What’s next for the Delaware Journal of Public Health?
Our upcoming 2024 issues include:
If you would like to submit an article to the DJPH, please visit our submission page.
The Academy/DPHA, in partnership with the Public Health Management Corporation, is pleased to announce the availability of funds for Community Health Workers in Delaware. See a video from Executive Director, Tim Gibbs, here. To address vaccine confidence and deploy outreach in Delaware and Pennsylvania, PHMC is implementing a comprehensive and integrated approach designed to target, engage, and connect individuals to COVID-19 vaccines and education. The central component to this model is community health workers (CHWs). These public health and social service professionals support the members of their community by helping them to adopt healthy behaviors including staying up to date on all vaccinations.
Our model identifies, engages, trains, and supports CHWs from communities across the two states to help effectively reach as many underserved communities as possible. We will solicit applications from community-based organizations that would like to subcontract for funding to hire or assign existing staff to become a CHW. Using training and toolkits provided by PHMC, these CHWs will go out into their community, provide outreach and education, and report all outcomes on their efforts for a one-year project period.
We are seeking local stakeholders and organizations who want to get involved in bringing this opportunity to their community. Apply today here. To find out more information, reach out to Stephanie Shell at sshell@phmc.org. In Delaware, the Academy/DPHA will be the State of Delaware’s coordinating body for this initiative.
The American Public Health Association (APHA) has awarded the Delaware Academy of Medicine/Delaware Public Health Association (Academy/DPHA) with its 2020 Outstanding Affiliate of the Year award. The award was given at the APHA Annual Conference (held virtually this year) Council of Affiliates Reception Saturday evening, October 24, 2020.
The CoA Outstanding Affiliate of the Year Award celebrates an APHA Affiliate that has made significant contributions through innovative programs and activities that impact the public’s health. The Affiliate of the Year Award is given to an APHA Affiliate that provides a model for other Affiliates for work or project(s) of high value to public health such as innovative workforce development programming or impactful advocacy for public health policy within its state.
Tim Gibbs, MPH, executive director of the Academy/DPHA said “Just six years ago we became Delaware’s affiliate to APHA, and it has been an amazing experience which has led us to grow in ways few of us could have anticipated.” Mr. Gibbs was joined in accepting the award by President of the Board, Omar A. Khan, MD, MHS who stated “This means the world to our diverse membership of physicians, dentists, researchers, public health practitioners, community health workers, academics, and student interns.
The Delaware Academy of Medicine ( www.delamed.org ) was founded in 1930 and originally operated as Delaware’s medical library and conference center. In 2006, the Academy moved from its historic location in the City of Wilmington to Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware. Shortly after the move, Mr. Gibbs was promoted to the position of interim, then permanent executive director, and has overseen the transformation of the Academy into a public health, education, and research organization.
In 2014, after three years of realignment work, the Academy applied to the American Public Health Association to become Delaware’s affiliate and was accepted at the APHA annual meeting held in Boston, MA that fall. Since then, programming and revenue streams to the Academy/DPHA have diversified to include funding from the CDC, and contracts with the Division of Public Health.
In 2015, the Academy/DPHA started publishing the Delaware Journal of Public Health ( www.djph.org ), its signature, peer-reviewed publication. Other programs of the Academy/DPHA include the operation of the Immunization Coalition of Delaware (www.immunizedelaware.org), Student Financial Aid Programs, consumer health education programs, several clinical conferences, and student internship programs.
Partners of the Academy/DPHA include the Delaware Health Science Alliance and its member institutions, the Delaware Chapter of the American Planning Association, the Delaware State Dental Society, the Medical Society of Delaware, and the Delaware Stroke Initiative. The Academy/DPHA is a founding member of the Midlantic Public Health Partnership (www.midlantic.org).
The Academy/DPHA, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt membership organization is run by a board of directors, and supported by a public health advisory council, and investment advisory council. Membership in the Academy/DPHA is open to all healthcare provider degrees, public health degrees, researchers, academics, and students. The mission of the Academy/DPHA is “To enhance the well-being through education and the promotion of public health.”
Melissa Alperin, EdD, MPH, MCHES said:
“The CoA Outstanding Affiliate of the Year Award celebrates an APHA Affiliate that has made significant contributions through innovative programs and activities that impact the public’s health. This year we are honoring the Delaware Academy of Medicine/Delaware Public Health Association.
The DPHA is uniquely positioned as an APHA Affiliate embedded within a state medical academy. With this relationship, the Academy/DPHA has provided a model for a seamless partnership between traditional medical communities and public health.
The Academy/DPHA draws together primary care providers along with public health workers including those at the state division of public health, local academic institutions, and non-profits into one community focused on creating a healthier Delaware.
The Academy/DPHA uniquely combines a hands-on approach to public health community building with a commitment to science and data. Several activities of note include:
Too often, health care is one size fits all. Treatments meant for the “average” patient may not work well for individual people. Health care providers may find it difficult to coordinate care among specialists or to access all of a patient’s health information. Researchers may spend lots of time and resources creating new databases for every study.
All of Us is working to improve health care through research. Unlike research studies that focus on one disease or group of people, All of Us is building a diverse database that can inform thousands of studies on a variety of health conditions. This creates more opportunities to:
The National Institutes of Health formed the Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the Director in March 2015. The group concluded its work in September 2015 with a detailed report. The report provided a framework for setting up the All of Us Research Program.
Precisionmedicine:
All of Us is part of a new era in which researchers, health care providers, technology experts, community partners, and the public work together to develop individualized health care. Learn more about who is involved.
The All of Us research program is transformative as it will generate insightful data encompassing the diversity that comprises our population. I am particularly proud of Tim Gibbs and his colleagues at the Delaware Academy of Medicine / Delaware Public Health Association for their important contribution to this program, particularly because it influences how we develop CRISPR-directed gene editing for human therapy. This breakthrough technology relies heavily on the underlying DNA sequence of an individual genome for effective action so having genomic databases that truly reflect that diversity will help us design tools not for a privileged few, but for…All of Us. The research objective of this wonderful program aligns perfectly with the ChristianaCare mission of a patient-first approach to therapeutic gene editing for cancer and infectious diseases.
Eric B. Kmiec, Ph.D.
Director, Gene Editing Institute Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute ChristianaCare
The goal of the Delaware Academy of Medicine / Delaware Public Health Association is to see Delaware’s residents, in all of our diversity, well represented in the All of Us Research Program. During this COVID-19 pandemic the importance of programs like All of Us is highlighted more than ever.
Timothy E. Gibbs, MPH
Executive Director Delaware Academy of Medicine Delaware Public Health Association
https://participant.joinallofus.org/#/register
The All of Us Research Program is dedicated to better health, both in the future and today. We have all watched the increase in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases in the U.S. We believe it is important to act in the best interest for our participants, their families, and the All of Us team to protect their health.
To this end, we’re pausing all in-person All of Us appointments and events. We anticipate that this pause will last for at least one month. We will continually assess and make decisions about whether this pause will extend.
It is vital at this moment that individuals, whether they feel sick or healthy, distance themselves from others to help slow the exposure and spread of this virus. In addition, postponing these appointments will help reduce the number of non-essential visits to clinics and other health care providers. We must make sure our health care providers are free to see sick patients first. We’ll continue tracking this situation and will share more updates as needed.
This pause impacts only in-person activities, which include:
If you have a clinic appointment scheduled, your local enrollment partner will contact you to reschedule.
People can still sign up and take part in the program online at JoinAllofUs.org. Existing participants can also sign in to their accounts and answer survey questions.
In times like this, health research feels especially important. Together, we can help make a difference in speeding up research and improving the health of our communities.
Please take care of yourselves and your neighbors. For updates on COVID-19 and tips on staying safe, please visit coronavirus.gov.
With thanks,
Josh Denny, M.D., M.S.
Chief Executive Officer All of Us Research Program
We are honored to have been interviewed and included in the July issue of The Nation’s Health, in an article titled:
Executive Director and publisher, Tim Gibbs, and Deputy Editor, Liz Healy, are quoted in the article which you can read here:
The Nation’s Health is the monthly newspaper of the American Public Health Association, a source of news from and for the public health field. The newspaper covers issues of interest to public health professionals, including news on federal, state and local public health policy; developments and trends in public health science and practice; global health issues; research findings; and coverage of state and local health departments.
