May 3, 2026

The Program in Public Health & Society has quickly gained traction since launching a minor in fall 2024 and adding a major in fall 2025. The Arts & Sciences-based undergraduate program was developed in collaboration with WashU School of Public Health, and is co-directed by School of Public Health Professor Lindsay Stark.

A team led by Beth Stelson, WashU Public Health assistant professor, measures exposure to secondhand trauma, an occupational hazard in the "helping professions." Such trauma can cause workers to develop feelings of anger and sadness, sleep issues and social withdrawal.

Trani's global health and development work is driven by commitment to justice, equality and reducing poverty. His work focuses on marginalized populations in conflict-affected, fragile states and low-income countries, as well as in underserved areas in the U.S. 

Todd P. Lewis, a WashU Medicine assistant professor in the Division of General Medicine and Geriatrics, gave a talk Wednesday, April 29, titled, “Reassessing the performance of primary care: Care delivery, user experience, and what populations can tell us.” 

WashU Public Health PhD student Anita Kabarambi has received a Margaret McNamara Education Grant to study how to implement cervical cancer prevention into HIV care in Uganda.

Isabella Welborn, who recently completed her first year as an MPH student, has won a Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations fellowship from the City University of New York School of Medicine.

WashU Public Health Professor Amy McQueen (at right) and co-authors won a 2026 Leading the Narrative Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine for their Healthy Living article, "The U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk 2025: What Does it Mean?" The award, presented at the society's annual meeting in Chicago, honors exemplary science communication.

Media coverage of WashU Public Health's people, research, and other news.

As the one-year anniversary of the 2025 St. Louis tornado approaches, WashU Public Health's Salma Abdalla discusses the long-term impacts of natural disasters. (Source: KMOX)

Muslim high schoolers participating in the Study of Adolescent Lives after Migration to America (SALaMA) project led by WashU Public Health's Lindsay Stark celebrated breaking the daily Ramadan fast with their American schoolmates. (Source: The Arts Council of Greater New Haven)

Proscovia Nabunya, an associate professor at WashU Public Health, is a co-corresponding author on, “Using machine learning to predict depression among adolescents living with HIV in Uganda,” published in Global Social Welfare. Massy Mutumba, an assistant professor at WashU Public Health, and McKelvey Engineering’s Chenyang Lu, a member of the WashU Public Health secondary faculty, are co-authors.

Imelda Nabossa, a PhD student in public health sciences, is the first and corresponding author on, “A review of models, outcomes, and policy implications in the United States, targeted at integrating mental health into maternal HIV care,” published in the World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews.

WashU Medicine’s Anne Mobley Butler and Michael Durkin, both WashU Public Health secondary faculty members, co-authored, “Amoxicillin-clavulanate vs. amoxicillin for acute sinusitis in adults,” published in the Journal of the American Medical Society (JAMA). Read a write-up of the study here.  

Jean Hunleth and Michelle Silver, both of WashU Medicine and members of the WashU Public Health secondary faculty, co-authored, “Integrating HPV vaccination into ART clinics: perspectives from an ethnographic study with girls aged 9-14 years in Ndola District, Zambia,” published in AIDS Care.

Dean Galea's latest post in The Healthiest Goldfish focuses on being useful in a rancorous public moment. 

 "More or less every day, I find myself engaging in conversations around some variant of this question: 'In a world where so much seems awry, what could I possibly do?'"... Continue reading