Dr. Mouhcine Guettabi joined Mayor Ethan Berkowitz at the Anchorage daily COVID-19 community update on Wednesday, May 6. He discussed the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the Anchorage economy and the prospects for economic recovery. A video of the briefing is available from the Anchorage Daily News website. Dr. Guettabi’s presentation begins at about 16:42 and lasts about 12 minutes. His presentation can be found in ISER's publications database.
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List of news articles from 2019 that reference ISER studies or researchers.
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CBHRS researchers are evaluating Project HOPE, the State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services’ Narcan® distribution and overdose education program. Narcan® is a nasal spray medication that reverses opioid overdose. The public distribution of opioid overdose rescue kits is a best practice strategy to reduce opioid-related deaths.
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In the midst of a national teacher shortage, Alaska does not simply need teachers, it needs high quality educators who reflect the diversity of its students. Teachers who are prepared in Alaska not only bring cultural familiarity, but also have lower turnover rates. Grow-your-own initiatives to recruit and train local teachers are a sustainable and effective way to staff classrooms with “homegrown” educators who are culturally and linguistically similar to the students and communities they serve, but Alaska is not recruiting enough Alaskans into teaching.
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Anchorage Climate Action Plan collaborators, including UAA and ISER faculty, are sponsoring a lunchtime talk Friday, August 9 in the ISER conference room, by Illinois Research Climatologist Ashish Sharma on how the most vulnerable in urban settings can be better protected from climate-related health challenges. As extreme weather becomes the norm, the number of heat-related deaths around the world continues to rise, causing the media to coin the phrase, “heat, the silent killer.”&
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Sarah Andrew, new director of University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Bristol Bay Campus, invited ISER’s Dayna DeFeo to deliver the keynote talk at the Bristol Bay Campus annual summit in Dillingham last month. Andrew called upon DeFeo, who directs ISER’s Center for Alaska Education Policy Research, to share research findings on how to better serve rural Alaska students, and to lead a discussion addressing difficult issues of equity, access, and privilege.
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ISER researcher and Alaska Public Health Association board member Katie Cueva shared evaluation findings (PDF, 513KB) from cancer education work with Alaska's Community Health Aides/Practitioners (CHAPS) at the 2019 Alaska Health Summit in Anchorage, January 22-24. In the session, "The Relationship between Body Weight and Cancer Risk in Alaska," Dr. Cueva discussed how "learners'" end-of-module surveys in a CHAPS cancer education online program indicated that participating in an online cancer education module on physical activity, nutrition, and cancer, helped "learners" feel more comfortable talking about cancer in their communities, helped "learners" to talk about cancer more often with their patients, and supported "learners" to plan to reduce their own cancer risk by things like moving more and eating healthier. CHAPS is part of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
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CBHRS and its partners on the Women’s Health Nurses and Midwives Collaboration for Alcohol-Free Pregnancy (WHNMCAP) project are meeting for the first time this week to map out the next four years. They are also sharing information at the Alaska Public Health Summit as part of a panel presentation.
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Dr. Ralph Townsend, ISER director, will discuss how changes in Alaska’s demographics will impact workforce and health care costs at the annual Northrim Bank Lecture series at Mat-Su College Tuesday, February 12 at 7p.m.
Using the latest research and data on Alaska demographics, health care costs, and employment, Townsend will provide insights into challenges facing Alaska in the next decades.
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Researchers in ISER’s Center for Behavioral Health Research and Services (CBHRS) conducted interviews with individuals who use heroin to explore ways individuals began opioid use and how their use progressed over time. Their report found that few participants began use with heroin but transitioned to heroin due to increased cost and reduced availability of prescription opioids.