Global MPH Program Director James Macinko is the lead author of a newly published study which shows that two-thirds of the difference between death rates among African Americans and Caucasians are now due to causes that could be prevented or cured. The study appears in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The major reason for the black-white mortality gap - representing about 30 percent of the gap for men and 42 percent for women - is due to conditions that have effective treatments, the study found. Disparities were most pronounced for conditions or diseases for which deaths can be prevented, such as diabetes, stroke, infectious and respiratory diseases, preventable cancers, and circulatory diseases like hypertension.

Dr. Macinko co-authored the report with Irma T. Elo, Ph.D. The report can be accessed online here.

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) has elected Robert Berne, NYU senior vice president for health and a professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, as a new fellow. Senior VP Berne, who has been instrumental in the founding, development and continuing oversight of the Global MPH program, is one of five fellows from NYU elected to the AAAS this year. AAAS will welcome this year's fellows at an induction ceremony on Oct. 10 at the academy headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A complete list of the new members is available here.

Senior VP Berne, a scholar of public education policy and financing, furnished expert analysis and testimony in the landmark school finance case, CFE v. the State of New York. He has authored The Relationships Between Financial Reporting and the Measurement of Financial Condition and co-authored The Measurement of Equity in School Finance, Hard Lessons: Public Schools and Privatization, and The Financial Analysis of Governments. As senior vice president for health, Berne is responsible for working with deans and other university leaders on long-term academic, financial, and operational strategies for the wide range of health activities at NYU.

Fall 2009 incoming Global MPH student Alexandre Carvalho has been awarded an NYU Reynolds Graduate Fellowship in Social Entrepeneurship. The Reynolds program is designed to attract, encourage and train a new generation of leaders in public service, and provides up to $25,000 for each of two years of study. Fellows also participate in an intensive two-year curricular and co-curricular component designed to help prepare them to be the next generation of social entrepreneurial leaders.

Dr. Carvalho is a physician from Brazil, and the work he presented in his Reynolds application involves working with impoverished rural communities there to help them write and produce their own heath education films.

For more information on the Reynolds Fellowship at NYU, please visit their website.