Collaboration opportunities
Interested in working with us, but not sure how? Explore opportunities for collaboration with our expert faculty, staff, and students through idea hub at BUSPH.
Community health
Addressing vaccine hesitancy to improve uptake
COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is already rampant across various groups in the US. This becomes significantly more problematic for those already struggling with a disproportionate burden from COVID-19, like low-income communities. These populations make up much of our essential workforce and, if vaccination rates within these communities is low, their burden is likely to increase significantly and outbreaks will continue to emerge.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member Dr. Elaine Nsoesie has a proposal for working in collaboration with local community organizations to identify critical factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and utilizing communications programs to increase vaccine uptake.
Mask safety
Facemasks are our new normal, but there is a lot we don’t know about their use, comfort, and efficacy within the general population.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member Patricia Fabian has a proposal for testing different scenarios involving mask use to help companies and consumers make informed purchases and improve the safety of products.
COVID-19 transmission prevention in retail environments
Facemasks help to prevent the spread of COVID-19 but correct mask use varies, putting retailers and their employees at risk. To protect employees, customers, and communities, retail stores must motivate customers to put on, and keep on, a mask before entering their establishment.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty members Dr. Julia Raifman and Dr. Jacob Bor seek collaborators to explore public health messaging related to mask wearing. What type of messages encourage customers and employees to consistently and correctly wear a mask? Does effective messaging vary by geography or type of retail establishment? This project will have important implications for the health of essential workers and the customers they serve.
Mental health
Suicide loss -- the mental and physical effects
The suicide of someone close leaves an indelible mark on friends and family. There is an average of 130 suicides per day, and estimates that one suicide can impact up to 135 people – meaning 17,550 people a day are affected by the loss of someone from suicide. However, we know very little about the trauma and other physical and mental outcomes suicide has on those left behind.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member, Dr. Jaimie Gradus, has a proposal for studying the immediate and long-term mental and physical health sex-specific outcomes of suicide loss from among all possible diagnoses in Danish registries using a novel discovery method called TreeScan.
Suicidal tendencies and the impact of low blood oxygen levels
Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death. In the research around suicide prevention, an area that may have more of an impact on suicidal tendencies than previously thought is chronic hypoxia (low blood oxygen). Chronic hypoxia is associated with diseases such as COPD and depression as well as non-diagnostic factors, such as smoking and living in high altitudes, all of which are associated with an increased risk of suicide.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member, Dr. Jaimie Gradus has a proposal to comprehensively examine the association between markers of chronic hypoxia and suicide in a longitudinal cohort of over 10 million Department of Veterans Affairs patients in hopes to find another target in preventing suicide.
College health
The mental health and the well-being of health-sector students is something that is not often prioritized in demanding educational programs, increasing rates of depression, anxiety levels, and burnout among clinicians.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member, Patricia Elliot has a proposal for supporting students in high-pressure academic programs to build resiliency for health-sector careers.
Kidney disease
Chronic kidney disease
Close to 700 million people around the globe suffer from Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and more than 1 million people a year die from the disease. Peritoneal dialysis may be the solution to reducing mortality from CKD, particularly in low-resource and rural settings without access to expensive dialysis equipment.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty members, Drs. Madeleine Scammell and Daniel Brooks have a proposal for solving the technical challenges of deploying peritoneal dialysis in locations where it is needed most.
Driving value in healthcare
County-level excess death tracking for COVID-19
Valid counts of deaths and what people died from are critical inputs for setting public health priorities. Existing estimates of excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic suggest that COVID-related deaths exceeded the official COVID-19 death tallies by 20% or greater for the US as a whole in 2020.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member, Dr. Andrew Stokes and his team has developed a new initiative to track patterns of excess mortality across more than 3,100 counties in the US. This technique may be a better indicator of COVID-19 related mortality than the official death counts. He is looking for a media partner to publish an interactive dashboard to enable the public to interact with this information.
Social determinants of health (SDoH) screening and intervention in case management
Health systems, payers, and policymakers recognize the value in pursuing upstream solutions to reduce health care spending by focusing on the SDoH. However, it is still unclear how SDoH screening and intervention fits into healthcare case management and how to identify targets for innovation that provide increased value to providers, payers, and patients.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty members Dr. Paul Shafer and Dr. Jack Clark are interested in developing mechanisms of SDoH data collection, the utility in processes of care, and ultimately the value in improving health outcomes.
Climate change and health
Understanding the impacts of climate change on mental health
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the potential impacts of disasters and disruptions on mental health and wellbeing. Hurricanes and other extreme weather events have also proved to be harmful to mental health, but the broader impacts of continued climate change remain to be fully understood.
Opportunity: Drs. Gregory Wellenius and Amruta Nori-Sarma at BUSPH have a proposal to leverage big data from OptumLabs(TM) to understand the impacts of heat waves, wildfires, and hurricanes on the mental health of adults and children, to begin to build communities that are more resilient to climate effects, now and into the future.
Health impacts of air pollution from wild and agricultural fires
Climate change has led to an explosive growth in the number and size of wildfires across the western US. The use of prescribed burns for agriculture and forest management has also increased. Surprisingly, the health effects of air pollution from these fires is still not well understood.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty members Drs. Gregory Wellenius and Patrick Kinney are ready to launch the first large-scale study in the US to quantify the impacts of fire smoke on the health of individuals across the lifespan, from pregnancy and infancy to end of life.
Cities and health
Health impacts of urban climate mitigation and adaptation interventions
Millions of square feet of white and green roofs are being installed by cities all over the world. The roofs reduce the urban heat island effect, decrease greenhouse emissions, and minimize cooling electricity bills, but there is limited research on their impact on the health of building occupants or occupant lived experience of heat.
Opportunity: BUSPH faculty member Dr. Patricia Fabian is looking for a partner to fund an evaluation of the health impacts of climate mitigation and adaptation interventions such as white and green roofs, particularly in vulnerable populations and environmental justice communities in Massachusetts.
Other opportunities
Tailored training programs
Opportunity: BUSPH’s Public Health Exchange (PHX) offers custom training programs designed around the needs of your organization. Previous programs have included a summer leadership institute for school nurses, SAS and GIS trainings, American health policy program for international healthcare professionals, and environmental health online technical trainings.
For more information on how PHX can meet your needs, contact us
MPH and DrPH interns and practicum students
Opportunity: Hiring talented masters and doctoral interns and students for your health-related projects. Students are eager to apply their skills in qualitative and quantitative research, health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), data analysis, quality and performance improvement, Lean Six Sigma, strategic planning, project management, health communication & promotion and more.
For help connecting with the right intern for your project, contact us
Emerging Women Leaders program sponsorship
About 72% of public health degrees awarded went to women between 2005 and 2016; however, they experienced 45% lower odds of holding executive leadership positions than men in overall state governmental public health agency workforce.
Research shows mentoring as a key factor in promoting a successful career. Young women and people of color seeking leadership training often do not have sufficient role models who can help guide their advancement in the field and, in turn, shift the gender and ethnic distribution of global leadership.
Opportunity:
The BUSPH Women Emerging Leaders DrPH and PhD program is looking for a sponsor interested in addressing the gender and ethnicity gaps in career mentorship for doctoral students. 41% of the BUSPH DrPH and PhD students are non-white and 84% are female.
For more information, contact us