News Release

July 26, 2007

Contact: Christopher DeFrancesco, 860-679-3914
e-mail: cdefrancesco@uchc.edu

New Public Health Ph.D. Program at UConn

Concentration in Occupational and Environmental Health Sciences

FARMINGTON, CONN. – The University of Connecticut is offering a new concentration in occupational and environmental health sciences within its public health Ph.D. program.

It will be the public health doctoral program’s second approved concentration area. The other is in social and behavioral health sciences, which started in January.

“This new concentration within the Center for Public Health and Health Policy represents an important and exciting step forward in public health training,” says Nicholas Warren, Sc.D., an associate professor at the UConn Health Center, and co-creator of the Health Center’s Ergonomic Technology Center. “The joint focus on occupational and environmental exposures, their health effects, and their control recognizes that health hazards do not start or stop at the factory or office door. Rather, public health research and policy must address the additive and interactive effects of exposures from multiple sources. The joint resources of the Storrs and Farmington campuses are well matched and necessary to provide training in this crucial area.”

Warren and Lawrence Silbart, Ph.D., professor and head of the Department of Allied Health Sciences at the UConn campus in Storrs, are co-directors of the new concentration.

“We are excited about bringing together the diverse talents of faculty at both campuses to help address the public health needs of the state and beyond,” Silbart says. “Not only will the new collaboration provide excellent educational and research opportunities for our students, they undoubtedly will spawn new research initiatives that will attract extramural funding aimed at identifying and solving a variety of occupational and environmental health issues.”

This interdisciplinary, cross-campus doctoral program is designed to train future public health leaders to enhance health in the human population. UConn has internationally recognized faculty who have agreed to support this new concentration, as well as research programs in occupational and environmental health sciences.

The UConn Graduate School is accepting applications from prospective students for Fall 2008.

The University of Connecticut Health Center includes the schools of medicine and dental medicine, the UConn Medical Group, University Dentists, and John Dempsey Hospital, a Solucient Top 100 Hospital® 2006. Founded in 1961, the Health Center pursues a mission of providing outstanding health care education in an environment of exemplary patient care, research and public service. To learn more about the UConn Health Center, visit our website at www.uchc.edu.

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