MPH Poster Session Makes Foray into the Virtual Arena
On March 6 and 7, the College’s online Master of Public Health (MPH) degree program took its annual capstone group research projects poster session into the virtual world. The former version of the event took place in person during the summer, a format that limited students' ability to discuss and share their posters widely with Larner College of Medicine faculty. This year, in an effort to engage the College community in a greater way, UVM Associate Dean for Public Health Jan Carney, M.D., M.P.H. and Library Associate Professor in the Dana Medical Library Donna O'Malley created an innovative approach. Rather than presenting their posters in person, students recorded their presentations and posted the audio and their poster file to an online portal. For two days, faculty, mentors, student peers, and other interested parties were able to log into the portal, view the posters, listen to the presentations, and then write to the students via a comment section which the students could then reply to. The six posters that were presented were: "Childhood Residential Mobility and Healthcare Utilization," "Associations Among Healthcare Utilization and Binge Drinking," "Vermont Hospitals' Emergency Department Utilization Charges by Insurance Payer," "Life's Simple 7 and Health Care Utilization Among Framingham Generation III Cohort," "Examining the Relationship Between Electronic Cigarette Use and Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents," and "Adolescent Alcohol Usage in Vermont State: A Comprehensive Review of Underage Drinking and its Associations with Suicidality."