Danielle Hawkins

George Mason University graduate student Truman Deree is one of 20 students (one of five graduate fellows) awarded a 2024-25 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts Fellowship. He received the award for his photography, which he also shares at TrumanDereePhotography on Instagram.

How do environmental factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, air pollution, chemical exposures, social, genetic, and neighborhood exposures influence obesity and asthma rates? The College is exploring this question as it collaborates in the ECHO program, a seven-year initiative funded by the National Institutes of Health.

A new George Mason University College of Health and Human Services study is one of first individual-level studies to track movements and symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Janusz Wojtusiak led the study—one of the first individual-level studies to track movements and symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

New research led by George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services faculty Dr. Michelle Williams assessed African American breast cancer survivors’ risk factors and knowledge about cardiovascular disease in the Deep South. They found that although African American breast cancer survivors have a higher prevalence of CVD risk factors, their knowledge about CVD is low.

How can we better understand how people move during the pandemic and how they spread COVID-19? Janusz Wojtusiak, associate professor of health informatics and director of the Machine Learning Inference Lab is leading one of the first individual-level studies on social distancing.

A study led by Dr. Kenneth Griffin of George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services and researchers at National Health Promotion Associates (NHPA) finds that the Cadet Healthy Personal Skills (CHiPS) program shows promise in reducing unwanted sexual contact in military academies. The intervention, which was rigorously tested with more than 800 cadets during their first year at the academy, addresses a critical gap in evidence-based interventions.

New George Mason University study is first to examine unmet basic menstrual health needs, (often called ‘period poverty’) and associations with depression among college students. More than 14% of participants reported lack of access to menstrual products in the past year, and 10% reported period poverty every month. Women who experienced period poverty were more likely to report symptoms suggestive of moderate or severe depression.

In the first national study to assess use of e-cigarettes among adults with disabilities, George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services researchers found that e-cigarette use was more than twice as likely among adults with a cognitive disability (12.0%), an independent living disability (11.0%), or two or more disabilities (9.2%), compared to adults without disabilities (4.8%)

New George Mason University Study finds that health care professionals with a greater personal ability to respond to change experienced lower rates of burnout when their work environments offered strong communication, teamwork, and leadership support. This is one of the first studies to explore the effect of individual and organizational capacity for change on burnout among health care professionals.