News & Events

Notable & Quotable

• Assistant Professor Leena Bharath, who teaches in the School of Health Sciences, has received $434,000 in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The awarded R15 grant will stretch over three years and is intended to support the training of undergraduate students.

• Associate professor of health sciences, Zi Yan, was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal supporting the benefits of outdoor group exercise in the winter during the pandemic. Yan, who’s interdisciplinary research involves psychology, public health and exercise science offered that exercise classes provide physical benefits and much-needed social support, especially during the winter months.

• Assistant professor of health sciences April Bowling was featured in a Boston Globe story April 13, 2020 on how people should continue to exercise during self-isolation. Adhering to a fitness regimen that incorporates cardiovascular and resistance training is important for overall health, she told the Globe.

• Health Sciences Department assistant professor Juliana Cohen was recently featured as an expert source for a KTVA television report regarding a pilot program in Anchorage, Alaska to lengthen lunchtime and recess for school children as a means of improving academic focus. 

• Health sciences assistant professor Juliana Cohen was interviewed by both the Washington Post and Good Morning America (GMA) for a story on school lunches. Cohen says that because children learn better when they eat, schools should provide enough time to have lunch. 

  WATCH GMA SEGMENT

• Juliana Cohen, assistant professor of health sciences, was featured in a cnn.com article “How school lunches measure up in countries around the world” published April 9, 2018. “When kids eat healthier foods, this can have a really important impact on their cognitive functioning, which can then translate potentially to better academic performance,” she said. Cohen’s 2015 study, published in the Journal of the Academy of the Nutrition and Dietetics, was also featured. Her study found shorter lunch periods to be linked with less healthy eating among children. 

• April Bowling, assistant professor of health sciences, had a paper, “ADHD Symptoms and Body Composition Changes in Childhood: A Longitudinal Study Evaluating Directionality of Associations,” accepted for publication in Pediatric Obesity, a peer-reviewed medical journal covering research into all aspects of obesity during childhood and adolescence.

• School of Health Sciences Dean Kyle McInnis, Associate Dean Kevin Finn and Assistant Professor Zi Yan published an article, “Promoting Physical Activity and Science Learning in an Outdoor Education Program,” in the Jan. 5, 2018, issue of the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance. In the article, the authors argue that Integrating physical activity and science learning in an outdoor education program addresses two challenges children face today: physical inactivity and poor science performance.

• April Bowling, assistant professor of health sciences, was interviewed for U.S. News & World Report’s Oct. 27, 2017, “Parent First” podcast on the possible link between stimulant use and obesity in individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. People with ADHD “have consistently been found to have an increased risk of being overweight or obese,” Bowling noted. She added that adults with the disorder have about one-and-a-half times the obesity risk compared to adults who don’t have ADHD.

• Juliana Cohen, assistant professor of health sciences, co-authored a May 18, 2017, column for The Huffington Post on the Trump administration’s decision to rollback regulations associated with the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, an Obama-era initiative to curb this country’s obesity epidemic and maximize children’s learning and development. “We should not weaken the school lunch standards further,” wrote Cohen and her co-authors, Jessica Hoffman, Lindsay Rosenfeld and Edward Alan Miller. “Instead, we should truly make school lunches great by providing schools with the resources they need to offer the healthiest, best-tasting foods possible. Investing in the health and development of our youngest citizens is one of the most important investments we can make as a country.”