Category: Health

If you think senior centers are places where elderly folks go to eat lunch and play bingo, you’re pretty old-fashioned.

Increasingly, these centers offer a broad range of classes, speakers and electronic activities aimed at keeping people’s minds and bodies healthy.

Like a lot of other people, Bill Rock of Madison wonders why his prescription drugs are so expensive. He suspects itââ?¬â?¢s due in large part to ââ?¬Å?huge mark-upsââ?¬Â; this, he reasons, would account for wide disparities in cost and the fact that providers like Wal-Mart can fill many common prescriptions for as little as $4.

Paul Montague nominated Dr. David Allen for our people making a difference segment. He says Dr. Allen… “Practices what he preaches and rides a bicycle to work on most days even in winter.”

20 years ago, Madison was rooting for him as a runner. Today, he is trying save children from a disease that could catch up with them later in life. So, David along with a couple other Pediatrics Physicians came up with a fitness initiative to try and measure how fit children really are.

More than a third of disadvantaged 3-year-olds in Chicago and other major U.S. cities are overweight or obese, according to a new study that supports the notion that the struggle with obesity often begins in early childhood.

By the time they reach the age of 3, more than one-third of low-income urban children are already overweight or obese, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study released yesterday that provides alarming evidence that the nation’s battle of the bulge begins when toddlers are barely out of diapers.

To examine the use and impact of health resources on the Web, researchers in Wisconsin created a whole new site. Although their study is ongoing, one finding is clear: the discussion boards are the best-used section.

The Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System provides interactive education – message boards, detailed medical information, decision-making tools – for patients and their families. It began in 1987 as a long-term controlled study of how consumers use computers for health care; Internet access to the program was added later and quickly became dominant.

“People in the thousands have used it since its inception,” says Fiona McTavish, a deputy director of the program, a collaboration of the departments of industrial engineering and preventive medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Rollerskates, a stick shift – and hair long enough to be curled.
Those are the pleasures of life for Gabby Mahan, who had brain surgery at UW Hospital this year that cured her tremors but required her head to be shaved.

Pomegranates could help in the fight against lung cancer, according to new research.

In a study at the US University of Wisconsin-Madison, pomegranate fruit extract was shown to help stop the growth of new lung cancer.

MADISON, Wis. — Strep throat is what’s going around these days, according to Madison arean doctors and health care professionals.

Pediatricians at University of Wisconsin Hospital said that they’re seeing a lot of cases lately, WISC-TV reported.

Milwaukee health officials are investigating a confirmed case of tuberculosis involving a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee came one step closer to creating a School of Public Health when a committee of the UW System Board of Regents gave the university the green light Thursday to continue planning for such a school.

Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the City of Milwaukee got an important and well-deserved vote of confidence Thursday from the Education Committee of the UW Board of Regents in their goal of developing a freestanding, accredited school of public health at UWM.

At its meeting today, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will hear a report recommending that UW-Milwaukee develop a school of public health.

MADISON, Wis. — A new report from the Wisconsin Hospital Association said its members are struggling to fill a variety of positions, including hospital-based pharmacists.

The association’s report said the demand is rising for pharmacists, while the number entering the profession is dropping.

Admissions at Wisconsin’s only pharmacy school, University of Wisconsin-Madison, have remained flat for five years. Some hospitals spend as much as a year recruiting nationwide before filling pharmacy vacancies.

(CBS)Ã? Ever wonder why we seem to crave most the food that’s worst for us? Could it be that we literally can’t resist it?

That’s what neuroscientist Ann Kelley has been studying for more than a decade in her lab at the University of Wisconsin, CBS News correspondent Trish Regan reports.

“In a way, food is like a drug,” Kelly says.

(UNDATED) As use of prescription drugs continues to rise and Wisconsin�s population ages, there�s concern there won�t be enough pharmacists in Wisconsin to handle demand.

Some say a perfect storm caused by a changing society is to blame for a shortage of pharmacists. Jeanette Roberts is Dean of the state�s only pharmacy school, located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. She says there are so many more drugs for so many more things and it�s become a part of their normal management. The Hospital Association�s Warmuth says there�s a good reason for that. She says it�s so much better for patients if they can be treated with pharmacological intervention so that is the first approach that�s always taken.

With more than half of the state’s public health work force over the age of 50, Wisconsin needs an accredited school of public health to train tomorrow’s workers. And because Milwaukee’s public health needs are so great, the school should be located here, where some of the critical building blocks for such a school already exist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a report to be released today concludes.