Student Valeria Galan Trujillo presented at the Health Humanities Consortium on "Reframing Aging: Toward a More Just and Thoughtful Understanding of Anti-Aging Aesthetic Medicine." The presentation remarked on the popularity worldwide of anti-aging aesthetic interventions, both invasive and non-invasive. Highlighting the fact that despite the considerable demand for these interventions, they are still often dismissed as merely cosmetic and are not widely accepted as legitimate medical therapies. On the one hand, insurance companies generally dismiss anti-aging aesthetic procedures and refuse to reimburse them, because they are considered elective and, therefore, not medically necessary. On the other hand, cultural biases reinforced by prevailing social frameworks may determine who is perceived as deserving of these interventions, creating an asymmetry in how society accepts different forms of cosmetic procedures. While other interventions like makeup, hairdressing services, scalp micropigmentation, teeth whitening, etc., are widely embraced, anti-aging procedures still face stigma and restricted acceptance. This discrepancy undermines health justice and perpetuates inequality in access to aesthetic care.
Students Evelyn Lamb, Tiffany Bystra, and Daniel Aillaud De Uriarte publish in The American Journal of Bioethics!
PHHD and SPPH co-hosted Dr. Monisha Arya for a Master Class on health campaign design. Learn the BACMEE framework she uses to build campaigns that change behavior, and see what two faculty-and-student teams pitched in the closing skin cancer prevention design challenge.
Dr. Aparicio recently presented at the GCC Aging and Geroscience Symposium titled "Role of social and ethical dimensions of biomarkers of aging in the advancement of geoscience".
Dr. Norrina Allen's H-COR keynote at UTMB argued dementia risk develops across the life course, with early-adult vascular risk factors weighing more heavily than late-life ones. UTMB researchers pressed on harmonization limits, generational change, and age-stratified risk models.
Prospective student questions about UTMB's MS in Aerospace Medicine cluster around eligibility, the 12-month in-person schedule, the residency distinction, and the application process. Two info sessions with Program Director Dr. Kreykes are scheduled for April 30.
SPPH biostatistics professor Dr. Heidi Spratt has been named to the inaugural Fellows of ACTS cohort, 36 selected from nearly 6,000 members, for sustained leadership, mentorship and service. She was inducted at Translational Science 2026 on April 21.
Please join us in extending a huge and heartfelt congratulations to Hannah Carpenter for the successful oral defense of her dissertation. Her work, entitled: "Controlling Knowledge, Constricting Autonomy: A Bioethical and Legal Analysis of Reproductive Clinical Practice and Research Trials" is the result of four years of diligent and conscientious research. We’re also excited to share that Hannah will be starting a new position this fall at Baylor College of Medicine as a Clinical Ethics Postdoctoral Fellow. We wish her all the best as she takes this next step - there’s no doubt that she will continue to do amazing things! Congratulations, Dr. Carpenter! Your hard work, dedication, and perseverance have paid off, and this is a truly well-deserved achievement.
In 2020, gun injury became the leading cause of death for American children. A $1.2M CDC-funded UTMB project led by Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria tests whether youth-informed videos can steer middle schoolers in Houston and Memphis away from community violence.
Three first-year Ph.D. Students - Carmen Haynes, MPH, Evelyn Lamb, MA, and Rachel Ray, MS - came together under the supervision of Dr. Lisa Campo-Engelstein to write an Open Peer Commentary in response to Laura Hermer's article "Abortion and Embodiment." Their OPC, entitled: "Reimagining Embodiment: Abortion, the Zero Trimester, and Pregnancy as Public Domain" was recently published in the American Journal of Bioethics. In it, the authors argue that societal context, feminist literature, and legal realities must be considered in abortion discourse. They draw on Miranda Waggoner's Zero Trimester theory as a concise and competent framework which highlights the anticipatory and perpetual nature of reproductive regulations for women. It is wonderful to see three scholars with distinctly different academic backgrounds collaborate on this project and embrace the highly interdisciplinary nature of Bioethics & Health Humanities!
Student Hannah Carpenter and Faculty publish in The American Journal of Bioethics.
MPH student Monserrat Hinojosa participated in a UTMB School of Public and Population Health Global Student Experience in Peru.
UTMB’s April 15 special lecture, co-organized by the Sealy Center on Aging and the Department of Epidemiology, brought Anna Zajacova to campus to examine chronic pain as a population health issue shaped by age, education, geography, policy, and access to care.
Dr. Moses recently published in The Journal of Pediatrics on "Applying a Biosociocultural Approach to Early Female Puberty."
Dr. Wellesley graduated with her PhD from our program in 2025. Find her recent article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine here.
During National Public Health Week, SPECTRE and Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities faculty examined how UTMB's Biocontainment Care Unit prepares for high-consequence infectious diseases, from the post-Ebola national network to the ethical dilemmas of provider safety, patient isolation, and public transparency.
The poster session at UTMB's 2026 Public Health Symposium featured research from students across GSBS, SHP, SON, JSSOM, and SPPH alongside virtual presentations from Badya University in Egypt. Said Abdelrhman presented on sleep disturbances and late-life disability, Sinaan Momin on oral health gaps in Texas Medicaid, and Dr. Umair Shah delivered the keynote.
Dr. Umair A. Shah, former Washington State Secretary of Health and current CMO of Jaan Health, keynoted UTMB's 2026 NPHW Symposium with a talk on why science alone cannot sustain public trust, how AI should serve real workflows, and why the field must build systems of excellence across political lines.
Six second-year medical students from Badya University in Cairo presented original research on lifestyle factors and gastrointestinal health at UTMB's Public Health Symposium. UTMB faculty from multiple schools engaged with live Q&A, and the session was described as a milestone for medical education in Egypt.
SPPH rose from No. 116 to No. 89 in the 2026 U.S. News public health rankings, the largest gain among current top-100 programs. The post traces public health education at UTMB back to 1891 and includes faculty perspectives on what prospective students should prioritize when choosing a program.