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Department of Social and Behavioral Health News

Housed in the UNLV School of Public Health, the Department of Social and Behavioral Health is made up of faculty who are engaged in research that brings the community to the forefront through the development and evaluation of community based programs that promote health and prevent disease. Health education, health communication, and study of the social determinants of health and health disparities are essential to this area. Students in social and behavioral health are prepared to take on roles that help identify high-risk behaviors or trends in specific populations, and help to propose solutions that aim to improve overall public health in these communities.

Current Social and Behavioral Health News

man posing in front of vegas skyline
People | April 25, 2023

Manoj Sharma receives Community Engagement Award for his work to provide access and delivery of health care to marginalized groups.

UNLV letters surrounded by roses
Campus News | March 17, 2023

A roundup of news stories highlighting UNLV faculty and students who made headlines locally, nationally, and globally.

Scarlet and Gray, “REB's Glitter Squad”, Lester Cruz and Isabel Ferguson, take pictures and hype up students and families during the October 2022 homecoming football game.
Campus News | November 8, 2022

A collection of news stories highlighting UNLV students and faculty who made headlines locally, regionally, and internationally.

Lake Mead
Campus News | July 11, 2022

A collection of news stories highlighting UNLV experts who made headlines locally, nationally, and around the world.

books inside the U.N.L.V. Bookstore
Campus News | February 10, 2022

A collection of news stories highlighting the experts and events at UNLV.

students in classroom socially distanced and masked
Campus News | January 13, 2022

Infectious disease expert Brian Labus' hopes and concerns as UNLV's spring semester starts.

Social and Behavioral Health In The News

Sunday Guardian Live
May 14, 2023

Ramesh Chand, a 42-year-old chartered accountant in Delhi, woke up in the morning at 4 am with severe pain in the jaw so hard that he thought it would explode. He woke his wife and before they could do anything about it, he became unconscious. His wife called the ambulance and upon arrival at the hospital, he was declared dead. Cause: coronary heart disease.

Nevada Current
May 3, 2023

The Huntridge Family Clinic, the largest LGBTQ+-centered medical clinic in Southern Nevada, announced its temporary closing in April after a decade because of increased staffing costs, but hopes to be able to reopen by the end of the month.

The Sunday Guardian
April 15, 2023

As we observe a stress awareness month in April, there is cause for concern in India’s context. Stress has reached alarming levels in India. A recent survey conducted by Cigna TTK Health Insurance found that 89% of Indians reported being stressed.

KLAS-TV: 8 News Now
April 12, 2023

At one point or another most people experience stress which the World Health Organization defines as a state of worry or mental tension and how the body responds to that.

New India Abroad
March 20, 2023

Americans spend more on prescription drugs than any other country. One of the agendas of the Biden-Harris Administration has been to focus on lowering prescription drug prices and making them more affordable for American families.

Sunday Guardian
March 19, 2023

The fear of Covid-19 virus may have vanished in thin air, with health planners and citizens in India treating it as an “almost-over case”. But it is not. Given the news about long-term Covid infection still rattling many around the world, there is one worrying factor. It is the deep impact the virus has left on the mental health of many, including in India, where the population is ageing, underserved by the health care system, and is uninformed and poor. While we kept analyzing Covid-19 impacts primarily from business, jobs and economy angles, the pandemic has, in fact, exposed the fragility of the health system in India. Further, Bill Gates, the billionaire philanthropist, in his latest 304-page book, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic, talks about these fragile health systems and the need to develop a strong infrastructure to combat pandemics in the future.

Social and Behavioral Health Experts

An expert on health behavior and coping with stress.
An expert on lactation, breastfeeding, and maternal and child health and nutrition.
An expert on health disparties and LGBTQ aging adults with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

Recent Social and Behavioral Health Accomplishments

May 28, 2023
Kavita Batra (Medicine) and Manoj Sharma (Social & Behavioral Health; Internal Medicine) have co-edited a book titled, “Effective Use of Social Media in Public Health,” published by Elsevier (ISBN: 9780323956307). The book presents a current and extensive review of social media and its role in public health and health care. The book is divided…
May 23, 2023
Max Gakh (Environmental and Occupational Health), Tim Grigsby (Social and Behavioral Health), Courtney Coughenour (Environmental and Occupational Health), Malcolm Ahlo (Southern Nevada Health District), Kacie Washburn (Epidemiology and Biostatistics), and Shawn Gerstenberger (Environmental and Occupational Health) published an article titled, "…
May 16, 2023
Manoj Sharma (Social and Behavioral Health; Internal Medicine) coauthored an article titled, “Predisposing, enabling and reinforcing factors associated with opioid addiction helping behaviour in tri-state Appalachian counties: Application of the PRECEDE–PROCEED model–cross-sectional analysis,” in the journal, BMJ Open (Impact Factor: 3.007), in…
May 15, 2023
Manoj Sharma (Social and Behavioral Health; Internal Medicine) coauthored an article entitled, “Probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics in type 1 diabetes mellitus: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of clinical trials,” in the journal, Diabetes/Metabolism Research and Reviews (Impact Factor: 8.128) in association with colleagues from Ishafan…
May 5, 2023
Manoj Sharma (Social and Behavioral Health; Internal Medicine) received a grant of $449, 611 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s “National Initiative to Address COVID-19 Health Disparities among Populations at High-Risk and Underserved” administered through the Nevada State Health and Human Services Department. He is the…
May 5, 2023
Jason Flatt (Social and Behavioral Health) recently published with colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Discordance in chromosomal and self-reported sex in the UK Biobank: Implications for transgender- and intersex-inclusive data collection. We found about 200 individuals in UKBiobank with sex discordance…