Olean Native, Noted Public Health Researcher to Give Lecture at SBU

Olean native and University of Georgia scientist John E.Vena, Ph.D., will visit St. Bonaventure University this month to share insights into how individual rights must be balanced with public health protections.

At 7 p.m. Thursday, March 11, Vena will give a public lecture, “Health Disparities and Challenges to You for Global Health,” in Dresser Auditorium of the John J. Murphy Professional Building at St. Bonaventure. The greater Olean area community is welcome to attend as Vena addresses questions such as:

· What is public heath and how can we address the disturbing health disparities in the U.S. and globally?

· What are the threats from global warming?

· What paths can you take, following the Franciscan traditions, to meet the challenges ahead?

Steps to self-renewal and personal and career strategies will be highlighted.

Vena will also lead discussions on public health issues during a forum with faculty and staff on Friday, March 12, and with SBU’s health care students on Saturday, March 13, at Mt. Irenaeus.

Vena, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at St. Bonaventure, studies factors that affect the health of populations and is presently researching occupational and environmental risk factors that impact breast, lung and bladder cancers.

At the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health, Vena is head of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the University of Georgia Foundation Professor in Public Health. He also is a Distinguished Cancer Scholar with the Georgia Cancer Coalition, which selects scientists engaged in the most promising areas of cancer research who can strengthen the state’s research talent, capacity, infrastructure and funding.

Vena has published extensively in the field of environmental and occupational epidemiology and his studies have included descriptive and analytic studies of air and water pollution, bladder cancer and drinking water contaminants, occupational exposures, health of municipal workers including firefighters and police officers, diet, electromagnetic fields and persistent environmental toxicants.

He has published extensively in cancer epidemiology especially on breast, lung and bladder cancer, including case-control studies of occupational and environmental risk factors. He has led a multi-project cohort study of New York state sportsmen investigating the effects of persistent environmental toxicants. Outcomes under investigation included adverse reproductive and developmental effects and biomarkers of intermediate effects, including endocrine disruption and a newly funded study will be looking at cancer risks. He was an invited speaker to the President’s Cancer Panel in December 2008.

Before joining the University of Georgia, he served as professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. Vena was professor of social and preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a research fellow at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (1981-2003) and director of the Environment & Society Institute (1999-2003).

He received his B.S. in biology from St. Bonaventure and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in epidemiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. A native of Olean, Vena is also a graduate of Archbishop Walsh High School.

Vena is a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the American Epidemiological Society, a member of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, Society for Epidemiologic Research and the American Public Health Association (APHA) and serves on the Governing Council for Epidemiology for APHA.

Vena served on the National Academy of Science Committee for the evaluation of the impact of oceans on human health in 1999 and the Committee on Gulf War and Health: Pesticides and Health, Solvent/Cancer Panel in 2002-2003. He has served as external reviewer for both the Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology Branch Intramural program at The National Cancer Institute and the Epidemiology Branch Intramural Program at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and has served on numerous NIH grant review panels.

Vena presently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Since 1981, Vena has taught courses in epidemiologic methods and applications in occupational health and in environmental health and has mentored graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty.

His visit to St. Bonaventure is sponsored by the University’s Franciscan Center for Social Concern and Clare College.