EPI

MPH student qualifies for US Olympic squad

When Katelyn Abeln turned 13, she aged out of her 4-H BB gun team, so she and her father, Jerry, started one for air pistol. At that young age, Abeln never imagined it would lead her to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Abeln is a student at The Ohio State University, pursuing her master’s degree in public health and epidemiology. She was a vital part of Ohio State’s pistol team, which won national championships in the last three consecutive years.

Get to Know: Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson

What made you decide to come to The Ohio State University?

I am originally from Detroit where there's a very striking racial disparity in preterm birth, the adverse birth outcome on which I focus. I found that Columbus’s preterm birth outcome is one of the worse in the country. There were no social epidemiologists here at Ohio State and the potential to create a social epidemiology class was appealing because a lot of students haven't been exposed to the subject discipline of social epidemiology which merges sociology and epidemiology together.

Quality is an 'afterthought' in the campaign for health care access, report finds

Associate professor of epidemiology Marcel Yotebieng, MD, MPH, PhD, alongside 13 other experts in the field, co-authored a report released in August by the National Academy of Medicine.

The report, titled “Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving health care worldwide,” describes a need for the public health community to shift their focus from strictly providing access to health services to instead providing high-quality, effective health care.