Rishelle Eithun, with UW Health Kids, says American Family Children’s Hospital sees fireworks-related injuries every July— including burns, loss of fingers or limbs, and other serious trauma. She says sparklers are especially dangerous for children younger than five.
UW Health revealed Wednesday that Carbone Cancer Center was included in Newsweek’s inaugural list of America’s Best Cancer Hospitals 2023. It was ranked highest in Wisconsin and #30 in the nation.
Roots4Change, a Madison-based cooperative of Latina or indigenous doulas that started in 2018, has received grants from the state and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health to expand its services, train new doulas and help medical providers better understand various Latino cultures. Another UW medical school grant has helped families get fresh food.
UW Health’s Carbone Cancer Center was named the best cancer hospital in Wisconsin and one of the best in the country, according to Newsweek.
The center ranked as No. 1 in Wisconsin and No. 30 nationwide on the inaugural list. A total of 175 hospitals were ranked.
Afour-story UW Health clinic nearly three times the size of UW’s Digestive Health Center on Madison’s West Side is expected to open next to that facility in early 2026, according to plans going before city officials for approval beginning this month.
Data from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Collaborative for Reproductive Equity (CORE) shows an estimate of 7,000 fewer abortions took place in Wisconsin in the year after the Dobbs decision than the year before.
Other med schools that have also established substantial training efforts on such subjects include Louisiana State University, the University of Mississippi at Jackson, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.
Studies have pointed to the critical importance of developing a diverse health care workforce that reflects the patient population and can deliver culturally competent care to help reduce disparities. That’s why the Dane County NAACP is calling on UW Health, the largest medical provider in our area, to show leadership on this issue by declaring Juneteenth — Freedom Day — a paid holiday for all employees.
Sara Benzel, a spokesperson for UW Health, confirmed with the Cap Times that medical professionals in Madison do not, and have never, performed procedures commonly referred to as “bottom” surgeries on minors.
Some doctors are urging the return of masking mandates at hospitals. Dr. Kaitlin Sundling is a UW Health pathologist and an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. She is trying to gather public support for overturning UW Health’s decision in early May to scale back its mask mandates.
“It really is a mistake to take that protection away and to put both patients and health care workers at risk,” she said.
As part of the study, lead author Heather Inzalaco, a post-doctoral researcher at UW-Madison, gave blood with CWD-positive material to ticks in a lab. She found that the ticks both ingested and excreted CWD prions.
“They were taking it up, simultaneously eliminating some of it in their frass, which is just a fancy word for tick poo,” Inzalaco said. “So it was in both places.”
Plus, while the impact of age on a couple’s fertility has historically focused on the woman, “there has been a lot of data gathered over the last 10 years that indicates that, as men age, their fertility potential does decline over time,” said Daniel H. Williams, a urologist who specializes in male infertility at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Exercise can help your memory and learning ability, too. Moderate-intensity exercise is linked to an increase in cerebral blood flow and brain glucose metabolism, which are connected to cognitive functions, says University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Ozioma Okonkwo, who co-wrote two studies on the subject.
Like others 80 and older who have superior memories for their age, Frantz is in a study of super agers at UW-Madison. Through cognitive tests, blood tests and MRI scans, the participants could help researchers identify biologic, behavioral, environmental and socioeconomic clues to keeping memories intact — and avoiding Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia — well into advanced age.
Dr. Dixon Kaufman says the center is one of six in the U.S. and the only one in the Midwest that actively does heart, kidney, liver, lung and pancreas transplants for adults and kids.
Children in need of heart transplants will now be able to receive them in Madison. UW Health’s Transplant Center just launched a new pediatric heart transplant program at American Family Children’s Hospital.
UW Hospital added metal detectors at its ER in August. UnityPoint Health-Meriter, Madison’s Veterans Hospital and Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin haven’t installed metal detectors at any locations and said they rely on other security measures.
“As a pharmacist who works in a rural primary care clinic, I’ve seen how challenging it can be for patients to get in for an appointment with their primary care provider,” Marina Maes, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy said. “The provider schedules are booked two to three months out, which limits patients’ access to timely and convenient care from trusted health care professionals.”
UW-Madison researchers are part of a five-year, $29 million National Institutes of Health grant using gene editing to develop drugs for two rare diseases that cause blindness.
An UW Health surgical team performed life saving measures after removing a tumor that was blocking a newborn baby’s airway in February, resulting in a dramatic before and after transformation.
Jessica Calarco, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar take. “This idea of ‘doing the work,’ is just the latest manifestation of the kind of self-improvement culture that has long permeated American society and that is closely linked to America’s obsessively individualistic bent,” she told me via email.
Noted: Twenty years of research has standardized the dosage of the drugs used in clinical trials, but the therapy part has not received similar scrutiny. Instead, therapists’ work is often based on tradition rather than empirical evidence, said Dr. Charles Raison, the director of clinical and translational research at the Usona Institute in Wisconsin and a professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin.
In recent months, hospitals have stopped requiring people to wear masks in their facilities. We speak with a Dr. Kaitlin Sundling, an associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the UW–Madison, who is among many health care workers calling for universal masking in medical facilities because of the risks facing workers and patients.
To help people find culturally-inclusive foods and food services, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension Brown County launched a new map to help people find food and food services in northeast Wisconsin. It includes things such as food pantries, electronic benefit transfer locations, meal programs and community gardens.
“We collect food pantry statistics and in the last couple of months we have seen an increase in the number of households using food pantries,” said Clarice Martell, one of the extension staff members who worked on the map project. “We hope that this map can make it easier for food insecure households to locate food resources near to them.”
Quoted: “If you’re drinking one to two drinks (per day) because it’s good for you, it doesn’t necessarily increase the length of your life,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison medical school. “There’s no evidence in this large, well-designed study of a life-extending benefit.”
Hospitalized patients at UW Health and UnityPoint Health-Meriter now can have two visitors at a time, with no limit on the total number of different visitors.
“If you’re drinking one to two drinks (per day) because it’s good for you, it doesn’t necessarily increase the length of your life,” said Dr. Patrick Remington, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison medical school. “There’s no evidence in this large, well-designed study of a life-extending benefit.”
UW-Madison medical entomologist Susan Paskewitz explains how black-legged ticks, also known as deer ticks and transmit Lyme disease to humans, are increasingly found in more areas around the state.
About four years ago, Maichou Lor was living in New York completing a postdoctoral fellowship, when family members back home in Wisconsin kept telling her that her dad’s hearing was getting worse.
“He wasn’t responding to conversations even though he had a hearing aid,” said Lor, now an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “I brought him in to see his doctor through the ENT clinic here at UW-Health.”
“The machine will match where the tumor is. That is really great because especially when you’re talking about tumors in the lung, or tumors in the liver, they’re going to move as the animal breathes and it’s the same with people,” UW School of Veterinary Medicine Radiation Oncology Section Head Dr. Lia Forrest said.
Dr. Hans Sollinger, the former chair of transplantation at UW-Madison who pioneered a pancreas transplant technique and developed an anti-rejection drug taken by many transplant patients, died Monday at his home in Madison.
“During the pandemic almost everything Covid related, whether it was vaccines or testing or treatment was all covered by the government. Basically, it was all subsidized that starts to go away. Now, what’s covered depends on who your insurer is, or if you have insurance,” said Dr. Jeff Pothof, chief quality officer at UW Health.
UW Health psychologist Dr. Shilagh Mirgain said Mother’s Day can be an emotional trigger for many.
“Almost in anyone’s life, there are going to be years where Mother’s Day is really challenging,” Mirgain said.
Shilagh Mirgain, a health psychologist for UW Health, says reframing how you view the day may help you still enjoy it and work through those hard feelings.
“Reframing the focus of this holiday can be an effective way to celebrate all the positive attributes of motherhood you may not have experienced yourself as a child or missed out on as an adult,” she said.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health has money to give away. Now it needs applicants.
The school is inviting nonprofit health organizations to apply for grants “to provide better care and address root causes of maternal and infant health disparities.” Awards will be made for a maximum of $1.15 million for up to two years. Applicants must propose working with community partners.
“So many of the issues that are happening right now, this generation of teens really thinks about how it’s going to impact them,” said Dr. Megan Moreno, a pediatrician at UW Health, and the co-director of the American Academy of Pediatrics Center of Excellence for Social Media and Mental Health.
Family child care providers make an average of $7.46 an hour, while center-based teachers make an average of $12.99. Both make less than the average Wisconsinite with a high school diploma, according to research by Alejandra Ros Pilarz, an assistant professor at the Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She found poor wages and lack of career advancement opportunities are top reasons why 18% of family child care providers and 28% of ECE teachers plan to leave the field within a few years.
“Certainly fewer people are dying than were dying in the beginning of the pandemic, but we’re still losing over 200 Americans a day,” says Prof. Tiffany Green, a health economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I hope the average person in Wisconsin doesn’t see the ending of the emergency declaration as the ending of the pandemic,” says Prof. Ajay Sethi, a UW-Madison epidemiologist.
Dr. Mark Moss, an allergist at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine is the station master of the university’s pollen counting site, which is part of a nationwide network of such stations. He’s been the station master for 13 years, and the university has pollen counts going back into the 1990s.
“Over the past two decades, there has been two clear changes: the beginning of the season in the spring starts earlier and the end of the season in the fall goes later,” Moss said.
University of Wisconsin Law School Professor Miriam Seifter explains legal arguments over the state’s 1849 law and later statutes related to abortion as hearings begin in a high-profile court case.
Ashley Swanson, associate professor of economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said hospital mergers — on average — increase prices, while having a negligible effect on patient care.
“It seems like they primarily increase prices when the merging hospitals are located close to one another,” she said. “But there is some relatively new evidence suggesting that cross-market mergers can sometimes increase prices as well.”
Noted: Additionally, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found, menstrual cycles are highly-variable on an individual level, with 1 in 5 women having an “irregular” cycle. For some, that activity can be detected 35 to 37 days after the beginning of their last period.
There’s a new strain of coronavirus going around right now that has symptoms similar to seasonal allergies.Dr. Jeff Pothof, UW Health Chief Quality Officer, said the new strain known as Arcturus seems to be a bit more contagious, but it isn’t severe.
Quoted: “I feel like we hear about new places that have PFAS every day,” said Christy Remucal, a University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor of engineering who studies the chemicals and did not participate in the study.
Interview with Dr. Patrick Remington, a professor emeritus in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, about the results of a new review of 107 other studies, and its conclusions about whether low-level alcohol drinking extended people’s lives.
“The pandemic has and likely will continue to disproportionately impact Black birthing people and their families,” said Dr. Tiffany Green, co-chair of the Black Maternal and Child Health Alliance of Dane County and an associate professor at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
The organizations have announced that masks will now be encouraged rather than required at many clinics and some areas within hospitals, but will still be required in certain areas.
UW Health and UnityPoint Health — Meriter are moving to make masks “encouraged” rather than required in many of its facilities. The hospital systems are now encouraging masks as most clinics and some spaces within hospitals. Masks are still required in locations deemed as “high risk” based on the patient population served.
As a clinical professor at the UW-Madison School of Nursing, (Gina) Bryan said she also sees many parts of the state struggle to attract psychiatric advanced practice nurse graduates, who go instead to Minnesota or Iowa where they can work independently. “Why would our students stay here and practice?” she said.
Bunmi Kumapayi, a UW Health nurse practitioner who has treated urologic conditions for more than 20 years, said the doctor she collaborates with allows her to work very independently. But for many newer advanced practice nurses around the state, that is not the case, she said.
He already was a rock star at running hospitals and had options, but agreed to become chief executive officer of the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics (the predecessor to UW Health.) The mammoth hospital we see today on Highland Avenue opened five years after he arrived. Derzon navigated its evolution for 26 years before retiring in 2000.
Noted: University of Wisconsin-Madison political science and law professor Howard Schweber said if Kaul’s lawsuit is successful, the 20-week abortion law would go back into effect along with the waiting periods and mandatory ultrasound requirements.
Dr. Greg DeMuri, a pediatric infectious disease doctor at UW Health, also spoke in favor of eliminating the mandate, saying that “almost the entire population has some form of immunity to COVID, whether it’s the vaccine or natural infection.” The number of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are now “very, very low,” he said, adding that complications are “very rare.”
A job working at Madison-based UW Health while attending nursing school at Madison College. Full-time benefits and salaries. Paid time-off to attend classes. Free college tuition, books and supplies.
That’s the offer on the table for those aspiring to earn a nursing degree through a recently announced, first-of-its-kind apprenticeship program in Wisconsin launching this fall. The program is designed specifically to address staffing shortages in Wisconsin that Rudy Jackson, UW Health’s chief nurse executive, said have reached “crisis levels.”
“The program began through grant funding from the Meriter Foundation and an NIH grant from UW-Madison,” Fire Department spokesperson Cynthia Schuster said. “Over the years, the program has grown to be an integrated part of the Madison Fire Department, and Mindy has been instrumental in that growth. Her contributions to the program have helped expand its services and will have a lasting impact on the program for years to come.”
UW Health and Madison Area Technical College are starting a nurse apprentice program to help diverse medical and nursing assistants get nursing degrees and become registered nurses.
The health system says the four-year program is designed to encourage a diverse group of health care personnel to pursue an associate degree in nursing. The degree will make those individuals eligible to take the board examination and become a registered nurse.
It’s also not clear that social media use contributes to young people’s emotional struggles, said Heather Kerkorian, who researches the effects of media on children’s development and family interactions at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“If we look at individual kids, some kids might benefit a lot from social media, some might be harmed by social media and most of them are not affected much,” Kerkorian said.
Jenny Higgins, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, said the biggest takeaway from the report was that these declines were not balanced out by increases in the number of abortions happening in states where abortion access is less restricted.
“One of the things that people had expected after Dobbs was that states like California would get an influx of people … states with relatively few restrictions,” Higgins said. “What the #WeCount report shows is that we haven’t seen the flooding into those states.”
They discussed updated leadership position descriptions, the Student Sustainability Advisory Council and legislation to encourage UW’s administration to prioritize students’ mental health in future academic calendars, among other things.
