School Notes: School of Public Health
November/December 2022

Faculty receive international honors

Yale professor Paul Anastas, widely considered the “father of green chemistry,” was honored September 1 with the prestigious August Wilhelm von Hofmann Commemorative Medal by the German Chemistry Society. Past recipients of the medal have gone on to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry. 

Heping Zhang, the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics at the Yale School of Public Health, delivered the prestigious 2022 Neyman Memorial Lecture presented by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics—one of the highest honors in statistical societies. Given every three years, the Neyman Lecture highlights innovative work at the intersection of statistical theory and scientific research.

Fracking sites associated with risk of childhood cancer

A study led by YSPH associate professor Nicole Deziel found that Pennsylvania children living near unconventional oil and gas (UOG) developments at birth were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of 2 and 7 than those who did not live near this activity, after accounting for other factors that could influence cancer risk. 

The registry-based study, published August 17 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, included nearly 2,500 Pennsylvania children, 405 of whom were diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common type of cancer in children.

“Unconventional oil and gas development can both use and release chemicals that have been linked to cancer, so [exposure] to these chemical carcinogens is a major public health concern,” Deziel said.