Feature Channels: Public Health

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No, sitting is not the new smoking, despite what countless newspaper articles have peddled in recent years.

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Firearm violence is a significant public health problem worldwide. In the United States, firearms are used to kill almost 100 people daily. Yet despite the staggering impact of firearm violence, there is limited research directed at preventing or addressing its impact on individuals, families and communities.

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“Think globally, act locally” is a popular global health idea that encourages people to consider the health of the entire planet while taking actions in their own cities and communities. And it’s an idea that inspired a group of students in the Perelman School of Medicine to join with other medical schools in Philadelphia and start a group dedicated to the growing field of global surgery. Until recently, surgery has been largely omitted from global health efforts, taking a back seat to infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. But as progress is made to treat and prevent these diseases, it has become clear that there is a significant need to focus on treating people in resource-limited settings who are in need of surgical care. And this need touches almost every aspect of health care from cancer to obstetrics to orthopedics. In fact, according to the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, more than 18 million people die each year from lack of surgical care.

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New research by Lijun Song suggests that knowing high-status people may not always be good for your health--but it depends on how economically unequal your country is.

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By Paul Keckley, PhD

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Skeletal stem cells are valuable because it's thought they can heal many types of bone injury, but they're difficult to find because researchers don't know exactly what they look like or where they live.

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New method developed by Mount Sinai team allows systematic study of effects of a wide range of drugs on the developing fetus

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Graduates who earn UWM's new coordinated master’s degree in public health and social work will be well positioned to succeed in two careers experiencing rapid job growth

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Health People: Community Preventive Health Institute filed a petition today with the New York City Board of Health to formally demand the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to declare Type 2 diabetes a public health emergency and finally confront the city’s runaway diabetes epidemic.

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First-of-its kind research, led by the University of Washington, Northeastern University and Harvard University, delves into public perceptions of gun violence and the leading causes of death in the U.S.

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Two strains of influenza D have been identified, one affecting cows and the other both cows and pigs, but antibodies have been found in goat, sheep and horses. Researchers are evaluating the likelihood of this stable virus becoming a risk to humans.

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As many as 16.5 million adults in America suffer from a skin disease known as atopic dermatitis, an inflammatory disease that results in red, itchy skin. The estimate comes from a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, which also projected 6.6 million of these adults have disease that would be classified as moderate to severe, leading to a decrease in quality of life.

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PHILADELPHIA — A $17.5 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) will propel Penn Medicine research efforts to prevent Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). Harold I. Feldman, MD, MSCE, chair of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics and director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and J.

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Veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder were less anxious and depressed and had an improved quality of life after an eight-week therapeutic horseback riding program, according to a Baylor University study.

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Exposure to wood smoke can have different effects on the respiratory immune systems of men and women – effects that may be obscured when data from men and women are lumped together.

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In this issue, find research on infant sugary drink consumption, China's top 20 health challenges, aging and healthy years in the Netherlands, and increasing opioid use in Massachusetts

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Using a novel biomarker panel to track and measure kidney function, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and University of California San Francisco School of Medicine report that lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mm Hg does not damage the kidney organ itself. Instead, any negative changes to clinical results are more likely due to decreased blood flow.

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E-cigarette brand JUUL’s Twitter handle is attracting adolescents to the point that at least a quarter of its followers appear to be under age 18. Many of these minors – to whom it is illegal to sell nicotine-delivery products – are retweeting JUUL’s messages, amplifying its advertisements.

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Rachael Lee, M.D.In a retrospective cohort study conducted at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of Infectious Diseases, patients with candidemia — a yeast infection in the bloodstream — had more positive outcomes as they relate to mortality when infectious disease consultation, or IDC, occurred during their hospital stay.

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In a report published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, West Virginia University researcher Michael McCawley and his colleagues pinpoint shortcomings in how miners’ exposure to respirable coal-mine dust is monitored. Inhaling this dust over time leads to black lung disease.

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Biochemists, microbiologists, drug discovery experts and infectious disease doctors have teamed up in a new study that shows antibiotics are not always necessary to cure sepsis in mice. Instead of killing causative bacteria with antibiotics, researchers treated infected mice with molecules that block toxin formation in bacteria. Every treated mouse survived. The breakthrough study, published in Scientific Reports, suggests infections in humans might be cured the same way.

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Texas Biomed researchers – in collaboration with the University of Iowa – are trying to find out how malarial infections impact people exposed to Ebola virus. Both diseases are endemic in that region.

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A startling report from Health People: Community Preventive Health Institute, to be released at a press conference at the City Hall steps on Wednesday, October 17th, reveals that New York City diabetes-related foot amputations have soared 55% in eight years.

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Women in Nigeria whose clerics extol the benefits of family planning were significantly more likely to adopt modern contraceptive methods, new research suggests, highlighting the importance of engaging religious leaders to help increase the country’s stubbornly low uptake of family planning services.

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Robust environmental monitoring should be used as the world approaches global eradication of polio, say University of Michigan researchers who recently studied the epidemiology of the 2013 silent polio outbreak in Rahat, Israel.

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Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at UC San Diego Health, professor of medicine and associate dean for informatics and technology at the School of Medicine, and a founding faculty member of UC San Diego Halicioğlu Data Science Institute, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

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Study shows that vehicles with advanced technology could potentially reduce crashes, injuries and deaths.

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Fear never works. Or does it? Fear can be a powerful tool in public health efforts, although graphic, emotionally evocative campaigns have been the source of controversy over the past half-century.

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Arizona State University professor Matt Buman and colleagues published a paper debunking the sensationalized health myth

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Tamara Strauss has been living with high-grade, stage IV pancreatic neuroendocrine cancer for more than three years. Current treatments, although effective for her, are highly toxic. Tamara enrolled in a first-of-its-kind, pilot study at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health to test a personalized vaccine using her unique cancer mutations to boost an anti-tumor immune response.

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The study found that people living in all areas of Puerto Rico faced an elevated risk of mortality during the first two months after the storm, but this risk elevation was most prominent, and prolonged, for people living in the poorest parts of the island.

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New research from the University of Georgia suggests that in the case of HPV, health care providers shouldn’t place too much faith in the smart device alone to get their message across.

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Hoping to speed up the move from idea to application, West Virginia University and 23 other regional institutions have come together to create a “virtual hub” that will ultimately help speed the commercialization of groundbreaking university research.

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ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz, Pharm.D., Sc.D. (Hon.), FASHP, today attended a White House ceremony to commemorate the signing of S. 2553 and S. 2554, the “Know the Lowest Price Act” and “Patient Right to Know Drug Prices Act,” respectively. ASHP, independently and as a lead member of the Steering Committee of the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing, has long advocated for measures that would improve transparency in drug pricing.

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Speed cameras rank among the most cost-effective social policies, saving both money and lives. Using the 140 speed cameras in New York City as a case study, researchers reported that doubling the number of cameras from 140 to 300 would save $1.2 billion while improving the quality and the duration of New Yorkers’ lives.

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MANHATTAN — African swine fever virus threatens to devastate the swine industry and is positioned to spread throughout Asia. The virus has spread throughout the Caucuses region of Eastern Europe and was reported in China in August. It recently was detected in wild boar in Belgium.Kansas State University researchers and the Biosecurity Research Institute have several projects focused on African swine fever.

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Study is the first to highlight sex differences in thermal behavior and could one day inform the development of new athletic apparel.

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On Monday, October 15, UC San Diego Health will open a new comprehensive health center located at 16950 Via Tazon in Rancho Bernardo. Described as a “clinic of the future,” the new 57,000 square foot facility will offer patients increased access to a team of top doctors and nurses, and an array of convenient services, such as urgent care and advanced imaging, including a pharmacy and optical boutique.

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The Gates Foundation has chosen Ross Boyce, M.D., M.Sc., from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to receive a Grand Challenges Explorations grant to explore access to childhood vaccines in Uganda.

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A culturally tailored program used when discharging stroke patients from the hospital helped to lower blood pressure among Hispanic individuals one year later, finds a new study led by researchers at NYU College of Global Public Health.

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Scientists using a powerful new technology that sequences RNA in 20,000 individual cell nuclei have uncovered new insights into biological events in heart disease. In animal hearts, the researchers identified an array of cell types and investigated the “transcriptional landscape” in rich detail.

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A Rutgers University–New Brunswick-led team of researchers is calling for the creation of a global microbiota vault to protect the long-term health of humanity. Such a Noah’s Ark of beneficial germs would be gathered from human populations whose microbiomes are uncompromised by antibiotics, processed diets and other ill effects of modern society, which have contributed to a massive loss of microbial diversity and an accompanying rise in health problems. The human microbiome includes the trillions of microscopic organisms that live in and on our bodies, contributing to our health in a myriad of ways.

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Antar Jutla, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at West Virginia University, will partner with researchers at the University of Maryland, led by Professor of Microbiology Anwar Huq, to look at ways in which the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events are likely to affect the ecology of pathogenic Vibrio bacteria in the Chesapeake Bay, which is already experiencing twice the global average rate of sea-level rise.

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The National Institutes of Health grant supports a collaboration between Temple University's dentistry and psychology researchers