Students

Seven Mailman School students were awarded the 2010 Susan P. Baker Prize for Injury Prevention in Native Americans and honored at a reception at the School on December 7th.

Injuries are the leading cause of death during the first four decades of life, and take a particularly great toll of young Native Americans. For example, motor vehicle-related death rates of Native Americans are twice the rates for other Americans, and suicide rates among 15-24 year old Native Americans are more than double the rate of the U.S. average for that age group.

The award was established by Susan P. Baker, MPH, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, to encourage students to address this issue.  Dr. Baker was the Mailman School's 2010 winner of the Calderone Prize in Public Health.

Recipients will use the awards to undertake a research project on injuries to Native Americans or other indigenous people of the U.S. or Canada, in the hope that their work will ultimately lead to needed policy changes and/or environmental changes that would benefit Native Americans.

All graduate students at the Mailman School were encouraged to submit proposals in October 2010. A review committee led by Dr. Guohua Li, Professor of Epidemiology, selected the winners from a highly competitive pool of applicants.

The first place winner was Kristyn Bigback who received $2,000 to study the impact of state and tribal GDL laws on motor vehicle crashes in American Indian/Alaskan Native youth populations. Six additional students received prizes of $500. 

Dr. Li, whose work focuses on the area of injury epidemiology and prevention said in presenting the awards, “We were delighted by the enormously high caliber of proposals submitted by the students.  Each one was a winner in our estimation, and we look forward to seeing the results of their research and contributions to the field in the years ahead.”

The six recipients of the $500 award and respective research projects are:

• Carla Foster, Impact of Childhood Moderate Traumatic Brain Injury in Native American
• Katherine Hensel, Gender-based violence and suicidal ideation among Native American youth
• Sarah Jubinski, Innovative Approaches to Preventing Native American Elder Abuse
• Nicole Levitz, Spirit Lake Research Proposal – The Missing Spirit Around Devil’s Lake
• Charley Liu, Comparison of death rates from injuries between Native Americans and Aboriginal Canadians
• Mina Tanaka, Gang Violence on Native Lands

December 15, 2010