Author: jnweaver

Quoted: “By definition, chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms must be ongoing for at least six months,” says Dr. Srivani Sridhar, a family physician with UW Health Northern in Rockford, Illinois. “It can last several years or a lifetime without treatment. Symptoms can also wax and wane over months and years.”

Quoted: The ambiguity in Wisconsin’s state abortion ban, for instance, has left doctors like Abigail Cutler, an OBGYN in Wisconsin, in an impossible bind. Wisconsin’s law, written in 1849, allows abortions to “save the life of the mother.” “Where’s that line?” Cutler asks. “How close does a patient need to be? On the brink of death for me to step in and intervene? What if I wait too long and she dies in front of me? Or what if in the eyes of some prosecutor who’s not a doctor, not at the bedside, not staring at the patient bleeding or infected in front of them—to them, what if I intervene too soon, and I’m charged and risk going to prison?”

Quoted: Prof. Tiffany Green, a health economist at the University of Wisconsin who studies health equity, particularly in the area of obstetric and reproductive care, calls expanding access to reproductive health services “crucial and important in helping people to exercise their right to reproductive autonomy.”

At the same time, “it is not a substitute for abortion care access,” she said, adding that she believes that Madison and Dane County officials understand that as well.

Green said it will be important as agencies expand their services that they do so in ways that reach out to the communities they serve and take time to understand and respect their needs and preferences. That will include being careful about scheduling times when they provide their services. It will also include being culturally responsive and respectful to people of color and to other marginalized groups, including transgender and gender-non-conforming people, she added.

It will also include heeding and respecting the contraceptive choices that their patients want to make, rather than “pushing a kind of contraception on them they do not want,” Green said. “There is a history of doing that with Black people.”

Quoted: Medical Director for Infection Prevention at UW Health Dr. Dan Shirley told CBS 58 BA.5, a subvariant of omicron, seems to be the dominant strain.

“It has a little bit better capacity to overcome our immunity,” Shirley said.

It’s hard to resist the urge to spend as much time outside as possible in the summer.

But, experts at UW Health in Madison say it is important to maintain skin safety while enjoying all that sunshine.

“Over the years, we’ve started to bring awareness about skin cancer in general and interestingly enough we are still seeing an increase in incidents of melanoma across the United States,” said Medical Oncologist at UW Health Dr. Vincent Ma.

Quoted: “This one-size-fits-all approach is truly devastating for my patients and the doctors who take care of them,” said Dr. Abigail Cutler, a practicing OB-GYN and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-School of Medicine in Madison.

Noted: The adult smoking rate for Black people living in Wisconsin is 30%, or nearly three times higher than white people in the state at 12%. That 18 percentage point disparity is the widest gap between Black and white smokers in the nation, according to Dr. Michael Fiore, co-author and director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.

The statistics may give researchers clues about how to reduce those numbers and save lives, Fiore said.

New variants of COVID-19 are reminding us that the pandemic is not over. UW Health’s Chief Quality Officer Dr. Jeff Pothof, said two new variants are much more transmissible – even among those fully vaccinated or with prior infection.

“It’s really easy to catch COVID-19 with, you know, BA-5 or BA-4,” Pothof said. “With these variants that are so contagious, it really probably comes down to a matter of, you know, minutes, or maybe even seconds of being in close proximity to someone who’s shutting this virus for you to get infected.”

Dr. Bill Hartman from UW Health says the main symptoms of this variant are sore throat and nasal congestion.

Quoted: Dr. Dan Shirley, medical director of infection prevention at UW-Health, says the Naegleria fowleri amoeba thrives in warm water, you aren’t likely to contract it in Lake Michigan. “Usually late in the summer, in smaller bodies of water like ponds and small lakes where the water temperature can get warmer than usual,” he said.