Despite documented systemic barriers, a new UW-Madison study shows mothers with low incomes find the credit system in the United States legitimate. We speak with Sarah Halpern-Meekin and J. Michael Collins, two of the researchers.
This week, Republican legislators unveiled a proposal to legalize medical marijuana in Wisconsin. We get reaction to the proposal from Lucas Richert, a pharmaceutical historian at UW-Madison.
A bill that would prohibit higher education institutions in Wisconsin from conducting “gain of function” research on “potentially pandemic pathogens” received a public hearing on Wednesday.
The bill — AB 413 — was introduced by Rep. Elijah Behnke (R-Oconto) and Sen. André Jacque (R-DePere), who cited several incidents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and controversy over the origins of COVID-19.
Dr. Paula Cody, medical director of adolescent medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, warned about the dangers of diet pills and supplements more than six years ago after hearing enough patients ask about supplements to lose weight or gain muscle — and the issue has only grown.
“The incidence of eating disorders has increased pretty dramatically after the pandemic. We’ve seen the numbers skyrocket,” she said. “So I do think that the concern I had before, which was not a small matter then — I’m even more concerned now.”
Stem cell biologists are gaining new insight into the human brain — thanks to technology developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Randolph Ashton is the associate director of UW-Madison’s Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and says they can use that research to screen for numerous conditions like spina bifida and autism; and, according to Dr. Ashton, RosetteArray technology could eventually help scientists develop more specific medical treatments – and perhaps even a cure. When it comes to medical ethics, he says his primary concern is the prohibitive cost of such treatment.
UW-Madison is heading up a $150 million study at Alzheimer’s disease centers around the country that seeks to shed more light on mixed dementia, or having more than one kind of the neurological disease.
CEO Dr. Alan Kaplan said that despite the challenges facing health care providers, UW Health saw a “very strong” year. “Our vision at UW Health is providing remarkable care to our patients and our community,” he said. “Our more than 24,000 providers and staff made that vision a reality for a record number of patients over the last year.”
Simon Goldberg, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studies the effects of meditation, including research among people who have psychological problems such as depression and anxiety. He noted that because of Dunn and Folk’s strict criteria, they omitted hundreds of studies on meditation’s benefits. “It’s, in the spirit of rigor, throwing lots of babies out with the bathwater,” he says. “It’s really very obvious that meditation training reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.”
If you resolve to stay healthy, Madison, Wis., is a good choice. With five general hospitals — including UW-Madison School of Medicine — and more than 20 medical clinics, finding healthcare is accessible in Madison. The city also boasts a low percentage of uninsured residents and a high doctor-patient ratio.
Megan Moreno is a University of Wisconsin adolescent medicine physician and co-medical director of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. She often warns parents against romanticizing their own methods of socialization as adolescents over what their kids do to make and keep friends.
“I have a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old, and one thing I think a lot about is checking my own biases of how they’re supposed to be spending their time,” Moreno said.
Covering Wisconsin, a program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, helps people sign up for and understand their health insurance.
The program’s GetCovered Connector Tool can connect you with a local health insurance expert via Zoom, phone, or in person. The experts can provide advice on applications, appeals, coverage issues and more.
Similarly, inherited microchimerism might help explain why some studies have found that people are better at accepting organs from their mother than from their father, says William Burlingham, a transplant specialist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
In an opinion column in the Wisconsin State Journal, two University of Wisconsin-Madison professors wrote that the additional births caused harm to Wisconsin communities.
“Dobbs is just the latest abortion restriction to harm Wisconsinites, especially low-income Wisconsinites,” wrote Tiffany Green, associate professor of population health sciences and obstetrics, and gynecology, and Jenny Higgins, director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity. “In our role as scientists and public health professionals, we conclude that the evidence is clear: Restrictions and policies in our state that make abortion inaccessible and unaffordable harm the health and well-being of Wisconsin families
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many health experts were concerned about the new disease’s impact on older adults and people who are immunocompromised.
Jenna Nobles, sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was interested in another potentially vulnerable group – pregnant people.
“We know that emerging infectious diseases can be extremely consequential for pregnancies, both people who are carrying the pregnancies and the infants who are born from them,” Nobles said.
Quoted: “There can be some ability to trace that, because each company would be producing, potentially, different types of PFAS that could be linked back to them,” said Steph Tai, a law professor and associate dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an expert on environmental law.
A new book explores the life and career of Wisconsin Badgers hockey legend Blake Geoffrion, including his decision to retire from the NHL.
University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics are also asking that people wear masks in its medical buildings, including University Hospital, American Family Children’s Hospital and East Madison Hospital.
The Collaborative Care program helps patients get mental health treatment quickly, without having to possibly wait months to obtain an appointment at a specialty clinic. Patients can talk to their primary doctor about any issues they are experiencing and can see a clinician right away.
“In all cases of amblyopia, there’s a stronger eye and a weaker eye. And it’s winner-take-all in the cortex. And the cortex learns to ignore the signals from the weak eye,” says Elizabeth Quinlan, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
A new study by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that a lack of nurturing as a child is associated with accelerated aging later in life. The research looks at changes to a person’s genome that have been linked to their environment or behaviors — what’s called epigenetics. These markers can indicate a person’s biological age, or how much their body has aged physically.
Lauren Schmitz, professor at UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, said the field of research around these epigenetic changes is still new because data is limited. Studies require both survey data on people’s health experiences and a blood sample.
Lead researcher Bryan Heiderscheit, a UW-Madison orthopedics professor, said the main goal is to advance the understanding and prevention of hamstring injuries that are the most common ailment for NFL players.
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.
