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For Cole Jamal (they/she), working on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is more than a dream job in federal policy—it’s personal. “At one point in my past, I was on SNAP,” they recall. “Now, I get to help ensure the program is run with integrity—and that people get benefits in a timely way when they need them.” As a SNAP Management Analyst with the USDA’s Northeast Regional Office, Jamal supports SNAP operations across eight states and territories, helping to administer one of the nation’s most critical safety net programs. They serve as a connector across the region’s multiple branches—coordinating logistics, streamlining communications, and strengthening oversight…
The federal research funding supporting the development of a pediatric heart pump has been restarted, seven months after it stopped. But those lost months of work will add at least a year to the wait for the device. “It’s frustrating; it’s unfair,” said James Antaki, the Susan K. McAdam Professor of Heart Assist Technology at the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering in Cornell Engineering, who has spent more than two decades working on the PediaFlow pump. “However, I accept that you make do with what life has given you. So we’re going to try to make the best of our current situation and count our blessings. We’re grateful that we have the federal funding, and we’ll do our best…
For the first time, the President’s Awards for Employee Excellence united Cornell employees across time zones and continents, as staff gathered in the Statler Ballroom and tuned in from New York City and Qatar to celebrate the achievements and contributions of their colleagues. More than 75 employees were honored in this year’s ceremony on Dec. 3, representing Cornell’s Ithaca campus as well as Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. This year also marked the first time nominations were open to all three campuses…
Explore the 2025 Cornell Public Health Magazine, a collection of stories celebrating the amazing accomplishments of our students, faculty, alumni, and partners!
It’s National Rural Health Day! Cornell’s Health Impacts Core (CHIC) and Cornell Public Health faculty are doing a lot to support public health and wellbeing in rural communities across the U.S. Dr. Sabine Jamal, CHIC manager of public health workforce development shares more.
Just-in-time training for how to handle a food poisoning outbreak; a decision guide for air quality risk; a course for recognizing and responding to mental health issues. These are just a sampling of the resources provided by the Cornell Health Impacts Core (CHIC), which just celebrated the one-year anniversary of its launch. In this short amount of time, CHIC, which is administered by Cornell Public Health, has seen success despite significant national challenges pitted against public health. In recognition of these impacts and the years of groundwork to prepare for them, CHIC’s team has been awarded the Cornell President’s Award for Employee Excellence…
Aquaculture – the farming of fish and other aquatic organisms – is the world’s fastest-growing food production system. The sharpest growth in aquaculture is happening in Africa. Average annual growth rates have exceeded 10% in recent years measured by production value. Over the past 10 years in Lake Victoria, shared between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, aquaculture has transformed from a small-scale enterprise into a vast and diverse commercial industry. Lake Victoria is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake. Cage aquaculture, the farming of fish within cages, has expanded rapidly in the…
“Rats are adapted to human environments, they’re all around us,” Plowright says. “As we degrade habitats, we bring rats with us, and we’re potentially bringing a bridging host with us to help us be exposed to the next pandemic pathogen…
In the aftermath of COVID-19, the question of where the next pandemic might come from looms large. Increasingly, eyes turn to bats. The diversity of deadly viruses these much-maligned mammals carry is astonishing – as is their ability to host at least some of them without falling ill. “Bats also suffer certain diseases, but overall, they don’t suffer disease like we do,” says Prof Linfa Wang, a virologist at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. “They carry all these nasty viruses that are highly lethal when they jump – not only to humans, but to pigs, horses, cats, everything. But in bats, they don’t even induce a fever.” Bats have been blamed for some of the deadliest viruses to cross into humans – from SARS, Marburg and Nipah to…
The latest installment of the Cornell Veterinary Podcast features Dr. Amandine Gamble, assistant professor in the Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, who joins show host Michelle Moyal, D.V.M.’ 07, to talk about her work as a wildlife disease ecologist. Learn how her career journey has taken her to far-flung places like the Falkland Islands, where the Wi-Fi is bad but the mutton is tasty — and how seabirds make the perfect study models…
New York City’s mostly indoor cats easily caught SARS-CoV-2 during the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic – and most were asymptomatic and were likely infected by their owners, according to a new study from a sample of cats that visited an Upper East Side veterinary clinic. The study, published Oct. 7 in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases One Health, confirms that cats can efficiently catch SARS-CoV-2 from humans, though very few cases of humans catching it from cats have been reported. Their results point to the importance of including pets in public health surveillance – as well as the low public health risk infected cats pose…
In the past 20 years, extreme wildfires have more than doubled, causing destruction to those directly impacted and spreading air pollution across borders and even continents. Outdoor air pollution, and the disease it engenders, is estimated to cause roughly 8 million deaths globally each year. A team of scientists from Cornell and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) are working to understand how air pollutants from dust and wildfires have changed over time, from 1850 to today, to improve predictions of future air pollution. They’ll also calculate respiratory disease, mortality risk and economic impact for a range of air quality scenarios, with a special focus on Latin America…