The WashU Public Health Moment

October 5, 2025

Featured

Medicaid expansion reduced uncompensated care costs, may have prevented hospital closures

Free, public dashboards on Missouri hospital visits provide insight into health, health care in the state

News & features

WashU MPH/MSW student Isheeta Gupta, MBBS, recently was named an ambassador for the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH). The ambassadors share their experiences to inspire the next generation of public health leaders. They work to increase awareness of public health by hosting virtual events, engaging people through social media, and otherwise promoting the field.

Gupta, whose academic journey bridges the gap between clinical medicine and public health interventions, is passionate about mental and physical health equity.

Video: Zachary Linhares/WashU Public Health

Public Health People: A conversation with health economist Timothy McBride

Bernard Becker Professor discusses Medicaid expansion, the school's launch, and what drives him

Talking Public Health

The weekly Talking Public Health seminar series features presentations by leading thinkers in public health at WashU and elsewhere.

Lora Iannotti, MA, PhD, the Lauren and Lee Fixel Distinguished Professor and co-director of the Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM) Innovation Research Network at WashU Public Health, spoke October 1 on "Why the 3 E’s of the E3 Nutrition Lab matter for public health."

At noon CT October 8, Abby Barker, MA, PhD, research associate professor of public health at WashU, will give a talk titled, “Missouri Medicaid Policies to Build a Systematic and Evidence-Informed Approach to Maternal and Infant Health.” The talk will be in the Havana Room, on the second floor of 4240 Duncan Avenue and available via Zoom.

Notables

McKay gives a keynote address at implementation science conference

Ginger McKay, MA, PhD, an assistant professor at WashU Public Health, gave one of the keynote addresses September 24 at the Implementation Science Symposium at Dartmouth College. In the talk, “Why implementation scientists should work in environmental sustainability,” McKay argued that environmental sustainability is inseparable from public health, and that implementation science can facilitate a shift from a reactive to proactive approach in tackling environmental sustainability.

The talk builds on ideas in a recent Frontiers in Health Sciences paper in which she was the corresponding author. “As the threat of climate change continues to escalate, there is a compelling opportunity for dissemination and implementation scientists to actively engage and explore ways to address this urgent issue,” she wrote. “(D&I science) can play an important role in translating climate plans into actionable strategies and outcomes.”

In the News

Warning: Serious cardiovascular events don’t come out of the blue

Karen Joynt Maddox, MD, MPH — a WashU Medicine associate professor of medicine in cardiology, a secondary faculty member at WashU Public Health and a co-director of the School of Public Health’s Policy and Structural Solutions Innovation Research Network — discusses how systemic gaps lead to missed opportunities for early intervention. (Source: STAT News)

A federal program helps older people get jobs, but the Trump administration wants to get rid of it

The decades-old program helps older Americans balance their checkbooks, enjoy better health and engage with communities, co-writes Cal J. Halvorsen, PhD, MSW, an associate professor at the Brown School and a WashU Public Health secondary faculty member. (Source: The Conversation)

iHeard

Two-thirds of St. Louis adults surveyed have seen at least one prescription drug ad in the last 30 days, but only 12% had heard about new government plans to limit drug ads. More respondents supported than opposed limits (39% vs 7%), but most didn’t care either way.

iHeard is a listening project of WashU Public Health's Health Communication Research Laboratory. Each week, iHeard surveys about 200 people who live or work in St. Louis to find out what they know, believe and care about in regard to health.

Papers of note

Jean-Francois Trani, PhD, a professor at WashU Public Health, was the corresponding author of "The impact of a participatory intervention to improve learning outcomes and reduce school-based discrimination and community stigma in primary rural schools of Afghanistan: A cluster control randomized trial." The paper was co-authored with Derek Brown, also a WashU Public Health professor, and published in the International Journal of Educational Development.

Juliet Iwelunmor, PhD, a professor of medicine at WashU Medicine and a member of the WashU Public Health secondary faculty, was the corresponding author of, "Stimulating training and access to HIV research experiences (STAR program): a protocol for a crowdsourced, project-based, implementation science training program using mixed-methods design," published in Frontiers in Public Health.

Nathaniel Dell, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine and a member of the secondary faculty at WashU Public Health, was the corresponding author of "Psychosocial outcomes associated with mobile health app use among Medicaid recipients who use substances." The paper was co-authored with Hannah Szlyk, PhD, and Patricia Cavazos-Rehg, PhD — both in the Department of Psychiatry at WashU Medicine and secondary faculty members at WashU Public Health — and published in the Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions.

'What gives you hope?'

After posing the question, "What gives you hope?" to several colleagues he interviewed on topics in public health, WashU Public Health Dean Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, is asked, and answers, the question himself.

Learn what gives Dean Galea hope →

Podcast

In this episode, "Algorithms, attention and trust," host Dr. Salma Abdalla speaks with Matt Kreuter, the Kahn Family Professor of Public Health and director of the Health Communication Research Lab at WashU Public Health, about the evolution of health communication — from the early days of tailoring health messages to the algorithm-driven world we live in today. They discuss the promises and pitfalls of personalization, the risks of reinforcing stereotypes, the costs of communicating false certainty, and why public health can’t message its way out of complex problems.

"Complicating the Narrative" is hosted by Abdalla, an assistant professor at WashU Public Health, and supported by WashU Public Health and the Frick Initiative.