Program Director, Master of Public Health
Professor
Contact
Dhitinut Ratnapradipa, PhD
Program Director, Master of Public Health
Professor
Dr. Dhitinut Ratnapradipa is appointed as a tenured Professor in the Public Health Program at Creighton University. Prior to his appointment at Creighton, he was a tenured professor at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, TX and at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL, where he served as the graduate director and MD/MPH Co-Director of the concurrent degree program with the SIU School of Medicine. Dr. Ratnapradipa was also clinical faculty at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and was adjunct faculty in the Department of Public Health Sciences, New Mexico State University, La Cruses, NM. Prior to academia, he, supervised the Health Promotion and Emerging Risks Program at the Rhode Island Department of Health.
Dr. Ratnapradipa research interest is environmental health promotion and using risk communication approaches and organizational behavior. He has served on NIH and US EPA grant review panels, and has secured grants from the US EPA, CDC, HRSA and the states of Illinois. He received his PhD from the University of Utah and completed fellowships with the Northeast Public Health Leadership Institute, the CDC/ATSDR Environmental Public Health Leadership Institute, the National Environmental Health Association/UL Ambassador Exchange, the ASTHO Environmental Public Health Peer-to-Peer Tracking Program, and the Visiting Partners Program in Occupational and Environmental Health and Safety at the University of Michigan Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering.
Dr. Ratnapradipa served on the Board of Directors for the Alliance for Healthy Homes. His professional contributions have been recognized by several organizations including National Environmental Health Association and the Society for Public Health Education. He is a technical editor for the Journal of Environmental Health and Associate Editor for Journal of International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research and Journal of Health Behavior and Policy Reviews.
Department
Clinical Research and Public Health
Position
Professor
Articles
- Journal of Environmental Health
Cardinal, C, Cardinal, C., Ratnapradipa, D., Scarbrough, A, Robins, A. and Boes, K. (2022). Extreme Winter Weather and vulnerable populations in Texas: Environmental Impacts of Public Utility Policies. .
84 (7), p. 12-19 2022 - Journal of Cancer Education
Kendra L. Ratnapradipa, Dhitinut Ratnapradipa, Yue Xie Increasing cancer workforce diversity is a priority for the National Cancer Institute. Cancer research encompasses a wide range of disciplines including basic, clinical, behavioral, and social sciences, but many research development programs are narrowly focused. Our aim was two-fold: to describe undergraduate students’ knowledge of and interest in cancer research careers and to identify factors associated with having ever considered a cancer research career. Undergraduate students (n = 857) completed a paper questionnaire. Most students associated cancer careers with bench science and healthcare or public health, but less so for applied fields. Most respondents (69%) received career counseling in high school but only 4% had cancer-specific career counseling. Nearly half the respondents (49%) indicated they or an immediate family member had been diagnosed with cancer, and 17% had attended a cancer appointment. Only 10% of respondents indicated that they had ever considered a career in cancer research. Associated factors included cancer-specific career counseling (odds ratio [OR] 8.05; 95% confidence interval [CI] 3.60, 18.03), attended a cancer appointment (OR 2.37; 95% CI 1.34, 4.20), being slightly (vs. very) worried about developing cancer (OR 0.32; 95% CI 0.15, 0.68), and Other (vs. White) race (OR 2.83; 95% CI 1.34, 5.97). Personal experience with cancer and knowledge of cancer careers appear to be driving factors in career choice for cancer research. Increasing student exposure to cancer careers, possibly in junior high or high school, may be one mechanism for recruiting more underrepresented undergraduate students into cancer-related fields of study.
36, p. 630-638 2021 - Burns
Thereasa E. Abrams, Roberta J. Ogletree, Dhitinut Ratnapradipa, Michael W. Neumeister Introduction The individual implications of major burns are likely to affect the full spectrum of patients' physical, emotional, psychological, social, environmental, spiritual and vocational health. Yet, not all of the post-burn health implications are inevitably negative. Utilizing a qualitative approach, this heuristic phenomenological study explores the experiences and perceptions early (ages 18-35) and midlife (ages 36-64) adults providing insight for how participants perceived their burns in relationship to their post-burn health. Methods Participants were interviewed using semi-structured interview questions framed around seven domains of health. Interview recordings were transcribed verbatim then coded line by line, identifying dominant categories related to health. Categories were analyzed identifying shared themes among the study sample. Results Participants were Caucasian, seven males and one female. Mean age at time of interviews was 54.38 and 42.38 at time of burns. Mean time since burns occurred was 9.38 years with a minimum of (20%) total body surface area (TBSA) burns. Qualitative content analysis rendered three emergent health-related categories and associated themes that represented shared meanings within the participant sample. The category of 'Physical Health' reflected the theme physical limitations, pain and sensitivity to temperature. Within the category of 'Intellectual Health' were themes of insight, goal setting and self-efficacy, optimism and humor and within 'Emotional Health' were the themes empathy and gratitude. Conclusions By exploring subjective experiences and perceptions of health shared through dialog with experienced burned persons, there are opportunities to develop a more complete picture of how holistic health may be affected by major burns that in turn could support future long-term rehabilitative trajectories of early and midlife adult burn patients.
42, p. 152-162 2016