July Faculty and Staff Features

Steven Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., VCU School of Medicine and director of the VCU Center on Human Needs
Woolf, professor in the Department of Family Medicine and director of the VCU Center on Human Needs, recently authored a commentary in the Journal of the American Medical Association that identified funding cuts outside the health sector as being the biggest threat to public health.

In the editorial, Woolf discussed how government spending reductions could significantly impact public health in this country by removing opportunities for education, employment, food security and stable neighborhoods. Woolf explained that health status is heavily influenced by social and environmental conditions.

Read more about Woolf’s commentary through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Public Health interview here.

In the Project on Societal Distress, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Woolf and a team of researchers at the VCU Center on Human Needs are taking a closer look at major causes of societal distress such as food insecurity, precarious housing, poor health, inadequate education and low income - across the United States and in individual states. By monitoring the prevalence of these factors – how often people and households experience these conditions – they are able to provide the public and policymakers with accurate data about the priority populations affected by these conditions and important trends over time. A key message is that non-health factors such as education and economic conditions are major drivers of health outcomes – and of health care spending. The work and data are reviewed by a panel of national experts on the policy issues reviewed by the project.

The commentary appeared in the May 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Daniel Conrad, Ph.D., professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine

The American Asthma Foundation awarded Conrad one of seven senior investigator awards for asthma research. Awardees receive $250,000 a year for three years. Conrad's application involved novel studies involving the role of the metalloprotease ADAM10 in asthma. A team of two graduate students helped with the award application: Jamie Sturgill, who will continue to work in Conrad's laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow, and Joel Mathews, now a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University School of Public Health.