August 2015: Mount Sinai’s Environmental and Occupational Health Summer Training Program for First Year Medical Students

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For eight weeks this summer, six students funded by a National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) T35 Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grant immersed themselves in environmental health research at Mount Sinai. The students were selected from a pool of 60 applicants for this highly competitive program. The program is directed by Dr. Maida Galvez, an Associate Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Director of the Region 2 Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. Preventive Medicine faculty, including P30 Center Members, served as mentors to students. See the full list of participating students, research topics and faculty mentors below. The seminar faculty for this program included Rafael De La Hoz, MD; Denise Gaughan, PhD; Anne Golden, PhD; Shanna Swan, PhD; Susan Teitelbaum, PhD; Rosalind Wright, MD; and Norman Zuckerman, MS.

On August 5th, 2015 the students presented their work to an audience that included faculty members and staff from Mount Sinai and the US EPA Region 2 Office, and discussed the implications of their work. The presentation topics ranged from mapping air and noise pollution in East Harlem to the lingering health repercussions among 9/11 responders. See below for the full list of students, research topics, and mentors:

Ksenia Denisova
SUNY Downstate Medical College
Mapping Male Reproductive Health
Mentors: Shanna Swan, Hagai Levine and Sarah Evans
 
Molly Forster
Jefferson Medical College
Tragic untold stories of 9/11 responders, 10+ years in the making
Mentor: Ismail Nabeel
 
Michael Nevid
Stony Brook School of Medicine
Pilot Study Using AirBeam PM2.5 Monitor and microAeth® Model AE51 to assess
Air Quality in East Harlem
Mentors: Leon Hsu, Lynn Onyebeke, Demetrios Papazaharias, Maida Galvez and Roberto Lucchini
 
Velda Ocasio Ramírez
Ponce Health Sciences University (PHSU)
Pilot Assessment of Background Noise Levels in East Harlem using the AirCasting Noise Monitor
Mentors: Leon Hsu, Lynn Onyebeke, Demetrios Papazaharias, Maida Galvez and Roberto Lucchini
 
Rebecca Wax
SUNY Downstate Medical College
Consent Rate and Birth Outcomes of the PRISM Study
Mentors: Rosalind Wright and Suzy Allen
 
Ashley Williams
Medical College of Georgia
Novel applications to assess working memory among children ages 18 and 24 months
Mentor: Megan Horton