College of Public Health News

The Department of Health Administration and Policy partnered with Health Technology Network and Arlington Forward to create a cybersecurity event that informed attendees on the top concerns in federal, state, and private sectors as well as provided networking opportunities for local cybersecurity and healthcare professionals.

On Thursday, September 16, the student alumni organization Rising Healthcare Leaders at Mason (RHLM) hosted its first in-person networking event since March 2020. Both the graduate student leadership team and undergraduate students in the Department of Health Administration and Policy (HAP) worked together to make the event a successful networking opportunity for attendees.

Bethany Cieslowski, calls herself a disruptor – but don’t just take her word for it. One just needs to tour the virtual reality and simulation space on the 2nd floor of Peterson Health Sciences Hall with Cieslowski or participate in one of her VR/Sim training sessions to confirm that she has already brought positive change and vision to the College of Health and Human Services.

Mason nutrition practicum students gain valuable experience through a partnership with Real Food For Kids, a nonprofit organization with a mission to instill healthy food policies in the DMV area school districts, and help the organization advance its core nutrition programs.

The College of Health and Human Services is proud to announce that the Master of Science in Health Informatics program will maintain accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management Education (CAHIIM). With this announcement, the MS in Health Informatics program has successfully met the CAHIIM accreditation standards for another year and remains in good standing.

In order for athletes to balance their routines with wellness, they need to apply the same principles as they did with sports, says Emmett Gill, term assistant professor in the Department of Social Work within the College of Health and Human Services at George Mason University.

For Master of Public Health (MPH) student Jorge Garcia, the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to obtain real-world experience in infectious disease surveillance by applying the skills he learned throughout his MPH courses while working at the Fairfax County Health Department.

In a first-of-its-kind study, Associate Professor Hong Xue and Professors Alison Cuellar and Lawrence Cheskin and colleagues at George Mason University's College of Health and Human Services examined associations between the amount of time spent on specific social media sites and the use of both e-cigarettes and traditional cigarettes.  

While most of the social media platforms reviewed in the study showed no significant association with vaping, Xue and his colleagues did find that college-age e-cigarette users who spent more time on Snapchat did have a higher prevalence of lifetime e-cigarette use as well as an increased frequency of e-cigarette use in the past 30 days.

College-age e-cigarette users who are occasional or regular vapers spend an average of just over two hours a day on Snapchat, according to the study. Non-users, on the other hand, spend less than an hour each day on the app. The study also found that each extra hour on Snapchat was associated with a 4.61 percent increase in likelihood of lifetime e-cigarette use

Students beginning the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) program this academic year share why they aspire to join the profession and their excitement to join a supportive community of students and faculty.

Preparing aspiring health care providers is no small task and requires a true partnership between academic instructors and internship preceptors. The value of partnership to successfully prepare students for a career in health administration is exemplified by the relationship between Anastasia (Stacey) Schaab, senior director of nursing rehabilitation at Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, and John (Jay) Shiver and Virginia (Ginny) Blair, associate professors in the Health Administration program in Mason’s Department of Health Administration and Policy.