To honor the accomplishments of a nationally recognized advocate for underserved communities, the Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at HSPH has been renamed the Alonzo Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship. Applications are currently being accepted for 2003-2004.

The late Alonzo Smythe Yerby worked to improve the nation’s health care system, which he believed provided inadequate health care to the poor. He served as a consultant to President Lyndon Johnson on drafting the Medicare/Medicaid Act of 1965. At HSPH, he chaired the Department of Health Services Administration, the predecessor of the Department of Health Policy and Management, from 1966 to 1975, and was the school’s first African-American department chair.

The Yerby Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, based at the Division of Public Health Practice, aims to increase the number of under-represented minorities who enter academia. Each fellow works with mentors at HSPH, refining their skills in research, grant writing, teaching, course development, and oral presentation. Part of the program’s mission is to train postdoctoral fellows to be faculty members and then to retain them at HSPH.

Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition, directs the program. Said Willett: "In reviewing the paths followed by successful faculty members, it is clear that a strong postdoctoral fellowship experience is an essential ingredient. The Yerby fellowships are meant to provide the best possible setting to launch an academic career in public health."

Fellowships carry an annual stipend of $50,000 plus benefits and are renewable for a second year. An application can be requested at www.hsph.harvard.edu/php/postdoc/downloadApp.html. The deadline to apply is March 1, 2003. For more information, contact Betty Johnson at 617-496-8064 or bljohnso@hsph.harvard.edu.

This year’s Yerby fellows have undertaken a variety of projects...

Gary Bennett
Medical Psychology Intern
Duke University Medical center

Trained as a clinical psychologist, Gary Bennett found that he was increasingly interested in pursuing health topics on a population level. Now, he is exploring how chronic stress associated with low early-life socioeconomic status affects biological responses in people in minority groups.

Specifically, he is looking at the neuroendocrine system, which helps control the nervous system and hormonal responses. His studies have indicated that, as a group, African Americans typically secrete the stress hormone cortisol in different patterns when exposed to stressors as compared to Caucasians and other groups, said Bennett. He hypothesizes that these different patterns may be associated with disparities in health outcomes between African Americans and other groups. He is currently looking at data sets from existing studies to investigate his hypothesis.

At HSPH, Bennett is working with Lisa Berkman, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, Departments of Health and Social Behavior and Epidemiology, and Ichiro Kawachi, associate professor of health and social behavior, Department of Health and Social Behavior.

Tarik Kassaye
Former Consultant, Health Section
Program Divisions, UNICEF

Tarik Kassaye is using data from studies conducted in Tanzania to look at risk factors for fetal mortality among both HIV-infected and HIV-negative women who took nutritional supplements when they were pregnant.

Kassaye’s previous dissertation research assessed whether giving vitamin A supplements to children in Ethiopia between the ages of six and nine affected their lung function. Her findings have indicated that giving such supplements did not affect lung function, but her research also revealed that the lack of a link may have been muted due to a deficiency of zinc, a micronutrient essential in the metabolism of vitamin A. She will be using this data to assess the effect of vitamin A in reducing respiratory morbidity and also to determine the risk factors associated with vitamin A deficiency.

Kassaye works with Wafaie Fawzi, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology in the Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology at HSPH.

Shairi Turner
Physician, MGH-Chelsea Medical Walk-in Unit

When Shairi Turner earned her MPH degree at HSPH last year, she undertook a practicum with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services to help develop a substance abuse policy that was more culturally and ethnically appropriate for the thousands of adolescents in the state’s juvenile justice system. The research increased her awareness of a disproportionate number of minority youth in the juvenile justice system and made her question the role that inadequate substance abuse services played in their incarceration, she said.

Now, Turner is using the Yerby Fellowship to follow up on some of her questions. At HSPH, she is working with Angela Browne, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICRC) and adjunct lecturer on violence prevention and public health; David Hemenway, director of HICRC and professor of health policy; and Deborah Prothrow-Stith, director of the Division of Public Health Practice and professor of public health practice, all of the Department of Health Policy and Management.

Turner plans on taking life histories of adolescents currently in the juvenile justice system and then conducting quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data. She wants to determine if minority youth who come from abusive households are more likely to become substance abusers–and furthermore, how this substance abuse may predict future involvement in the criminal justice system.

She also plans on researching the substance use and incarceration patterns of different racial and ethnic groups in the juvenile justice system.

Robert Canales
PhD Candidate
Stanford University

Robert Canales became interested in environmental science in high school after hearing that scientists thought there was a possible link between pollution from Mexican maquiladoras, or assembly plants, and anencephalic births along the border between Mexico and the US. Anencephalic babies are born with severely under-developed brains or with no brains at all.

Canales is currently studying exposure assessment and the potential for intervention and policy development based on risk analysis. He would like to become involved in community-based collaborative health studies to develop models for the transport of contaminants and for the prediction of human exposure to pollutants.

Canales will come to HSPH after completing his doctoral thesis. He will work with Jonathan Levy and Deborah Bennett, both assistant professors of environmental health and risk assessment, Departments of Environmental Health and Health Policy and Management.

Lupita Montoya
Research Fellow
Environmental Science and Engineering Program, HSPH

Lupita Montoya’s broad research focus is looking at the effects of air pollution on human health. At HSPH, she is engaged in several projects, including a study working with Petros Koutrakis, professor of environmental sciences in the Department of Environmental Health. The air that people breathe may contain different kinds of particles, including, at times, air pollution. Not all particles travel to the lung, though. Tiny hairs in the nose and trachea trap larger particles, sometimes causing a person to sneeze or expel the airborne invaders. Smaller particles have a better chance of making it to the lungs, where they may do damage. It is then up to the body’s immune system to try to clean up the particles. Montoya is trying to see how efficiently airborne particles, also known as aerosols, deposit in the respiratory system

Montoya is also working with Joseph Brain, chair of the Department of Environmental Health, on a project to determine the biological activity of specific types of particles that people may breathe. The main goal of this study is to determine whether there are differences in biological responses in animals based on the size and composition of the particles. The study involves the use of instruments recently developed in Koutrakis’ group and of animal models developed in Brain’s lab.