….One of the issues, it seems, is that no one is taking ownership of this problem. Gov. Jim Doyle should either step in himself or direct someone else in authority to deal with it.
This is, after all, a facility owned by the taxpayers of Wisconsin, not some private corporation.
There’s no excuse for a UW facility, especially one that harbors some of the top engineering and environmental minds in the country, to be a major polluter of our air and water.
Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon plans to invest more than $14 million to start the second pharmacy school in the state.
The decision, which the university’s board of regents approved Friday, is designed to meet the growing demand for pharmacists in Wisconsin and throughout the country. That demand is expected to increase in coming years as more pharmacists retire.
The state’s only pharmacy school is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Patient case histories also provide evidence that honey can help wounds heal. In 2001, Dr. Jennifer Eddy, associate professor at the department of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin, was treating a patient with an extreme case of diabetic foot ulcer. It had refused to heal despite treatment with conventional remedies: surgical debridement (or removal of dead tissue) antibiotics, hydrogel dressings and use of an off-loading orthotic.
Wisconsin is about to gain some much-needed pharmacists.
Officials at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon announced today that the university’s Board of Regents has approved funding to start a pharmacy school in the 2009-10 academic year.
The state currently has just one school of pharmacy, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. That school graduates about 130 pharmacists annually, but more than three applicants apply for every available seat in the school, said UW-Madison Pharmacy Dean Jeanette Roberts.
Starting last year, the two principal public figures pushing for an accredited graduate school of public health in Milwaukee, Mayor Tom Barrett and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago, have been making subtle references to well-heeled donors waiting in the wings – angel investors, if you will.
It’s now clear that it wasn’t wishful thinking. Joseph Zilber, who in a matter of just a few weeks has become Milwaukee’s newest major philanthropist, has decided to give the proposed school the financial boost it needs to become a reality.
Researchers hope to recruit 1,250 families in Waukesha County, starting next year, who are willing to allow scientists to study their children through medical tests and physical examinations for more than 20 years. Participants might be compensated or offered other incentives.
Other pilot sites are in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, North Carolina and South Dakota.
Coordinated locally by the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the $2.7 billion study is being funded by the federal government.
MADISON, Wis. â?? Tests for tuberculosis turned out negative for hospital personnel who were checked since a co-worker contracted the potentially deadly lung disease, a doctor says.
Dr. Dennis Maki, an infectious disease specialist at University of Wisconsin Hospital, said the results mean the woman probably wasnâ??t very contagious.
MILWAUKEE (AP) â?? Efforts to build a public health school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are expected to get a boost today when a local philanthropist is scheduled to announce a $10 million donation.
Real estate developer Joseph Zilber announced last month that he would give $50 million to Milwaukee causes, including $30 million to the Marquette University Law School. The donation to UW-Milwaukee will be part of that package.
A bill involving emergency contraception actually received a public hearing on Thursday — a rare moment in a state Assembly controlled by social conservatives. But after the hearing, it is not yet clear if the measure will advance any further.
The proposal would require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims who request it.
Limited literacy is a health hazard. That’s the message that a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher and a local nurse brought Wednesday to an open house of the Literacy Network, a Madison agency that trains volunteers to help adults learn to read.
Mike Grasmick of the UW Department of Family Medicine worked with UW physician Paul Smith this spring to gain insights from six focus groups, two each in Madison, Racine and Oshkosh, on how well patients understood medical information.
What’s the buzz?
If you haven’t stepped out of your house the past week or two, that hum you hear outside is from millions of floodwater mosquitoes that have exploded on the scene, following the record rainfalls in August.
Quoted: UW-Madison entomologist Phil Pellitteri
As the academic year begins, University of Wisconsin students are preparing for projects, papers and exams.
But this fall, University Health Services will be asking students to take, and hopefully ace, yet another test.
MADISON, Wis. — Even while U.S. numbers lag, the number of vaccinations for meningitis is high in Wisconsin.
A government survey finds that about 12 percent of teens get the relatively new vaccine.
But Wisconsin has higher compliance, in part because of a state law passed after a student died of the infection.
Wisconsin college students aren’t required to get the shot, which usually costs around $90.
Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist with the University Health Services in Madison, said that three-fourths of incoming freshmen are vaccinated.
If you’ve tried loading up on fruits, vegetables and whole grains and still can’t get relief from constipation, maybe you need more than a boost of fiber.
“The idea that many patients have, and unfortunately their physicians, if we just keep pushing fiber until the grass grows out of their behind they’ll have been treated successfully, that’s not really true,” said Dr. Arnold Wald, a professor of medicine in the section on gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Wisconsin.
Wisconsinites can take pride in so many of our state ‘s achievements, but our drinking status is not among them. The Badger state regularly lands at or near the top of national rankings on high-risk or heavy drinking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And it ‘s not just college students
A caregiver who works at University Hospital and the Veterans Hospital has tested positive for a rare form of tuberculosis, but officials say the possibility that the disease was spread to others is slim.
Precautions, however, are being taken to ensure both employee and patient safety, including TB tests of employees who came in contact with the woman. Letters recommending tests are also being sent to the doctors of 100 to 150 hospital patients who may have come in contact.
“Patient is on the roll.”
With that cue from a hospital security guard, five-year-old Justin Pinchart was wheeled out of his cramped room on the fourth floor of the UW Hospital, and cruised to his fancy new digs at the American Family Children’s Hospital next door.
The nine-minute trip through a maze of hallways and several elevators was swift, with his mom Diane and dad Dan at his rolling bedside, plus several attentive nurses and moving company employees hired to do some of the heavy lifting.
MADISON, Wis. â?? About 30 co-workers are being tested for exposure to tuberculosis after a woman who cares for patients at two Madison hospitals came down with the potentially deadly lung disease.
Officials are also trying to contact as many as 150 patients to be tested.
Quoted: Dr. William Busse of the University of Wisconsin, who headed the panel.
MADISON, Wis. — A Madison hospital patient care provider has tested positive for a rare but possibly contagious form of tuberculosis.
The head of infectious disease for the University of Wisconsin Hospital said he believes that the likelihood anyone will get sick from this incident is low but that more testing needs to be done on some health care workers to pinpoint the risk.
More than 100 patients could be contacted by the hospital, WISC-TV reported.
Hospital officials say a UW and Veterans Hospital caregiver has tested positive for a form of TB.
Officials say the provider’s form of TB is not thought to be contagious.
Officials say the health care provider was sick for about 2 weeks, was admitted to the hospital, and then it was determined the person had TB.
The caregiver is on antibiotics and as a precaution those who worked closely with the individual will be tested for TB.
Sediment tests conducted for the city of Madison show that UW-Madison’s coal-powered power plant on Charter Street is not discharging high levels of contaminants into the soil under Monona Bay, according to the state Department of Natural Resources, although there are some high concentrations of mercury and lead in the bay.
Dr. Carl Getto, senior vice president for medical affairs at UW Hospital since 2001, has been named interim chief executive officer.
He replaces Donna Sollenberger, who announced in late July that she will leave next month to head the Baylor Clinic and Hospital in Houston.
Three-fourths of cancerous prostate removal surgeries at the University of Wisconsin Hospital are now performed by a robot. The robot and its very flexible “wrists” are controlled by a surgeon, however.
The first robotic prostatectomy at UW Hospital was performed in March 2006 by urologic surgeon Dr. David Jarrard, who also performed the 200th on July 31 this year.
It wasn’t that long ago when few people embraced alternative medical practices such as chiropractic services, acupuncture and massage.
Today, such services, like many advanced traditional medical practices, are moving into the mainstream of pet care as more and more people pamper their pets — although medical care isn’t seen on the same plane as some other pampering practices.
Quoted: Dr. Sandi Sawchuk, School of Veterinary Medicine
The blood thinner warfarin, which this week became the first widely used drug to carry a label encouraging doctors to perform a genetic test on patients before prescribing it, was discovered at UW-Madison.
The more that depressed people try to decrease their emotional response to negative situations, the greater their emotional response becomes, says a new study by UW-Madison researchers.
The finding suggests that in some people with depression, traditional psychotherapy may do more harm than good, the researchers say.
Cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye that begins as a vague blurriness and can lead to blindness, is a common affliction of aging. For insured Americans, cataract surgery is a routine procedure that restores vision completely.
Despite the simplicity of cataract surgery, about 20 million people worldwide are blind because of cataracts, and 90 percent of them live in developing countries.
Dr. Suresh Chandra, an opthalmologist at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, has been working to eliminate preventable blindness through the Combat Blindness Foundation he started in Madison in 1984. Since then, the CBF has supported more than 100,000 free cataract surgeries.
Paula Tran, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, relies on her school’s health center for affordable birth control pills. Even though she doesn’t have insurance, she bought a year supply from the clinic for only $7 per pack last fall.
But when she goes back for more this September, she’ll be hit with a bill five times that amount, something she says will definitely affect her spending. “It will cut into the kinds of notebooks I buy to the kind of groceries I get to the cable package that I order,” she says.
Everyone who lives long enough will eventually get cataracts, a clouding of the lens of the eye that begins as a vague blurriness and can lead to blindness. For insured Americans, cataract surgery is an routine procedure that restores vision completely.
Despite the simplicity of cataract surgery, about 20 million people worldwide are blind because of cataracts, and 90 percent of them live in developing countries.
Dr. Suresh Chandra, an opthalmologist at UW-Madison medical school, has been working to eliminate preventable blindness through the Combat Blindness Foundation he started in Madison in 1984. Since then, the CBF has supported more than 100,000 free cataract surgeries.
People with clinical depression may be unable to “snap out of it” because of faulty wiring in the brain, according to a new study released.
Researchers who compared the way people with very severe depression responded to negative stimuli relative to a group of healthy controls found that the circuits involved in controlling emotions were disrupted in the depressed individuals.
“The neural circuits involved with regulating emotions may be damaged in people with this condition,” said Tom Johnstone, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health and lead author of the study published in the journal Neuroscience on Tuesday.
If you’ve tried loading up on fruits, vegetables and whole grains and still can’t get relief from constipation, maybe you need more than a boost of fiber.
“The idea that many patients have, and unfortunately their physicians, if we just keep pushing fiber until the grass grows out of their behind they’ll have been treated successfully, that’s not really true,” said Dr. Arnold Wald, a professor of medicine in the section on gastroenterology and hepatology at the University of Wisconsin.
Dane County Emergency Management spent the afternoon learning how to handle a large scale decontamination. The scenario: a hazardous material was released at a soccer game.
If you were near the UW Hospital or St. Mary’s Monday you may have noticed medics wearing protective haz-mat clothing. This was all part of a drill to train each agency how to respond in this type of scenario.
The University of Wisconsin medical school and Marshfield Clinic will start a new program this fall to increase the number of graduating physicians trained in rural hospitals and clinics.
Leaders of the medical school and clinic said Monday that the new Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine will prepare up to 25 medical school students a year in the next few years for practice in small-town settings. The first class of five students is entering this fall.
A low-profile building opening in Madison this month comes with high expectatons in one of medicine ‘s most dynamic fields: brain research.
The Hedberg HealthEmotions Research Building, tucked behind a wooded slope off Research Park Boulevard, will expand UW-Madison ‘s already notable program in mental health research, scientists say.
Author: Richard Hartel is a professor of food engineering in the department of food science at UW-Madison. He may be contacted at rwhartel@wisc.edu.
The annual Films in the Field event has always been one of the more appealing benefit concepts going. Gather outside on a warm summer evening with hundreds of other families from around southern Wisconsin and watch a film together to support one of the world’s premier research facilities.
Experience has shown that even a few short discussions with a health professional can help a problem drinker. But sometimes people who could benefit from the talks are unable to come in or reluctant to do so.
The researchers, led by Dr. Richard L. Brown of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, screened patients in waiting rooms at 18 Wisconsin clinics and contacted those who appeared to have a possible alcohol problem.
NEW YORK – Among chronic pain patients who have been prescribed opioid drugs such as OxyContin or Percocet by primary care physicians, nearly 4 percent abuse these drugs, according to the results of a large study conducted in Wisconsin.
The findings also suggest that these patients commonly exhibit â??aberrant drug behavior,â? such as requesting early refills or purposely oversedating themselves.
Dr. Michael F. Fleming, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and his associates point out that a large number of patients have severe, incapacitating pain that cannot be controlled without daily opioid therapy. The researchers investigated substance abuse disorders in this patient population.
Your office laser printer may be hazardous to your health.
That’s because some printers emit large quantities of very fine particles that can be breathed into the lungs, according to a study by Australian researchers at the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at the Queensland University of Technology.
Quoted: Robert Hamers, UW-Madison chemistry department chairman & associate director of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center.
Tens of millions of dollars in benefits for thousands of state employees are hanging in the balance as legislative leaders hammer out a final budget deal.
….State Rep. David Travis, D-Madison, contends that the proposals are a back-door attempt to cut state workers’ pay.
“This isn’t a pay freeze,” said Travis, whose district includes many state and UW employees. “It’s a massive pay cut.”
Donna Sollenberger is resigning as president and chief executive officer of the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Authority, the academic medical center and health system that includes the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.
Sollenberger is leaving to join Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where she will serve as CEO of the Baylor Clinics and Hospital and executive vice president of Baylor College of Medicine, UW Hospitals and Clinics board chair Patrick Boyle announced Wednesday. She will begin her new position in late October where she will lead efforts in building the first Baylor-owned hospital.
University Hospital Chief Executive Officer Donna Sollenberger has been chosen to head Baylor College of Medicine’s first college-owned hospital, which is under construction and will open in 2010.
Sollenberger, who became president and CEO of the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics in 1999, will begin her new position in Houston on Oct. 22.
What will Donna Sollenberger’s legacy be after she leaves her position as chief executive of University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics to lead Baylor College of Medicine’s first college-owned hospital?
Most people will look at bricks-and-mortar achievements, most notably the construction of American Family Children’s Hospital.
But perhaps her greater impact has been on health policy and her vision for the hospital, said Steve Brenton, president of the Wisconsin Hospital Association.
Donna Sollenberger, who has led UW Hospital for nearly eight years as president and chief executive officer, will leave Sept. 30 to head the Baylor Clinic and Hospital in Houston.
Surgeons at the University of Wisconsin-Madison say they have performed the country’s first successful operation that replaces a person’s kidney and pancreas with the organs of a deceased donor.
Quoted: Maureen Durkin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist.
MADISON â?? When the University of Wisconsin approached American Family Insurance officials for support of a new childrenâ??s hospital, it didnâ??t take long for them to embrace the idea.
â??It really struck a chord with Harvey Pierce, our former chairman and chief executive, who believed there could be no finer corporate gift than to help sick children and their families,â? said Ken Muth, an American Family spokesman.
The 80-year-old Madison-based insurance company, which has 3,800 workers in the state, made an initial donation of $10 million in 2003. In return, it got the hospitalâ??s naming rights for the new hospital, which will be feted in an open house this Sunday.
American Family Children’s Hospital held its open house Sunday, and one room got much of the attention.
When Laurie Meade died, her family wanted to do something in which to remember her. And, as it turns out, they may have accomplished something that has never been done before.
When the Waukesha native was born with Cystic Fibrosis, doctors gave her eight years to live. Thirty two years later, it finally caught up with her. Her family, knowing that time may be running out, shifted their attention to her pets.
The new UW Children’s Hospital will be state of the art, and offer the level of medical care expected at an institution like the UW Hospital.
Some of that state of the art technology hasn’t arrived. The theme of today was “opening the gift” and make no mistake – this was a big milestone for the Children’s Hospital.
UW-Madison study Follows 10,000 Wisconsin High School Grads From Happy Days to the War on Terror.
But the most troubling finding from the University of Wisconsin survey is that people who hold fatalistic beliefs about cancer are more likely to put their lives at risk by smoking, not eating enough fruits and vegetables, and making other unhealthy choices.
Quoted: James Stein, a cardiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The opening of University Hospital’s new standalone children’s hospital in August means better facilities for young patients and their families as well as more space for treatment of adults in the UW Hospital and Clinics building.
It will also provide a more visible hospital that can better compete with the well-known Wauwatosa-based Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.
Dr. Ellen Wald, physician-in-chief for the new American Family Children’s Hospital, said the new building — which will cost $117 million when a second phase is completed — is better for the children.
Wisconsin’s youngest hospital patients have a shiny new place for treatment — a 250-thousand square foot UW hospital.
Quoted: Bruce P. Barrett, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Wisconsin
Saris Cycling Group is selling new pink colored bike racks to raise awareness and funds for the UW Cancer Center.
UW Children’s Hospital treats thousands of children every year. And every year, those children are invited to celebrate their health at a local park.
Sunday afternoon hundreds of former patients enjoyed a picnic at Madison’s Elver Park.
They helped give rise to the University of Wisconsin System. They shaped an important social theory. They challenged conventional thinking about retirement.
They confirmed that men and women have different views on sex, even later in life.
For 50 years, a third of the graduates from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 have answered questions on topics ranging from money to menopause. In doing so, they have served as a sociological Petri dish in one of the country ‘s longest-running studies.
Recently, the Wisconsin Population Health Institute issued its State Health Report Card, giving Wisconsin a B- for overall health and a D for health disparities. Didn’t a federal agency only a month ago say our health care system was No. 1 in the country in terms of its quality? How can we have the best health care but medium to poor health outcomes?
….How can Wisconsin raise our grades? We should continue to improve access to quality medical care, and we must increase our emphasis on the other determinants of health. Reducing smoking rates, controlling obesity and reducing substance abuse are among the most important overall strategies.
(David Kindig is an emeritus professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.)
