Epidemiology department members travel to Thailand to present research, meet with international partners

group posing for cameraEpidemiology faculty, staff and NIDA T32 predoctoral fellows from the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions traveled to Thailand to participate in the 22nd World Psychiatric Association’s World Congress of Psychiatry, held in Bangkok August 3-6, and meet with partners at Chulalongkorn University.

The team was composed of Dr. Linda B. Cottler, PHHP’s senior associate dean for research, dean’s professor of epidemiology and founding director of UF HealthStreet; Dr. Catherine Striley, an associate professor of epidemiology and deputy director of UF HealthStreet; Zoe Martusewicz, an administrative coordinator; and students Nicole Fitzgerald, Anna Wang, Nae Won and Andrew McCabe, who are predoctoral fellows under UF’s T32 training grant funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The team presented their research at the Congress and met international experts in the field, including Dr. Norman Sartorius, the former director of the World Health Organization’s Division of Mental Health, to discuss mental health and substance use from a global perspective.

In addition, they met with leadership, faculty and doctoral students at Chulalongkorn University, a premier public university in southeast Asia. Chulalongkorn University adopted a model of UF’s community engagement program, HealthStreet, for implementation in Thailand in order to promote community health. UF faculty and students exchanged information on the similarities and differences between the models as well as plans to continue the collaboration between the two universities.