2020 HHD Alumni Society Fall Award Recipients

The HHD Alumni Society Board has selected HHD’s Alumni Award recipients for 2020. Under normal circumstances, the award recipients would be recognized at the board’s fall awards dinner, but due to safety concerns related to the pandemic, recipients have instead been notified and will be mailed their awards. We hope to resume our ceremonial dinner next year.

Below are this year's recipients of the Alumni Recognition, Alumni Service, Emerging Professional - Graduate Degree, and Emerging Professional -Undergraduate Degree Awards. 

Alumni Recognition Award

The Alumni Recognition Award is presented to an alumnus/alumna of the College of Health and Human Development who has demonstrated professional excellence and exemplary voluntary community involvement in a health and human development field.

She began her relationship with the Special Olympics when she volunteered at the 1990 Pennsylvania State Special Olympics Summer Games as a Penn State athletic training student. In the years that followed, Gazzillo Diaz extended her volunteership to the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committees as a certified athletic trainer.

In addition to her degree from Penn State, Gazzillo Diaz earned a master’s degree in Exercise and Sport Sciences and Athletic Training from the University of Florida in 1993 and a doctorate in Educational Administration Higher Education from Rutgers University in 1999. She is a certified and licensed athletic trainer and licensed massage therapist. She is currently a Professor of Athletic Training and Sports Medicine at William Paterson University, and she recently completed a 20-year stint as director of the Athletic Training Education Program.

Alumni Service Award

The Alumni Service Award recognizes an alumnus or alumna of the College of Health and Human Development who has positively impacted the quality of people's lives through service to others above and beyond their call of duty.

Harrison is the founder of the Food Dignity Project, a strategic program for leaders who are committed to nutrition outreach that prioritize healthy food access. Her advocacy has impacted thousands of people through her partnerships with corporations, non-profit organizations and universities.

Harrison earned her bachelor’s degree in Nutrition in 1997. She now holds multiple positions in service-oriented sectors. She is an advisory board member for the Pennsylvania American Academy of Pediatrics Food Insecurity EPIC program, an ambassador of the National Dairy Council and the President of the Al Beech West Side Food Pantry. She also hosts a weekly podcast titled “Food Dignity.”

Emerging Professional - Graduate Degree

The Emerging Professional–Graduate Degree Award recognizes a graduate of the past ten years who has demonstrated professional excellence and/or exemplary voluntary community involvement in the health and human development professions. This year, there are two recipients of the Emerging Professional – Graduate Degree Award.

Conserve has contributed to national efforts to promote HIV testing and develop policy for HIV self-testing in Tanzania as part of his ongoing project funded by a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health. He has expanded his research on HIV self-testing to South Africa and his native country Haiti in collaboration with the World Health Organization and other national and international health agencies. Conserve’s commitment to, and his frequent immersion in, the communities in the countries he works have contributed to his growing reputation as an international expert in HIV prevention. He is currently leveraging his HIV self-testing research to inform the emerging SARS-CoV-2 self-testing field.

He has produced policy-relevant publications on diverse topics such as crop burning and respiratory health, pathways from adolescent childbearing to child undernutrition, trends and drivers of anemia, and determinants of common mental disorders in Indian mothers of young children.

Recently, Scott co-edited a series of over 30 blogs on COVID-19 in relation to food security, health systems, nutrition, gender and agriculture in South Asia. He is a co-principal investigator on an upcoming evaluation of a World Food Programme intervention to improve farmer resilience to climate shocks in Sri Lanka. He is also actively engaged in capacity building of young professionals in India.

Emerging Professional - Undergraduate Degree

The Emerging Professional–Undergraduate Degree Award recognizes a graduate of the past ten years who has demonstrated professional excellence and/or exemplary voluntary community involvement in the health and human development professions.

After Musso graduated with a bachelor’s in Nutritional Sciences in 2010, he pursued a master’s in the field of public health at Boston University, where he served as president of the student senate.

Musso spent seven years working with the California-based non-profit organization, Vitamin Angels. His role there took him to Africa more than a dozen times to partner with governments, NGOs and universities to expand distribution of life-saving vitamin A supplements for children and multivitamins for pregnant mothers. These programs reached more than 18,000,000 children under five and pregnant mothers in 2018 alone. He currently lives in Washington DC and works an award manager with Save the Children, where he supports a USAID-funded initiative on nutrition security.