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School Notes
A supplement to the Yale Alumni Magazine from the fourteen schools of Yale
November/December 2012
School of Architecture
Robert A. M. Stern, Dean
www.architecture.yale.edu
Celebrating women in
architecture
YSoA will host the
first-ever gathering of its alumnae at a reunion conference November 30–December
1 to celebrate the accomplishments of women architects and mark the 30th
anniversary of the Sonia Albert Schimberg Award. Sonia Albert ’50MArch was one
of only two women to graduate from YSoA in 1950, when the field was still
largely dominated by men. Her daughters created the award in her memory to
honor an outstanding woman student each year at Commencement. The reunion will
explore the legacy of YSoA women graduates, current conditions in architecture,
and future trends. Students, faculty, and experts from related disciplines will
join alumnae for panel discussions, lectures, and presentations.
Professor wins inaugural
prize
Deborah Berke, adjunct
professor of design, has been named the first recipient of a $100,000 prize
that honors the advancement of women in architecture and recognizes a
practitioner or academic who also emphasizes a commitment to sustainability and
the community. The 2012 Berkeley-Rupp Architecture Professorship and Prize,
awarded by the University of California, Berkeley’s College of Environmental
Design, includes a semester-long professorship, a public lecture, and a gallery
exhibition at the school. A founder of the New York City–based architecture
firm Deborah Berke Partners, Berke has received awards for the 21c Museum Hotel
Louisville and the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York.
Exhibition and symposium
to focus on influential designer
Coinciding with the
exhibition George Nelson: Architect/Writer/Designer/Teacher (November 5
through February 9), the school is hosting a two-day symposium titled George
Nelson: Design for Living, American Mid-Century Design and its Legacy Today.
The program, November 9–10, will bring together an international group of
historians, critics, and designers to examine the extraordinary impact of Yale
alumnus George Nelson (1908–1986). Nelson and his contemporaries helped evolve
the Bauhaus aesthetic into a more colorful, playful, and versatile idiom that
reflected the American lifestyle in the mid-twentieth century. After receiving
BA and BArch degrees from Yale and the Rome Prize of the American Academy,
Nelson worked as an architect, writer, publicist, lecturer, and curator before
becoming director of design for Herman Miller, where, for nearly three decades,
he shaped the company’s product line and public image.
School of Art
Robert Storr, Dean
yale.edu/art
National photography
foundation honors professor
Professor Tod Papageorge,
former director of graduate studies in photography at the School of Art, was
honored recently by the Lucie Foundation as recipient of its 2012 Lucie Award
in documentary photography. The Lucie Foundation is a nonprofit organization
whose trifold mission is to honor master photographers, to discover and
cultivate emerging talent, and to promote the appreciation of photography
worldwide. Its annual awards honor the greatest achievements in photography.
Papageorge
has been photographing for 50 years. His achievements include two Guggenheim
Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grants. His
photographs have been exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and are
represented in more than 30 major public collections, including those of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2009
Papageorge was invited to the American Academy in Rome as a resident in the
visual arts, and the following year he was awarded the Rome Commission in
Photography.
Yale College
Mary E. Miller, Dean
yalecollege.yale.edu
Two new college deans greet students
This year two new Yale residential college deans have
enrolled in “Deans School,” the affectionate nickname for an extensive formal
training program for deans in their first year of service. The program was
created in 1988 by Joseph W. Gordon, dean of undergraduate education, and is
currently led by Mark Schenker, dean of academic affairs. Classes began in
August before the students arrived. Mornings were devoted to academic
regulations, then a thorough examination of “Blue Book 101,” followed by
afternoon field trips to meet key constituents across campus, from the
college’s writing tutor and dining hall director to the registrar and the head
of health services. In-service training continues with weekly sessions
throughout the academic year.
Stepping into new roles as residential
college deans are Christine Muller at Saybrook College and Joseph Spooner ’91
at Jonathan Edwards College. Muller earned a BA in history and psychology and
an MA in English from Villanova University, and a PhD in American studies from
the University of Maryland–College Park. For more than ten years she has held
residential positions, first with the Office of Residence Life at Villanova and
then as house director of a sorority at Maryland. She served for five years as
the assistant director of Villanova’s Honors Program, filling the role of
academic adviser for 450 exceptional students from all of the university’s
colleges. Dean Muller says she loves good stories and good storytellers, and
Saybrugians may benefit from her other passion: taking informal cooking lessons
from her father, a retired chef and culinary school dean.
Twenty-one years after earning
a bachelor of arts degree in English from Yale College, Dean Spooner happily
returns to New Haven. JE master Penelope Laurans said Dean Mary Miller and the
search committee chose Spooner not only for his extensive teaching and
administrative experience, but also for his enthusiasm and ability to connect
with students. Since earning his master’s in American studies at Florida State,
he has held teaching and administrative positions at Chipola College, Florida
State, Williams College, and the University of Edinburgh. A first-generation
college student from a small family farm in northern Florida, he says he has
not forgotten how overwhelming and foreign Yale can be, and hopes that his
varied experiences in higher education will benefit all of those fortunate
enough to call Yale home.
Divinity School
Gregory E. Sterling, Dean
divinity.yale.edu
Settling in at YDS: a
busy month for the new dean
Gregory E. Sterling began
his term as dean of Yale Divinity School at the beginning of August. But the
summer heat did little to slow him down, as he filled the month with a flurry
of meetings with YDS staff and faculty, alumni leaders, Yale University administrators,
emeriti faculty, and students. About the only concession to the heat came near
the end of the month, when Sterling and his wife, Adrian, hosted an ice cream
social for students two days before classes began.
Sterling
had his first experience greeting a new class to Sterling Divinity Quadrangle
during orientation week, August 20–24. In remarks to the entering students, he
welcomed them to a “robust environment” where they can “debate and argue with
one another, and maybe with faculty, and with guest lecturers.” Said Sterling,
“It’s a liberal spirit, and that’s what I hope you can embrace.”
At the end
of the month, the new dean offered an initial impression: “The most impressive
aspect of YDS initially has been the sense of community that exists. Faculty,
staff, students, and alumni are all keenly aware of the importance of community
and work to foster it.”
Class of 1952 write about
their faith
In their systematic theology
course years ago, members of the YDS Class of 1952 were asked to write a credo,
or statement of beliefs. In spring 2012, six decades later, members of the
class were given another writing assignment—by the Class’s 60th reunion
planning committee: a statement of faith.
Twenty-five
members of the class responded, and the result is a lengthy, spiral-bound
document called The Faith by which I Live Today, prepared for a
gathering at Convocation and Reunions in October. Class Secretary Richard
Stazesky ’52BD, ’53STM, ’55MA, who compiled and edited the document, notes the
distinction between what was asked of his class as students—a credo—and the
recent request. “Beliefs usually refer to doctrines, intellectual assertions,”
he said. “Faith is more a matter of the heart, emotions, that which deeply
motivates. Faith is what is important.”
School of Drama
James Bundy, Dean
yale.edu/drama
Human struggles are theme
of YSD theater season
The school’s 2012–13 drama
season features three productions staged by the 2013 directing class that
explore the human struggles—vain or victorious, intimate or epic—to become who
we believe we are meant to be. The shows, staged and performed by YSD students,
are: Iphigenia Among the Stars, a space-age adaptation of Euripides’s Iphigenia
at Aulis and Iphigenia Among the Taurians, by Benjamin Fainstein
’13MFA, directed by Jack Tamburri ’13MFA, which played October 30–November 3;
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical theater masterpiece, Sunday in
the Park with George, directed by Ethan Heard ’13MFA, December 14–20; and
Caryl Churchill’s sexy, sad, and mordantly funny satire, Cloud Nine, directed by Margot Bordelon ’13MFA, January 22–26.
School of Engineering & Applied Science
T. Kyle Vanderlick, Dean
seas.yale.edu
Center for Engineering
Innovation & Design opens
The school’s new Center for
Engineering Innovation & Design opened its doors for the start of the
2012–2013 school year. The CEID is the latest addition in the school’s ongoing
efforts to encourage collaborative work not just among engineers, but also with
students from all of the schools and programs on Yale’s campus. Offering
students the ability to realize their ideas with tools and training from its
affiliated faculty and staff, the CEID’s resources reach beyond the traditional
wood and machine shops found in design spaces to include equipment for rapid
prototyping and, in a unique and progressive move for a design space, a wet lab
to support design efforts in medical devices or research in microfluidics. The
CEID’s largest area, an open studio space on the ground floor, offers passersby
a full view of current center activities and serves as a reminder that the
space is open to the Yale community.
Grants support
interdisciplinary research
Through a generous gift from
Donna Dubinsky ’77, the School of Engineering has created the Dubinsky New
Initiative Grants to foster new research efforts aligned with the school’s
interdisciplinary research priorities. These priorities leverage talent across
the school and all of Yale. Through the new initiative grants, the school has
offered funding to two projects in the program’s first year. The first, a
collaboration between professors from biomedical and chemical engineering as
well as immunobiology, dermatology, anesthesiology, and medicine, proposes to
develop a “microvessel-on-a-chip.” Their research has widespread applications
in the study of cystic fibrosis, lung damage that leads to multiple organ
failure in septic patients, and breast cancer metastasis into the lung. The
second, a group representing chemical engineering, materials science, and
applied physics, will study clean energy generation by pyro-electric conversion
of solar radiation. Specifically, the group hopes to overcome a current
limitation that requires time-varying heat fluxes as energy inputs.
School of Forestry & Environmental Studies
Peter Crane, Dean
environment.yale.edu
Diseased trees
significant source of greenhouse gas
Diseased trees in forests
may be a significant new source of methane that causes climate change,
according to researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental
Studies in Geophysical Research Letters. Sixty trees sampled at Yale
Myers Forest in northeastern Connecticut contained concentrations of methane
that were as high as 80,000 times ambient levels. Normal air concentrations are
less than 2 parts per million, but the Yale researchers found average levels of
15,000 ppm inside trees.
“These are
flammable concentrations,” said Kristofer Covey, the study’s lead author and a
PhD candidate at Yale. “Because the conditions thought to be driving this
process are common throughout the world’s forests, we believe we have found a
globally significant new source of this potent greenhouse gas.”
Red maple,
an abundant species in North America, had the highest methane concentrations,
but other common species, including oak, birch, and pine, were also producers
of the gas. The rate of methane emissions was 3.1 times higher in the summer,
suggesting that higher temperatures may lead to increasing levels of forest
methane that, in turn, lead to ever-higher temperatures.
Professor honored for achievements
Paul Anastas, the Teresa and
H. John Heinz III Professor in the Practice of Chemistry for the Environment
and director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering, and a
pioneer in the design of environmentally friendly chemicals, has been awarded
the 2012 Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award for “helping
advance the biodiversity of life on planet Earth.” E. O. Wilson, the renowned
Harvard professor of entomology and evolutionary biology for whom the honor is
named, presented Anastas with the award on October 4.
Trained as
a synthetic organic chemist, Anastas has focused his research on the design of
safer chemicals, bio-based polymers, and new methodologies of chemical
synthesis that are more efficient and less hazardous to the environment. A
leading writer on the subjects of sustainability, green chemistry, and green
engineering, he has published ten books, including Benign by Design, Designing
Safer Polymers, Green Engineering, and his seminal work with
coauthor John Warner, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice.
Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Thomas D. Pollard, Dean
yale.edu/graduateschool
Four named Wilbur Cross
medalists
The Graduate School Alumni
Association recently awarded four alumni the Wilbur Lucius Cross Medal, the
Graduate School’s highest honor.
John Aber
’71, ’73MFS, ’76PhD (forestry and environmental studies), university professor
and provost of the University of New Hampshire, is well known for his research
on sustainable ecosystem management, climate change, and acid rain. He has
authored or coauthored more than 200 scientific papers and the basic text in
his field, Terrestrial Ecosystems.
Alfred W. McCoy ’77PhD
(history), the J. R. W. Smail Professor of History at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison, is one of the world’s leading historians of Southeast Asia
and an expert on underworld crime syndicates, the war against illegal drugs,
and international political surveillance. He is also an influential social historian
and has made important contributions to the history of gender and family
studies.
Jonathan M.
Rothberg ’91PhD (biology) combines spectacular achievements in genome science
and biotechnology with entrepreneurship, having launched Curagen (to identify
and target genes involved in specific diseases), 454 Life Sciences (which
sequenced DNA stunningly quickly and at low cost), RainDance Technologies
(which creates microfluidics for genomic and pharmaceutical research), and most
recently, Ion Torrent Systems, Inc., which innovated an outstandingly
successful DNA sequencing system.
Sarah Grey
Thomason ’68PhD (linguistics), the William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of
Linguistics at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor, is a specialist in
historical linguistics (the ways languages change over time), contact
linguistics (the influences that languages have on one another), and Native
American languages of the Northwest.
Grant will broaden
humanities studies
Yale has received a
four-year grant of $1.95 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to
enhance humanities education throughout the university, with several
initiatives specific to the Graduate School. The Graduate School will use
Mellon funding to introduce a new concentration that will extend coursework
from two to three years, enabling students to develop individual programs that
extend their understanding of both their primary discipline and the wider
intellectual setting in which it resides. In each of the next three years, a
team of faculty members will offer a core seminar on a different topic that
cuts across disciplinary boundaries, bringing students together from multiple
departments. Students will also be able to participate in team-teaching courses
that cover sweeping, cross-disciplinary themes at the edges and intersections
of traditional fields of study. The Mellon grant will also provide recent PhDs
with new opportunities to teach at the undergraduate level and to broaden their
teaching portfolios by offering courses that go beyond their specific
discipline.
Law School
Robert Post, Dean
www.law.yale.edu
Fellowships offer summer
work in public interest law
A grant from the Ford
Foundation will offer 25 Yale Law students an unprecedented opportunity to work
in the field of public interest law next summer. The inaugural Ford Foundation
Law School Public Interest Fellowship Program is open to first- and second-year
law students from Yale as well as from Harvard, Stanford, and New York
University law schools. It will offer the students ten-week placements with
Ford Foundation grantee organizations around the world on important social
justice issues. The foundation has made an initial commitment of up to $1.75
million for the fellowships for the first year.
Veterans appeals court
hears oral arguments at YLS
The US Court of Appeals for
Veterans Claims (CAVC) was at Yale Law School on October 2 to hear oral
argument in the case Copeland v. Shinseki. At issue was whether the
CAVC, an Article I Court, has the jurisdiction, and if so the power, to
invalidate a statute as unconstitutional. The case involved an appeal by
Constance Copeland, surviving spouse of Air Force veteran Donnie Copeland,
seeking review of a Board of Veterans’ Appeals decision that denied her claim
for accrued benefits and her claim for dependency and indemnity compensation
for the cause of her husband’s death.
Professor honored by
British Academy
Sterling Professor of Law
and Legal History John Langbein has been elected a Corresponding Fellow of the
British Academy. Langbein has been a member of the Yale law faculty since 1989
and is a leading authority on legal history, comparative law, and probate and
trust law. The British Academy is the United Kingdom’s national body
recognizing and supporting excellence in the humanities and social sciences.
Each year, in addition to electing several dozen UK-based Fellows who have
achieved distinction in the humanities and social sciences, the academy elects
a number of Corresponding Fellows from overseas universities. Langbein was one
of 15 Corresponding Fellows elected this year.
School of Management
Edward A. Snyder, Dean
mba.yale.edu
Yale SOM welcomes MBA
Class of 2014
“The world needs a different
kind of leader,” Yale SOM dean Edward A. Snyder told members of the full-time
MBA Class of 2014 when he welcomed them to campus on August 8. Snyder described
Yale SOM’s approach to business education, saying that the school is working to
be the most connected to the advantages and resources of a preeminent home
university and the most “distinctly global” among US business schools. He also
stressed SOM’s commitment to educating leaders for an increasingly complex
world. Yale University president Richard Levin ’74PhD addressed the class the
following day, discussed Yale’s history of helping to rejuvenate New Haven, and
encouraged students to be a part of the city. “The university has a deep
involvement in the economic and cultural development of the city,” Levin said.
“What’s still missing in New Haven is more of a culture of innovative start-up
companies with Yale graduates at the helm.”
SOM alumni visit Evans
Hall
A group of Yale SOM alumni
from the Connecticut area recently got a chance to see the rapid progress being
made on Edward P. Evans Hall, the new home of the Yale School of Management.
The Connecticut chapter of the SOM Alumni Association organized a tour of the
building for alumni on August 3. Over the summer workers installed glass panels
around the courtyard at the center of Evans Hall and the Beinecke Room, a
function space at the back of the building. Steel framing for interior walls is
in place, as is drywall in the building’s signature curved classrooms. With
these interior structures visible, the visitors were able to get a sense of
many of the spaces in the building, including the classrooms, the dining hall,
the student lounge just off the courtyard, the Wilbur L. Ross Jr. Library, the
Beinecke Room, and the staff and faculty offices that surround an atrium in the
building’s south wing.
School of Medicine
Robert J. Alpern, Dean
med.yale.edu/ysm
Alumnus returns to chair
pediatrics
George Lister, a 1973
graduate of the School of Medicine and a member of its pediatrics faculty from
1988 to 2003, has returned to campus as chair of the Department of Pediatrics.
He will also serve as chief of pediatrics at Yale–New Haven Hospital and
physician-in-chief at Yale–New Haven Children’s Hospital. Lister returns to Yale
from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, where he served as
chair and professor of pediatrics and associate dean of education since leaving
Yale in 2003.
RNA biologist receives
twin honors
The School of Medicine’s
Joan A. Steitz has been awarded two major prizes that recognize outstanding
achievements of women scientists. Steitz, Sterling Professor of Molecular
Biophysics and Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator,
was awarded the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize of Rockefeller University for her
more than four decades of research on how messenger RNA is fashioned in order
to make proteins from the instructions in DNA, a process crucial to all life.
She was also named winner of the 2012 Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science,
created by Vanderbilt University School of Medicine “to honor and recognize a
woman scientist of national reputation who has a stellar record of research
accomplishments and is known for her mentorship of women in science.”
Two doctoral students are
named HHMI fellows
Two Yale doctoral students
have received fellowships through a new initiative of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute (HHMI). Sashka Dimitrievska, in the Department of Biomedical
Engineering, and Alice Qinhua Zhou, in the Department of Molecular Biophysics
and Biochemistry, will each receive a $43,000 award, which is given to 50
international graduate students named fellows each year. Dimitrievska, a native
of Canada, is working with Laura E. Niklason, professor of anesthesiology and of
biomedical engineering, in studying aspects of engineered blood vessels. Zhou,
a native of China, is working with Corey S. O’Hern, associate professor of
mechanical engineering and of physics, and Lynne J. Regan, professor of
molecular biophysics and biochemistry and of chemistry, in a study to predict
and redesign protein-protein interactions.
School of Music
Robert Blocker, Dean
music.yale.edu
Tuba player joins YSM
faculty
In 2006, the young tuba
player Carol Jantsch was planning to begin her master of music degree at the
Yale School of Music. But while still a senior at the University of Michigan,
she won the position of principal tuba in the Philadelphia Orchestra, thus becoming
the first female tuba player in a major symphony orchestra. This fall she
finally arrived at Yale, now as the newest member of the School of Music
faculty. She performed at the school’s opening convocation on September 6,
bringing down the house with her virtuoso performance of Arban’s “The Carnival
of Venice.”
Ellington Fellowship
celebrates 40th anniversary
In 1972, the Duke Ellington
Fellowship was established at Yale, beginning a series of concerts and
residencies by jazz legends and rising artists, both on the Yale campus and in
the city’s public schools. Kingman Brewster, then the president of Yale,
presented the first Ellington medals to 30 jazz greats, including the Duke
himself. Since then, a series of extraordinary jazz concerts has featured such
luminaries as Eubie Blake, Paul Robeson, Marian Anderson, Odetta, Joe Williams,
Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Sonny Greer, Jo Jones, Max Roach, Ray Brown, Charles
Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie, to name just a few. The program’s founder and
director, Willie Ruff, has been a member of the YSM faculty since 1971. The
40th anniversary season of the Ellington Fellowship opened this fall with
concerts by the Mingus Big Band and the Lou Donaldson Quartet.
Piano students perform in
China
Seven piano students travel
to Shanghai and Xiamen this November to perform piano sonatas of Sergei
Prokofiev. The performances follow the publication of a new performance edition
of the sonatas, edited by faculty member Boris Berman and released by Shanghai
Music Publishing House in 2011. The students—Melody Quah ’13ArtA, Euntaek Kim
’13ArtA, Larry Weng ’14MusAM, Esther Park ’13MusAM, Scott MacIsaac ’14CMus, and
Henry Kramer ’13ArtA—will join with two students from the Shanghai Conservatory
to play all nine of Prokofiev’s sonatas. There will be two concerts in
Shanghai, on November 20 and 21, and two in Xiamen, on November 23 and 24.
School of Nursing
Margaret Grey, Dean
nursing.yale.edu
Students begin DNP
program
With the start of the
semester, YSN welcomed its first students in the new doctor of nursing practice
(DNP) program. Fourteen students from around the world are part of this
inaugural class, bringing a myriad of backgrounds, experiences, and
accomplishments to this hybrid program (intensive on-campus and online
sessions). This class includes the only practicing nurse practitioner in all of
Israel, the lifetime chief of the Mohegan Tribe in Connecticut, and a veteran
of years of serving the very poor with Mother Teresa in the Sishu Bawan
(orphanage) and Home for the Dying.
The DNP is
a post-master’s program targeting nurses with a master’s degree in nursing or
other closely related fields. The program is intended for mid-career nurses who
seek to advance in the practice of nursing through leadership, management, and
participation in interdisciplinary policy and politics. For more information on
the DNP program at Yale and the new class of students, please visit
nursing.yale.edu/dnp.
Grant will fund diabetes
research
Dean Margaret Grey and YSM
professor Stuart Weinzimer are the codirectors of a recently awarded grant
funded through the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Diabetes
and Digestive and Kidney Disease (NIDDK) to support multidisciplinary research
training in the behavioral aspects of type 1 diabetes. YSN is the only nursing
school to be granted this one-time-only award, which will support a pre-PhD
student and two postdoctoral fellows. The program will bring together
scientists from nursing, medicine, and the behavioral sciences who will work
with programs such as Diabetes Endocrinology Research Center, the Yale Center
for Clinical Investigation, and NIDDK-sponsored study groups.
Alumna receives national
award
Amy Romano ’04MSN, a certified
nurse-midwife from Milford, Connecticut, has been named the recipient of the
2012 Kitty Ernst Award by the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM). The
award was presented at the 57th annual meeting and exposition of the ACNM in
Long Beach, California. Romano is best known as a talented writer who has
helped translate the value of midwifery care to the public via social media,
particularly with her work on Lamaze International’s award-winning blog, Science and Sensibility.
School of Public Health
Paul D. Cleary, Dean
publichealth.yale.edu
Health and social
networks
To better understand the
relationship between social networks and health, researchers at the School of
Public Health are turning to modern technology—in the form of smartphones—to
monitor the flow of information among dozens of people and discover how this
influences health outcomes such as substance abuse and sexually transmitted
diseases.
The study
will focus on existing social networks in three New Haven
neighborhoods—consisting of a total of 120 men ranging in age from 18 to 25
years old—and follow their cell phone activity over a period of several months.
Each participant’s physical location will be tracked through global
positioning, and a computer program that interfaces with the phones will
register all incoming and outgoing calls and text messages.
Fieldwork for state
educators
Ten Connecticut middle- and
high-school science teachers slogged through area woodlands and wetlands
earlier this year in search of tiny quarry: mosquito larvae. The educators were
part of a weeklong summer institute studying insect-borne diseases that are
expanding into the United States, including dengue fever, Chagas disease, and
leishmaniasis, and how their ranges are being affected by climate variables,
particularly temperature and precipitation. Drawing upon their experiences in
the field and the lab, the teachers are now collaborating on the development of
a science curriculum that immerses students in the dynamics of disease
transmission and generates interest in the biological sciences. The program,
led by YSPH senior research scientist Leonard E. Munstermann, is funded by a
five-year National Institutes of Health Science Education Partnership Award.
Low birth weight,
discrimination linked
New research from the Yale
School of Public Health finds that chronic, everyday instances of
discrimination against pregnant, urban women of color may play a significant
role in contributing to babies with low birth weight. Twice as many black women
give birth to low birth weight babies than white or Latina women in the United
States. While the reasons for this disparity remain unclear, initial evidence
suggests a link may exist between discrimination experienced while pregnant and
the incidence of low birth weight. In addition, experiences of discrimination
have also been linked to depression, which causes physiological changes that
can have a negative effect on a pregnancy.
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