Press releases

How health care facility characteristics affect HIV viral suppression among NYC patients

Posted on April 2, 2019April 18, 2019 by ISPH CUNY

April 2, 2019 Health care facility characteristics such as the type of clinical setting, the travel distance from the patient’s home, the support services offered, and physician experience have been shown to influence health outcomes among persons with HIV, but few studies have explored how these factors influence HIV viral suppression among patients. To test the association of these characteristics with the achievement and maintenance of HIV suppression among newly-diagnosed New York City residents, CUNY SPH doctoral alumna Ellen Wiewel—now the director of research and evaluation at th...

Researchers explore PrEP adherence strategies

Posted on February 4, 2019February 6, 2019 by ISPH CUNY

February 4, 2019 Consistent daily use of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can reduce the risk of HIV infection by 92 percent, but the drug becomes much less effective when taken inconsistently. Adhering to a daily regimen of any medication can be a challenge, so to assist health care providers in treating patients at risk for contracting HIV, CUNY SPH Professor Christian Grov, DPH student Javier Lopez-Rios, and MPH student Alexa D’Angelo co-led a study into the strategies PrEP users can employ to remember to stay on track with their daily doses. The study was published in the journ...

IeDEA Consortium Publishes Consensus Statement Outlining Key Research Priorities to Inform National Implementation Efforts to “Treat All” Persons Living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa

Posted on February 1, 2019February 1, 2019 by ISPH CUNY

February 1, 2019 A group of researchers, led by the CUNY ISPH, published a consensus statement on research priorities to inform the implementation of universal HIV treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the latest issue of the Journal of the International AIDS Society (JIAS). The article distills the outcomes of a research prioritization process involving over 200 researchers, implementation experts, policy/decision-makers, and HIV community representatives working in East, Central, Southern and West Africa who were convened by the IeDEA Consortium at a 2017 meeting in Kigali, Rw...

Promoting HIV self-testing via text message to truck drivers in Kenya

Posted on January 14, 2019January 17, 2019 by ISPH CUNY

January 14, 2019 Truck drivers in sub-Saharan Africa are especially vulnerable to infection with HIV due to contact with multiple sexual partners—often including sex workers—along their trucking routes. Accessing HIV testing can be a challenge for truckers due to their mobility and long working hours, as well as concerns about confidentiality and stigma. CUNY SPH researchers Dr. Elizabeth Kelvin, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and DPH candidate Matthew Romo are exploring HIV self-testing as a way to increase testing rates in this high-risk population. The research...

Redefining colorectal cancer subtypes

Posted on November 19, 2018November 20, 2018 by ISPH CUNY

November 19, 2018 There is a long-standing belief that colorectal cancer (CRC), which causes some 50,000 deaths in the United States each year, can be categorized into distinct molecular subtypes. In a paper published recently in the journal Genome Biology, CUNY SPH Associate Professor and ISPH Investigator Levi Waldron and colleagues proposed an approach to scoring tumors that can help to better differentiate patients who may differ in their exposures, outcomes, and optimal treatments. In the study, the authors re-processed and standardized individual patient gene expression data for mo...

IeDEA Consortium publishes journal supplement on research priorities for achieving universal HIV treatment in sub-Saharan Africa

Posted on November 19, 2018November 20, 2018 by ISPH CUNY

Nearly all countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have adopted national polices for universal HIV treatment, regardless of CD4 cell count or clinical stage. Evidence to date from SSA suggests that, once linked to care, timely ART initiation with retention and viral suppression is the norm. However, ART initiation in SSA usually occurs late in the course of infection, driving up mortality and new infection rates. With 10.3 million people untreated and a projected 1.2M new infections per year in SSA, the universal treatment era presents strategic opportunities for health systems to substantially ...

Nondaily cigarette smoking up among those with mental health and substance use problems; daily smoking continues to decline overall.

Posted on November 8, 2018November 16, 2018 by ISPH CUNY

For immediate release: November 8, 2018 Study finds persistent discrepancies in cigarette smoking between those with mental health and substance use problems and those without Between 2005 and 2014, nondaily cigarette use increased among persons with common mental health and substance use problems (MHSUP), according to a new study in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry lead by Renee Goodwin, Deputy Director of the Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health. “Historically, non-daily or infrequent smoking was not considered a great concern, and attention was focused primarily...

CUNY researchers gauge hypertension prevalence among residents of Haitian slums

Posted on October 29, 2018November 20, 2018 by ISPH CUNY

October 29, 2018 Residents of urban slums are vulnerable to poor health outcomes because of a confluence of poverty, inadequate healthcare access and environmental and social disadvantage. Hypertension is increasingly common in Haiti, where 74 percent of the urban population live in slums. To estimate the prevalence of hypertension and its risk factors among adults in four slum communities in Port-au-Prince, a research collaboration of the Institute for Implementation Science in Population Health (ISPH) at CUNY SPH, Weill Cornell Medical College, and the Haitian Study Group on Kaposi’s S...

CUNY ISPH investigators help define subtypes of ovarian cancer

Posted on September 4, 2018November 16, 2018 by ISPH CUNY

September 4, 2018 In a new paper published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, CUNY SPH Associate Professor Levi Waldron and colleagues resolved the long-standing controversy over how to define molecular subtypes of high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma, the most common form of ovarian cancer and the fifth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Understanding molecular subtypes of common forms of cancer is important because clinically similar cases may differ in their genetic underpinnings, causes, and outcomes. “Lumping together potentially different diseases just because...

Cannabis Use Up Among Parents With Children in the Home

Posted on May 15, 2018June 25, 2018 by ISPH CUNY

For immediate release: May 14, 2018 Study finds combined use of cigarettes and marijuana may increase children’s exposure to second-hand smoke Cannabis use increased among parents who smoke cigarettes, as well as among non-smoking parents, according to a recent study from researchers at ISPH. Cannabis use was nearly four times more common among cigarette smokers compared with non-smokers. Until now, little had been known about current trends in the use of cannabis among parents with children in the home, the prevalence of exposure to both tobacco and cannabis, and which populations might b...