A group of health care providers is forming a coalition to push for new laws to fight alcohol abuse.
The All-Wisconsin Alcohol Risk Education â?? AWARE â?? coalition will focus on three initiatives: reducing drunken driving, decreasing underage drinking, and prohibiting health insurance companies from denying claims for accident victims who test positive for alcohol and other drugs.
Do you ever find yourself yawning in response to another person’s yawn? Some say it seems to happen often and claim there is scientific proof behind the theory that yawns are contagious.
Often times, yawns are a sign of fatigue or boredom. But the true meaning of why people yawn has stumped researchers.
“What a yawn is good for, we don’t really know,” said Mary Klink, associate director of University of Wisconsin Health’s Wisconsin Sleep.
When it comes to heavy drinking, Wisconsin is regularly at the top of the national rankings.
With that in mind, UW Health announced a sweeping, state-wide coalition Tuesday, to combat alcohol abuse.
They’re calling for law-changing reforms to address the state’s drinking problem.
A $2.8 million grant has been given to a University of Wisconsin research group to develop a â??smart phoneâ? aimed at helping prevent recovering alcoholics from relapse.
Madison’s new far-west side fire station will be named in honor of the fire department’s former medical director who died in a Med Flight helicopter crash in May, officials announced at Fire Station No. 12’s groundbreaking Monday afternoon.
The station will be named for Dr. Darren Bean, who in addition to being the medical director for the fire department, was also a Med Flight physician for six years. When a flight returning to Madison from La Crosse crashed just outside of La Crosse on May 10, Bean was one of three passengers who died.
A group of health care providers is forming a coalition to push for new laws to fight alcohol abuse.
The All-Wisconsin Alcohol Risk Education coalition wants legislation to curb drunken driving and underage drinking and to force insurers to cover injuries caused by drunken driving.
MADISON, Wis. — A Madison fire station has been renamed to honor Dr. Darren Bean, its former medical director who died in a helicopter crash this spring.
Bean was one of three passengers aboard a Med Flight helicopter that crashed just outside La Crosse on May 10. All three died.
Wisconsin residents are waiting longer to see a doctor, and a physician shortage means the situation isn’t likely to improve, according to a report released Monday by a coalition of medical groups.
A group of health care providers is forming a first-of-its-kind coalition that it hopes will lead to sweeping changes in state law to combat problems of excessive drinking.
The group hopes new legislation will fight drunken driving, compel insurers to cover injuries caused by drunken driving, and decrease underage drinking.
UW Health will announce the coalition, named All-Wisconsin Alcohol Risk Education – or AWARE – at a news conference at 2:30 p.m. today at the state Capitol. In addition to presenting their potential legislative agenda and statistics about drinking in Wisconsin, organizers plan to encourage members of health care organizations, law enforcement, school groups and advocacy groups to join their efforts. The Legislature reconvenes in January, and already some lawmakers are planning to introduce bills to tackle the subject.
When Richard Kloepfer returned home this spring after spending the winter in Florida, the retired plumber’s chest started to hurt.
A CT scan revealed late-stage pancreatic cancer, which had spread to his liver. His prognosis is not good, but Kloepfer has enrolled in a chemotherapy study at UW Hospital.
Good writing assignments are definitely a good thing. When courses provide extensive, intellectually challenging writing activities, the NSSE report found, students engage in a variety of positive activities. They are more likely to analyze, synthesize and integrate ideas from various sources. They grapple more with course ideas both in and out of the classroom. And they report greater personal, social, practical and academic development.
Wisconsin residents that participate in funding breast cancer research and awareness may not know that the Madison area is home to many scientists who rely on the support donated by others
One of the young scientists working here is engaged in cancer research. His team’s lab is a place few get to see, but he said the public should know how their fundraising support might have helped him make a huge discovery.
The statistics show that one in eight people will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
It can be difficult to identify — it’s not something that can be done with a simple blood test, brain scan or routine physical. People need to find a doctor who has experience in identifying Alzheimer’s disease.
But experts said that often what people think is Alzheimer’s disease could be something else.
“When someone comes into our clinic, what we’re trying to see is what’s causing their memory problems, or if they have memory problems at all,” said Dr. Cindy Carlsson, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine.
Today is the 10th anniversary of a monumental achievement in stem cell research by University of Wisconsin professor James Thomson.
Many meetings aren’t worth their salt, but a meeting coming up at UW-Madison could be worth its salt and much more.
More than 20 food and ingredient companies will gather on campus Thursday to see what could be used in processed foods that works as well as salt as a preservative, with the goal being cutting down American salt intake without cutting down on flavor.
A five-year, $8.6 million grant has been awarded to the University of Wisconsin by the National Institutes of Health to help continue efforts in solving problems associated with transmitting reliable cancer information to patients.
A major insurance company has removed UW Hospital from its list of approved kidney transplant centers because of low success rates among transplant recipients.
The first-born children of older parents are three times more likely to have autism than their siblings or those born to younger parents, according to a new federally-funded study.
This is the largest study to look at the issue of parental age and its role in the developmental disability, said the author, Maureen Durkin, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
MARSHFIELD — Zuami Villagran, a professor at the University of Guadalajara, couldn’t foresee wearing a cheese hat.
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But along with that experience, Villagran went camping, rode horses and took in any little part of Wisconsin culture she could absorb during the past two months.
“I came to learn science, but learned a new lifestyle and culture,” she said.
Villagran and Leticia Orozco, another professor at the University of Guadalajara’s Centro Universitario de los Altos campus, spent seven weeks at the Marshfield Clinic, training in a microbiology program to improve their teachings and labs.
The exchange is part of the University of Wisconsin Center for Global Health in collaboration with the Clinic.
WHITEWATER, Wis. (AP) — A 22-year-old student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater is being treated for a probable case of the pneumonia-like Legionnaire’s disease.
….Walworth County health officer Pat Grove said the campus was alerted to watch out for possible cases of the disease, which can range from mild to fatal. Grove said the student’s case has not been confirmed by additional testing.
Quoted: â??What weâ??ve really seen is an increase in the salt load in childrenâ??s diet,â? said Dr. Bruce L. Slaughenhoupt, co-director of pediatric urology and of the pediatric kidney stone clinic at the University of Wisconsin.
Two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and a Marquette University researcher are winners of three grants totaling $70,000 from the Wisconsin Women’s Health Foundation.
The three women will be honored at a luncheon on Tuesday at the Italian Community Center in Milwaukee.
Several health-related factors have a significant effect on studentsâ?? overall academic performance, according to a study conducted by the University of Minnesota.
CONWAY, Ark. (AP) — Police officers patrolled the University of Central Arkansas campus Monday and classes were canceled after a shooting in an alleyway left two students dead and a third person wounded.
Shots were fired in the heart of the campus Sunday night near a male dormitory and behind the campus police station. No arrests had been made by 7 a.m. Monday.
“This is just an awful tragedy. It’s the worst thing that can happen on a college campus,” interim university president Tom Courtway said. “We have start looking at everything.”
Faculty and staff at UW-Madison will be rolling up their sleeves for flu shots in November, with the university setting a goal of immunizing 5,000 workers.
Flu shot clinics for UW employees will begin Nov. 3 and continue through Nov. 14 at a dozen campus locations.
The shots are administered at no charge for employees presenting their health insurance cards, but will cost $28 if no card is presented.
Officials from St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison will pick up a very special award at the end of the week at the National Collaborative meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
All of the hospital’s patients who are eligible to become organ donors signed up this year for the donor program, and the hospital will receive a medal of honor Friday for its effort.
St. Mary’s is part of the University of Wisconsin Health Organ Procurement Organization and the average sign-up rate in the UW service area is 87 percent for organ donations, while the national average is just 70.7 percent.
Quoted: Dr. Tony D’Allesandro, medical director of the UW Health OPO
October 26, 1988. The Los Angeles Dodgers just won the World Series. Michael Dukakis is about to lose the presidential election. And in Madison, Kelly Cotter receives a bone marrow transplant from her kid brother, Adam, that she hopes will save her life. The Capital Times puts her story on the front page: “Tough hurdle for 12-year-old athlete.”
…in the 20 years since her diagnosis, she has become a leading advocate for cancer research, not just locally but nationally. In 2002, she completed her law degree at UW and became director of legislative affairs for the National Childhood Cancer Foundation. Earlier this year, she helped lobby Congress to pass the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, which will devote $150 million to research over the next five years. UW Hospital will honor her for her work over the years at an event Monday.
A sense of cautious optimism filled the air Tuesday as the fourth annual World Stem Cell Summit drew to a close in Madisonâ??s Alliant Energy Center.
After two days of doctors, patients, advocates, company representatives and lawyers giving talks and hosting panels, almost everyone came away with a renewed sense of wonder at the promise stem cells hold for humanity. But they were also reminded of the obstacles left in the way of fulfilling that promise.
MADISON, Wis. — The bad economy is impacting people’s indulgence in some bad habits such as smoking.
The University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention said the group most affected by the rise in cigarette prices and the tough economy is teenagers.
The center said many smokers react in stages, initially going from brand-name cigarettes to generics and, in some cases, cutting back all together.
During this season of open enrollment for health insurance, when state employees may re-consider their insurance options, I am writing to ask people in Madison and Dane County to consider their choices seriously.
You might think all health plans, all HMOs, all hospitals, all doctors are pretty much the same.
But you would be wrong. Perhaps even dead wrong.
(Meg Gaines is the founder and director of the nationally recognized, award-winning Center for Patient Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a clinical professor of law.0
The largest association of medical doctors in Wisconsin is barring its members from accepting gifts from drug companies, following a national trend to limit conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
The ban includes the most common gifts to doctors such as food, mugs and pens, as well as reimbursements for travel, the Wisconsin Medical Society said in a statement released Thursday.
“A complete ban eases the burdens of compliance, biased decision-making, and patient distrust,” reads the new policy, which was approved Saturday.
A slick Web site aimed at recruiting doctors to Wisconsin is only two days old but already advertises more than 570 openings. “It’s pretty amazing,” said George Quinn, a senior vice president with the Wisconsin Hospital Association, which helped launch the site. “This proves that we have a real shortage of physicians in this state.”
Wisconsin’s two medical schools graduate between 330 and 340 doctors each year, but only 38 percent remain in the state. For years hospitals, clinics and other health care providers have been struggling to come up with innovative ways to lure them back.
University Health Services began offering free flu vaccinations Monday in hopes of decreasing the number of student illnesses this year.
Quoted: “Supplementation is important because most children will not get enough vitamin D through diet alone,” says Dr. Frank Greer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison pediatrician and co-author of the new recommendations.
A growing number of medical students at UW-Madison are being trained to become doctors in some of the most medically needy parts of the state: rural areas.
Home visits, job assistance and other services are being offered to parents of newborns in one of Madison’s most challenged neighborhoods: Allied Drive.
MARSHFIELD — Gov. Jim Doyle has unveiled an initiative he says will make Wisconsin a worldwide leader in personalized health care.
Doyle on Friday announced the formation of the Wisconsin Medical Research Triangle, one that might rival a similar research park in North Carolina.
The three points of the triangle are universities in Madison and Milwaukee and a clinic in Marshfield.
University of Wisconsin graduate Linnea Smith shared stories Thursday about her life-changing vacation to Peru, and said her two-decade trip transformed her medical career.
Quoted: The University of Wisconsin’s Douglas Laube, a former president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, blames “very significant external forces” for the overuse of expensive technologies in maternity care.
Quoted: Douglas Laube, chair of obstetrics and gynecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Only a small percentage of women in the country have breast reconstruction surgery after a mastectomy. A survey of Wisconsin surgeons examined the attitudes and biases which may affect breast cancer patients.
A third of respondents do not routinely refer eligible patients to further discuss having an implant or other reconstruction after breast cancer. However, the study published in the Wisconsin Medical Journal says a referral was more likely to be made if a woman expressed concerns about her appearance. (6th item.)
Doctors in the survey said the biggest deciding factor for them was cancer recurrence and worries that an implant or reconstruction might make it harder to detect. One of the report’s authors, Dr. Heath Stacey from UW Madison, says there’s evidence to the contrary. He also says other factors in the decision to refer vary from where someone lives and how old they are.
Each year, Dr. Marcia Slattery, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with UW Health, said she and her colleagues treat hundreds of children who are anxious about school-related issues, including homework. For some, the problem is limited to homework. For others, homework exacerbates an existing anxiety disorder or indicates other problems, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or an underlying learning problem.
MADISON (WKOW) — When you’re on the operating table, your life is literally in your surgeon’s hands.
A UW study discovered surgeons with smaller hands are at a disadvantage, because the tools they use are one-size-fits-all.
Surgeons perform life-saving operations everyday at UW hospital, many done laparscopically
Like many Americans, I was deeply saddened by the crash of an emergency medical services Eurocopter Dauphin II helicopter last weekend in suburban Washington that killed four people and left another person in critical condition. But as a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, I was not shocked.
EMS helicopters are among the most dangerous aircraft in the skies. While major airline crashes have declined over the past decade, EMS helicopter fatalities have increased. Until this year, the worst annual record belonged to 2004, with 18 killed. So far in 2008 there have been 20 deaths. Clearly, things are getting worse.
A team of researchers from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health has identified a breakdown in the brain’s control tower for obesity — a snarl in a complex molecular messaging system that regulates the body’s food intake and weight.
In a study published Thursday in the Oct. 3 issue of Cell, researchers led by Dongsheng Cai, an assistant professor of physiology, honed in on a part of the brain called the hypothalamus. Smaller than a grape, this tiny structure is charged with a mighty mission: the regulation and control of the body’s metabolism.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Overeating makes the brain go haywire, prompting a cascade of damage that may cause diabetes, heart disease and other ills, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Eating too much appears to activate a usually dormant immune system pathway in the brain, sending out immune cells to attack and destroy invaders that are not there, Dongsheng Cai of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found.
The discovery of another way in which the body appears to control how much it eats could shed fresh light on obesity.
US researchers said poor diets may trigger a signalling system which prompts the body to consume even more.
The latest “pathway” under investigation, by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is normally associated with the immune system, and inflammation, one of the body’s defence systems.
Hospitals are facing a critical workforce shortage that will only get worse as the state’s population grows. A new report from the Wisconsin Hospital Association said that by 2010 hospitals will be competing with each other for a much smaller pool of workers to fill job vacancies.
The largest percentage of vacancies and the most difficult to fill are in therapist positions, according to the 2008 Health Care Workforce Report released Thursday by the WHA.
Slots for getting proper training fill quickly at colleges, so WHA Vice President Judy Warmuth said expanding slots in college training programs is critical to head off the anticipated shortage of health care professionals.
Dear Editor:
….How much alcohol should a pregnant woman consume? The only safe amount is none. That $5 million to study monkeys should have been used to actually help people. Let’s stop wasting our limited resources on arcane scientific research that helps no one but the scientist banking the federal grant.
Dawn Kubly, Cambridge
Youngsters close to the age of three who develop wheezing with the virus have a 30-fold risk of becoming asthmatic by the time they turn six.
The older the toddlers are when they catch the virus, the greater their chance of developing the condition, which is called Rhinovirus, according to the research.
Around 5 million people in Britain, including more than 1m children, suffer from asthma.
Daniel Jackson, from the University of Wisconsin, who led the team which carried out the study, said that the Rhinovirus was a “significant predictor” that children would go on to become asthmatic.
The armed forces and cigarettes have a long history, going back to World War II. That’s when Ancel Keys, a scientist who spent his career studying the relationship between diet and disease, helped the Cig2 military develop an adequate meal suitable for combat. Named K-rations, after Keys, the meal considered sound at the time contained bacon, canned cheese and dextrose tablets. For relaxation, the military threw in gum and cigarettes, triggering massive nicotine addiction in young GIs.
The post-war tragedy unfolded over decades as smoking by WWII veterans led to a nine-fold increase in lung cancer deaths by 1980.
Cigarettes are no longer freebies in field K-rations, but the nicotine addiction rate in the military is still sky high, according to a news release put out by the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
Madison-based Stratatech Corp. announced Monday the successful completion of a clinical trial of its StrataGraft human skin substitute. The company said the trial showed StrataGraft performed comparable to the current standard of care.
The clinical trial was designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of StrataGraft in patients with major skin trauma that required temporary skin replacement before “autografting” — the transplantation of live skin tissue from one part of a patient’s body to another.
….The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Michael J. Schurr was the trial’s principal clinical investigator.
A cold is the most common illness on the planet, and having a medical degree hardly makes you immune to catching one. Being around people who are sick is part of the job.
Many swear by nasal irrigation as a remedy for allergies, sinusitis and colds.
ABCNews.com asked four holistically minded doctors what they do when they feel under the weather. Their prevention and treatment advice might help you dodge or short-circuit the next bug that comes your way.
Quoted: David Rakel, M.D., director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Integrative Medicine in Madison, Wis.
Breast-feeding has its rewards, more so than better health for both mother and baby.
The Madison Breastfeeding Promotion Network and the Wisconsin Well Woman Program are awarding four breast-feeding promotion awards Thursday in ceremonies at 2 p.m. at the Warner Park Community Center, 1625 Northport Drive.
(The UW-Madison Bacteriology Department is one of the award winners.)
Students seeking mental health services can now look to a new guide released on Tuesday for ways to find help and learn more about their legal rights.
MARSHFIELD — A doorbell rings and a voice bellows out of a speaker in one of the 16 rooms in Saint Joseph’s Critical Care Unit.
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“Hi, this is the e-ICU,” the voice says.
No one enters the room; instead, a small white camera that looks like a high-tech version of an at-home webcam turns from the wall and faces the patient. It’s an experienced critical care nurse or physician from University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics’ e-Care of Wisconsin program checking in through an electronic intensive care monitoring system.
The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics is one of the 100 best places for working parents to work, according to the annual “best of” list released by Working Mother magazine.
The hospital was the only Dane County company to be so honored, but Kraft Foods, owner of Madison-based Oscar Mayer, is also on the list.
This is the second year in a row UW Hospital and Clinics is on the Working Mother best places to work list.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson told the World Stem Cell Summit Tuesday a meeting he had in the summer of 2001 with President George W. Bush led to Bushâ??s approval of limited embryonic stem cell research.
A Madison organization has been named one of the best places to work in the country, according to Working Mother magazine.
The list of 100 firms, released Tuesday, had three Wisconsin companies, including UW Hospital and Clinics, which was cited for its strong maternity leave program.
At the top of Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk’s current to-do list is a problem Wisconsin knows all too well: alcohol abuse.
There’s too much of it in Dane County and throughout the rest of the state, Falk says, and we’re not doing enough to combat it. The financial and social costs are high. Funding for alcohol abuse prevention and treatment is tight. Treatment programs in Madison have wait times that are months long. And for Falk and many others who have watched family and friends struggle with addiction, there is too much suffering and too many painful memories.
Now that more doors are opening for women who want to be surgeons, it may be time to look at the equipment they are given at the operating table.
A recent study finds that some devices commonly used in what was once a male bastion are too big to be comfortable for women.
The study, which appears in Surgical Endoscopy, notes that women’s hands tend to be smaller then men’s, but that men with smaller hands also may find the equipment challenging.
One of the report’s authors, Dr. Peter Nichol of the University of Wisconsin medical school, said he had gotten the idea for the study while working with a resident and co-author, Dr. Danielle M. Adams.
