UW Hospital’s charity care was 0.9% of revenue last year after dipping to 0.7% in 2021, with the hospital helping 44,109 patients last year, up from 32,017 the previous year.
Widely used chemotherapy drugs don’t attack cancer the way doctors thought, according to a UW-Madison study that identifies a new mechanism that could improve the search for new drugs and help tailor treatments for patients,
“It’s a totally different mechanism than the field had been thinking about for the last several decades,” said Beth Weaver, a UW-Madison professor of cell and regenerative biology who is senior author of the study, published recently in the journal PLOS Biology.
Two UW Hospital surgeons who performed gender-altering surgeries on a woman who now claims the procedures were done without proper informed consent have denied her claims, and UW Hospital has asked a judge to dismiss her lawsuit against the doctors and the hospital.
Over the summer, 11-year-old Sezar went from playing soccer to needing treatment for heart failure. After attempts to treat the Rockford boy, doctors determined Sezar would need a new heart.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture approved the first lab-grown chicken meat for commercial sale. It’s the first cell-cultivated meat to be approved in the country, and it’s grown from stem cells in a bioreactor—no slaughter required. We talk to Jeff Sindelar, a professor and extension meat specialist in the department of Animal Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about whether lab-grown meat could eventually compete with the factory-farmed meat that dominates the industry.
UW Health and UnityPoint Health-Meriter on Tuesday will resume requiring staff, patients and visitors to wear face masks in clinic settings such as waiting rooms, scheduling areas and exam rooms, the hospitals announced Monday.
Underage sales of nicotine products have more than doubled in Wisconsin since 2019, the year when the federal age for purchasing tobacco products was raised to 21. Wisconsin has kept the minimum age at 18 in spite of research showing that raising the smoking age reduces nicotine addiction. Dr. Michael Fiore, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, explains.
Dr. Gerald Pankratz, an associate professor and geriatrician at UW Health, said the most common injuries from falls are innocuous and might include a few bruises or cuts.
“On the more serious side, we’re definitely concerned about fractures of the big bones, the hip, most predominantly — there’s a marked increased risk in mortality and institutionalization in the months after having a hip fracture,” he said.
Krishanu Saha leads the CRISPR Vision Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is member of National Institute of Health’s Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium. His lab is specifically studying how to cure Best disease as well as Leber congenital amaurosis, one of the most common causes of blindness in children.
“All of the testing that we’ve done thus far shows a lot of promise that it can actually correct the defects in these cells. And so the task for us over the next five years is to formulate a medicine that could be used here in trials enrolling patients,” Saha said in a recent interview with WPR’s “The Morning Show.”
Patrick Remington, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, said the rate of underage tobacco sales is going in the wrong direction.
“It’s more than just a minimal change,” Remington said. “To me, that would be cause to certainly redouble the efforts to vendors and sellers to comply with federal law.”
The Republican-controlled Senate Health Committee voted Thursday against recommending a former Democratic Dane County state representative and longtime nursing union leader to the UW Hospital Board after they were questioned about their views on abortion policy.
In the past decade, depression and suicide rates in the United States have been rising strongly, especially for college students, according to University of Wisconsin professor of human ecology and psychiatry Dr. Charles Raison.
During the holiday season, we’re often encouraged to make amends and forgive people, but what does it take to really forgive someone? And what happens to your brain and body when you do… or don’t? In this episode, Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks with forgiveness science pioneer, Robert Enright. He’s been studying and writing about forgiveness for decades at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and he says forgiveness is a choice, and that your ability to do it can be strengthened like a muscle. Enright walks us through a range of scenarios, from forgiving small things like being late for a meeting to larg
“There are many restrictions, where Wisconsin goes is back to where it was in June 2022, before the Dobbs decision,” said Amy Williamson, associate director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“All evidence indicates that the vaccine is very safe and effective,” said Jenna Nobles, a demographer and professor of sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison and study co-author. “In addition, it shows that avoiding the vaccine is what is potentially harmful for the pregnancy. This is an important piece of information for patients to have.”
The care can also include surgery, although most providers, including UW Health in Madison, do not provide “bottom” surgeries to minors, such as vaginoplasties and phalloplasties. Those procedures are provided only to adults and require extensive psychiatric evaluation before a “letter of readiness” signed by a mental health professional can ensure a patient is considered eligible for such gender-affirming surgeries.
Written by Jason Fletcher, a professor of public affairs at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs with appointments in Applied Economics and Population Health Sciences.
Other potential non-drug treatments that may help ease PPD, according to the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, include: counseling or therapy, including art therapysocial support from groups like La Leche League, or community groups based at religious centers, libraries, and/or public health centers.
Ignatowski, the Institute for Reforming Government director, noted that Wisconsin is ranked No. 32 in the United States for the number of mental health professionals.
That ranking is based on 2021 data from the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, a program of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Data from 2023 show that there are 420 people for every one mental health provider registered in Wisconsin. The national ratio is 340 people per one provider.
To give Wisconsin veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder more options, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to make it easier for researchers to treat those with acute PTSD with the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The bill would create a state trust fund called the “medicinal psilocybin treatment program” that would be administered by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The risk of developing CKD generally increases with age. “This is often due to a longer exposure to medical conditions or medications that can harm the kidney function,” says Laura Maursetter, DO, a nephrologist who’s an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure are all known risk factors for kidney disease, as is long-term use of over-the-counter NSAIDs such as ibuprofen and naproxen.
UW-Madison researchers are also studying psilocybin to treat people with opioid and methamphetamine use disorders, using drugs made by Usona, in a tranquil treatment room at UW’s School of Pharmacy.
Studies into the benefits of protein-restricted diets have shown that lower protein consumption is associated with a decreased risk of age-related diseases and mortality and improved metabolic health. Now, exploring alternatives to calorie-restricting diets, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that reducing the intake of a single amino acid in mice extended their lifespan, making them leaner, less frail, and less susceptible to cancer.
“We like to say a calorie is not just a calorie,” said Dudley Lamming, corresponding author of the study. “Different components of your diet have value and impact beyond their function as a calorie, and we’ve been digging in on one component that many people may be eating too much of.”
Letter to the editor from Maya Kamin, a student at UW-Madison’s School of Nursing.
Late fall is crunch time for John Achter and his team of counselors across the state public university system.
The novelty of the new school year has worn off, the realities of classes have set in and finals are looming. An increasing number of students have been seeking counseling in recent years, often during this stressful period of the semester.
A recent analysis from a UW-Madison professor finds that bottled water consumption is most prevalent among low-income women, signaling a distrust in household tap water. We speak with Manny Teodoro, an associate Professor in the LaFollette School of Public Affairs/Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.
Katherine Zimmerman had a very good problem on her hands. So many students showed up for the September kickoff meeting of an organization she leads that she had to move attendees to a larger room on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
That’s not surprising for a school bursting at the seams. But the turnout was unexpected, given the group’s focus on a topic long treated as taboo: mental health.
The medical assistant apprenticeship program started in 2018 and was the first of its kind in Wisconsin. UW Health and the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development created the program to address a shortage in healthcare workers. After eight months of their apprenticeship, all twenty participants in the 10th year cohort celebrated this huge milestone.
The Fitchburg facility, which involves a partnership with SSM Health, joins Dane County’s only other standalone rehab hospital, the 50-bed UW Health Rehabilitation Hospital, which opened in 2015 on Madison’s Far East Side. That facility, a joint venture with UnityPoint Health-Meriter and Kindred Healthcare, replaced a 21-bed rehab unit at UW Hospital and a 16-bed rehab unit at Meriter Hospital.
When neuroscientists talk about gratitude, they often cluster it with other social and moral emotions like appreciation and compassion. That’s no coincidence. These emotions activate similar networks in our brains, said Cortland Dahl, a scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds, part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“Gratitude, I would say, is a very specific version of (appreciation), where we’re oriented to something we really appreciate that has benefited us personally — somebody else’s presence in our lives, how they’ve supported us, being the most common expression of that,” Dahl said.
UW Health “strongly encourages” but no longer requires the COVID-19 vaccine for employees, spokesperson Sara Benzel said in an email. Staff members are required to be vaccinated against influenza, but religious and philosophical exemptions are an option.
Psychiatrist Charles Raison, a professor of human ecology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he has struggled with depression. Raison, who is also the director of the Vail Health Behavioral Health Innovation Center and a former mental health expert for CNN Health, described the state of mental health in the Unites States in one word: “bad.”
“This is something influenza absolutely loves,” said Dr. Jonathan Temte, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Wisconsin also had among the lowest vaccination rates for other required vaccines, which protect against such diseases as chickenpox, polio and whooping cough.
“It’s very concerning,” said Dr. James Conway, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and medical director of UW Health’s immunization program. “This is mostly a call to action that we need to do better.”
Beth Fields, an occupational therapist and assistant professor of kinesiology at UW-Madison who researches caregiving, said studies have found that instructing caregivers about discharge planning can reduce hospital readmissions.
The bill would create a pilot project in collaboration with researchers at UW-Madison to explore the medicinal benefits of psilocybin to treat PTSD among a select group of veterans. Program participants would need to be military veterans ages 21 and older, who are not members of law enforcement and who have been diagnosed with treatment-resistant PTSD.
Beth Fields, an occupational therapist and geriatric health and caregiving researcher at the University of Wisconsin, described her own experience with the challenges caregivers face.
After a back injury, her brother spent three weeks in intensive care before being sent home. Her family received “little information on how to support him when he got back home,” she said, and medical complications sent him back to the hospital.
“We must take a critical look at the support we are providing to the caregivers who are the backbone of our long-term care health care system,” Fields said.
Members of the UW Health nurses’ union delivered safety violation forms to the state health department last week, in an escalation after months of labor disputes between the system and the union. Two nurses with the union join us.
Isabelle Bogan is a junior studying marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also a sexual assault survivor.
“I wasn’t treated very well by friends when I told them about it or by people who knew the [assaulter],” said Bogan.
Bogan said she never wanted to be labeled as a sexual assault survivor. She said she just wanted to continue on with her life the best way that she could. That’s why she became a peer facilitator at Promoting Awareness Victim Empowerment, or PAVE.
Prof. Tiffany Green, a health care economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has researched the impact of birth- cost recovery programs, said a study she conducted pointed to better child support payments when birth-cost recovery (BCR) stopped.
“With the caveat that our results of preliminary, we found that BCR cessation was linked to increased probability of paying support to birthing parents (i.e., mothers and other individuals who gave birth), and that the amount of that support increased,” Green told the Wisconsin Examiner Monday. That pattern appeared “particularly pronounced among the fathers of Black children,” although not among fathers of white children. Future research will explore possible explanations for those differences, she added.
Students and faculty of the University of Wisconsin River Falls are mourning the loss of four members of the campus community.
In September, a professor of journalism died unexpectedly of natural causes. The obituaries of the three students say they all lost their battles with depression. Two of these students were from Minnesota. Last year, 43 percent of the student body came from Minnesota.
After years of demands from the nurses’ union at UW Health to improve working conditions, the SEIU announced Thursday that the union will now be taking their concerns to the Department of Health Services.
UW Health released a statement Thursday saying that a union’s recent threat stems from frustration with a previous agreement made to stop a strike. The union has since responded, stating some of UW Health’s statement is also inaccurate.
Nurses at UW Health submitted paperwork Thursday urging Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services to investigate concerns about patient safety.
It’s the latest escalation amid an ongoing labor dispute with the health care system, as nurses who are pushing for collective bargaining power raise alarms about the effects of under-staffing, employee turnover and worker burnout.
Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder could have access to medicinal psilocybin treatment under a bipartisan bill.
The proposal would create a pilot program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison run in collaboration with the university’s Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances and its School of Pharmacy. Veterans age 21 and older suffering from treatment-resistant PTSD would be eligible to participate as long as they are not currently serving as law enforcement officers.
Earlier this summer, the Healthy School Meals for All coalition and UW-Madison Professor Jennifer Gaddis released the first statewide survey of the Wisconsin school nutrition workforce.
That report found that of the approximately 5,089 K-12 school nutrition workers across the state, 94% were women, and 88% were white.
It also found that four out of five school food workers who were not managers worked part-time, and that a quarter of schools across the state offered poverty-level starting wages for school nutrition workers.
“Oftentimes we’re just scratching our heads as to what to do about it,” said Dr. Zachary Goldberger, a cardiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health who wasn’t part of the new research.“Now that these scientists have helped us to understand that there’s a possible mechanism for it, you could potentially imagine that there’ll be therapies on the horizon,” he said.
Editor’s note: This is the final chapter of a 5-part series in which former University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson and Vice President Jim Langdon reflect on their experience guiding the system though the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison
A 23-year-old woman who had her uterus and breasts removed at UW Hospital after a self-diagnosis of gender dysphoria that she said was not confirmed by a doctor is suing the hospital and two UW surgeons, alleging they operated on her without proper informed consent.
Last October, Raichik posted a video of Dr. Katherine Gast, co-director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s UW Health gender services program, describing gender-affirming operations. The backlash was swift, with thousands of Twitter accounts sharing the post, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
In fact, the UW Health spokesperson said the hospital isn’t certain if its decrease in applications is an indication of a trend – though she noted that some applicants have asked about the 1849 law in their interviews.
Dr. Ellen Hartenbach, chair of the OB-GYN department at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, also told Wisconsin Health News in May that the university is uncertain if abortion restrictions caused this year’s decrease in applicants.
Every year, 60 to 70 school psychologist positions in Wisconsin go unfilled.
That’s based on the most recent data collected by the Wisconsin School Psychologists Association. And it’s a good reminder why Katie Eklund, co-director of the School Mental Health Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spends her time focusing on workforce initiatives.
Take the case of Rufus Sweeney, a 4th-year medical student at UW-Madison and Oklahoma Choctaw. When he discovered his pre-diabetes condition, he turned to glucose monitoring apps in the market that recommended lifestyle changes, from diet adjustments to sleep tweaks. His breakthrough came when he prioritized physical activity over all other app notifications.
The Student Advisory Board was established to facilitate communication between the student body and Mental Health Services, allowing them to address the mental health needs of students on campus, University Health Services Outreach Assistant Director Danyelle Okesanjo said.
Another prisoner, Edgar Salinas-Leal, 36, said he suffers from severe migraine headaches for which he received regular and routine treatment shots at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Hospital, however, since COVID lockdowns, the prison canceled his appointments and they have not resumed.
This is the fourth chapter of a 5-part series in which former University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson and Vice President Jim Langdon reflect on their experience guiding the system though the COVID-19 pandemic. As the health care crisis raged, facilities on the front lines began to have severe staffing issues. Drawing inspiration from the foundations of the UW System, they found ways to help students jump from the classroom to the community to assist.
Lola Loustaunau, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Workers, said that “it would really open the door for a lot of protections for workers” if OSHA consistently inspected small dairy farms that provide housing to immigrant workers.
“If they are politically interested in doing something,” she added, “it looks like they have all the basis to do it.”
Written by Yi Fuxian, a senior scientist in obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Big Country with an Empty Nest” (China Development Press, 2013).
Dr. Stacey Ishman, an otolaryngology instructor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, estimated that she has treated about eight patients with insects in their ears over her 23-year career — often people who did outdoor activities like camping.
“Most of the time the ear is completely fine,” said Ishman, who also wasn’t involved in the new report. “If there’s some injury to the ear canal, quite honestly it’s more often from people trying to get it out than it is from the bug itself.”
