→ Researchers found few differences in engagement across race, ethnicity, or gender.

💡 WHY IT MATTERS
While these programs are becoming more common in the United States, researchers still know little about how people use them. The findings demonstrate that customer relationship management technology can provide real-time insights into how participants engage with arts prescription programs, helping organizations identify opportunities to improve retention and expand access.

🔗 Learn more about the study: https://go.rutgers.edu/rq3aawrb

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10/15/2026

Asbestos is a naturally-occurring mineral that was once widely used in building materials and is now known to be dangerous to human health. Thankfully we have accredited inspectors who learn how to recognize potential asbestos hazards, conduct inspections properly, and follow federal and state regulations.

Inspecting Buildings for Asbestos-Containing Materials is just one of the 300+ courses we offer every year at the Rutgers School of Public Health Center for Public Health Workforce Development.

Thank you to these inspectors (and their instructor, Mark Drozdov, far right) for working hard to keep our homes and communities safe.

10/14/2026

Supporting the next generation of New Jersey’s leaders is critical.

That’s the message from Rutgers School of Public Health Dean’s Leadership Council (DLC) member and Rutgers alumnus James F. Dougherty, MS, VMD, in “How the Honors College Helped Nkosazana Pursue Her Passions.” This video, made in collaboration with Rutgers Alumni and the Honors College, highlights Nkosazana, a first-generation student who studies clinical psychology and Korean.

Dougherty describes students who take a lot in stride and still make time to foster interests unrelated to their fields of study. That range is much like public health and the DLC, where leaders from different backgrounds and expertise come together to strengthen our communities.

🔗 Learn about Nkosazana’s journey: go.rutgers.edu/evsnrmz
🔗 Meet the Dean’s Leadership Council: go.rutgers.edu/xe60rbt7

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The Rutgers Honors College helps students like Nkosazana pursue the...

10/13/2026

Congratulations to two Rutgers School of Public Health leaders named to the 2026 NJBIZ Education Power List:

👏 Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH, Dean
👏 Rafael E. Pérez-Figueroa, MD, MPH, Associate Dean for Community Engagement, Population Health, and Global Public Health

NJBIZ says its honorees “represent the brightest lights in New Jersey’s educational firmament.”

💬 Asked about the most disruptive change in education in the coming year, Dean Halkitis said: “The greatest disruption in higher education will not be AI. It will be the erosion of public trust in science, expertise and universities. Our response cannot be retreat. It must be advocacy. We must educate students to humanize public health, defend evidence, engage communities and champion democracy.”

💬 Asked the same question, Pérez-Figueroa said: “Reduced investment in public health and prevention threatens our ability to educate professionals... Sustaining a well-trained public health workforce is essential to protecting population health and building healthier communities and society.”

Both answers point to the same place: the future of public health depends on how we educate and foster the people who will lead it. It is the work of the Rutgers School of Public Health, where we prepare leaders to advance public health in New Jersey, the U.S., and the world.

🔗 Read the announcement: https://njbiz.com/2026-njbiz-education-power-list-d-j/

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10/12/2026

The Rutgers School of Public Health joins communities across the country in recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a time to honor the histories, cultures, knowledge, resilience, and contributions of Indigenous peoples and communities.

Here in New Jersey, we recognize the continued presence and contributions of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation, Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation, and Powhatan Renape Nation, the three Tribal Nations recognized by the State of New Jersey.

We have a responsibility to learn from Indigenous communities and recognize Indigenous knowledge, leadership, and community strengths. Advancing health equity requires listening to communities, respecting sovereignty and self-determination, building meaningful and sustained partnerships, and ensuring that Indigenous voices help shape the research, education, policies, and public health practices that affect their communities.

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10/09/2026

Lead contamination in soil tracked inside homes can cause dangerous indoor lead dust levels, even in homes with no interior lead-based paint, according to researchers.

The study was conducted in East Trenton, New Jersey, by researchers at the Rutgers Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute in collaboration with community scientists: members of the general public who participate in data collection under the direction of scientists.

⚠️ The researchers found that nearly 94% of soil samples exceeded screening levels for multiple sources of lead exposure.

💬 "This is especially concerning because all samples were collected from bare soil at the surface, which is the most likely to be accessed by children or tracked into homes," said Sean Stratton, PhD, a recent graduate of the Rutgers School of Public Health and lead author of the study.

In 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added East Trenton to the Superfund National Priorities List after determining there was lead contamination in soil from 19th-century pottery manufacturing plants.

Working with The East Trenton Collaborative, a community organizing and development initiative, researchers recruited and trained residents to collect soil samples from 122 homes. In total, 242 bare surface soil samples were collected. Researchers then collected interior dust samples from floors, windowsills, and window wells in 42 of those homes.

📊 KEY FINDINGS

→ 86% of the 242 bare surface soil samples exceeded the EPA's 200 parts per million residential soil lead hazard level.

→ 80% of floor dust samples exceeded the safety threshold in homes without any interior lead-based paint.

→ A house's age doesn't rule out lead dust, even though the federal government banned consumer uses of lead-based paint in 1978.

💡 WHY IT MATTERS

According to the EPA, lead poisoning can affect brain development in young children, damage vital organs, and cause lasting behavioral and neurological damage. Indoor lead exposure has historically been attributed to flaking lead-based paint.

The work builds on the team's earlier collaboration with the Newark Water Coalition, which helped the researchers build trust in East Trenton, whose members approached them to test the soil.

🔗 Learn more about the study: https://go.rutgers.edu/m1zegztq

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10/08/2026

🌼📚 Rutgers School of Public Health students made pressed-flower bookmarks and swapped books at an event hosted by our Office of Student Experiences, Public Health Practice, and Alumni Affairs (SEAA). Alongside classes, research, and fieldwork, moments like this help our school community stay connected.

🙌 Thank you to SEAA for making experiences like these possible.

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