Quoted: “The average person shouldn’t be worried about monkeypox. It’s more about knowing when and where it’s been found and monitoring your own health,” said Dan Shirley, medical director for infection prevention at UW Health in Madison. “If you have anything that seems like monkeypox, report it right away.”
UW Health has created an “internal agency” of nurses, offering them $100 more per hour than their regular wage to take extra shifts, which has helped address a nursing shortage occurring nationally, CEO Dr. Alan Kaplan said Thursday.
More than 50,000 premature deaths each year could be prevented if air pollution emissions from energy-related activities in the United States were eliminated, according to a new study from University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
Quoted: “We call them essential but we treat them as expendable,” says Tiffany Green, a health economist and professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. “They’re less likely to be covered by benefits like health insurance.”
A new, more effective option for radiation therapy is coming for cancer patients at UW Health, one that experts hope will not only make treatment more affordable, but also more empowering for patients.
AUW Health anesthesiologist who sued the former head of her department and the UW Board of Regents — alleging unequal pay, unequal opportunity and a hostile work environment for female doctors — has received a $180,000 settlement.
UW Health’s $60 million proton therapy project will include new technology by Middleton-based Leo Cancer Care. Patients will sit in a special chair that shifts around a radiation beam instead of lying down while a massive contraption rotates around them on a gantry, as is the case at most proton therapy centers.
Mental health among student athletes has been thrust into the spotlight after at least five high-profile athletes died by suicide in recent months: Katie Meyer, a star goalie on Stanford’s soccer team; Sarah Shulze, a decorated runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Lauren Bernett, the softball player who helped lead James Madison University to the Women’s College World Series; Robert Martin a lacrosse player at Binghamton University; and Arlana Miller, a cheerleader at Southern University. Others have also been reported, but not confirmed.
Noted: Vos in 2005 was a sponsor of legislation that would have prevented the University of Wisconsin System from advertising, prescribing or dispensing emergency contraception. The Assembly passed it 49-41, but the state Senate never took it up and the measure died.
Quoted: The expansion of “test-to-treat” clinics is key, said Ajay Sethi, an associate professor of population health sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Test-to-treat locations are federally-designated one-stop shops where patients to get tested for COVID-19 and, if medication is deemed appropriate, get a prescription filled right away. There are 16 test-to-treat locations in Wisconsin so far.
“When we can scale that up to a point where we can feel confident that, ‘Hey, I’ve got symptoms, let me pop into that CVS, get tested, it’s positive, pharmacist gives me Paxlovid,’ that’s the next chapter,” Sethi said. “I think it’s the distribution issues that are keeping this from being a page-turner.”
“These proposals, if enacted, will have significant positive effects on our ability as a state to combat historic and pervasive health disparities across race, economic status, education, geographic location and history of incarceration,” according to a statement by council chair Gina Green-Harris, who directs the Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
The next director of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Global Health Institute has decades of experience studying viruses, including those that jump from animals to humans, and ways to prevent their spread.
Jorge Osorio is an expert in epidemiology, virology and vaccines and a professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine. He takes over his role in May, according to the news shared Tuesday by UW-Madison, and replaces Jonathan Patz, a professor and director of the institute since its founding in 2011.
Since the beginning of March, three high-profile college student-athletes have died by suicide across the United States: Katie Meyer, a star goalkeeper on Stanford’s soccer team; Sarah Shulze, a top runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Lauren Bernett, a standout softball player for James Madison University.
On Thursday, Southern University and A&M College announced a cheerleader, Arlana Miller, had died shortly after writing a social-media post that detailed her mental-health struggles, NBC News reported. That news followed the deaths by suicide of three women this spring: Lauren Bernett, a James Madison University softball player; Sarah Shulze, a member of the University of Wisconsin at Madison track team; and Katie Meyer, a Stanford University soccer player.
Sarah Shulze, a track star at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Katie Meyer, the Stanford women’s soccer team’s goalkeeper, both died by suicide.
Quoted: Patrick Remington, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, severely criticized Johnson and called his persistent questioning of medical science irresponsible.
“If he had a medical license these would be grounds for malpractice,” said Remington, a former epidemiologist for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “But since he’s not trained in medicine, he should stay in his lane and focus on things he knows about.”
Since the beginning of March, three high-profile college student-athletes have died by suicide across the United States: Katie Meyer, a star goalkeeper on Stanford’s soccer team; Sarah Shulze, a top runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Lauren Bernett, a standout softball player for James Madison University.
The suicides of five NCAA student-athletes over the past two months have roiled the world of college sports and illuminated the growing mental health crisis among young adults in the U.S. today. Among those who died was Katie Meyer, 22, a star goalkeeper on Stanford’s soccer team who was just a few months away from graduation, Sarah Shulze, 21, a top runner for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Lauren Bernett, 20, a celebrated softball player for James Madison University
Quoted: Jenny Higgins, a professor and director of the Collaborative for Reproductive Equity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says it’s more difficult to get an abortion in Wisconsin than it is in many other states.
“We have gone from a supportive state to a hostile state in a relatively short period of time,” she said.
It’s a gray and rainy Tuesday morning, and Dr. Michelle Buelow is with her patient Johnny at the Parkway Clinic of the Sixteenth Street Community Health Centers.
Despite the weather, Johnny, whom Buelow has been taking care of since 2018, is all smiles.
It’s just one of the reasons Buelow, a family medicine physician at the clinic, loves her work.
She was recently awarded the Max Fox Preceptor Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for her work. The award is given to a preceptor “whose effective service as a mentor and teacher has guided UW medical students,” according to a news release from the university.
The transfer agreement will facilitate transfers into a UW-Madison School of Nursing program called BSN@Home. Started in 1996, the program aims to address the shortage of bachelor-degree nurses in Wisconsin by providing a flexible part-time, online option for working nurses looking to expand opportunities in health care, officials said.
Noted: There is disagreement about whether such old laws could immediately take effect or whether they would need to be re-enacted, said University of Wisconsin-Madison law and bioethics professor Alta Charo, because they have been rendered ineffective for decades.
Wisconsin’s 1849 law also could make it difficult for UW School of Medicine and Public Health gynecology residents to get abortion training as they do now at Planned Parenthood in Madison, Laube said. UW might need to send residents to the Chicago area for such training, he said. UW Health spokesperson Emily Kumlien said the medical school will “work to ensure continuity of the robust training opportunities we provide.”
Co-authored by Jenny Higgins, PhD, MPH, a professor of gender and women’s studies and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
A new treatment was available for Brody’s form of Batten, delivered biweekly through unusual infusions directly into the brain. A UW Health team traveled to Chicago to learn how to give it, allowing Brody, now 6, to be treated near home.
Dubbed ‘Wisconsin Medicine,’ this philanthropic campaign is making an effort to drive innovation and progress in research, education, patient care, and health equity.
Kelly Marie Ward, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies and the Department of Sociology, is working to demystify abortion healthcare through her research on reproductive healthcare workers.
The campaign called Wisconsin Medicine seeks to raise $500 million from 100,000 individual donors by the end of 2025. The money will help fund research for new cures and treatments, and purchase new technology for the hospital and school.
Noted: In 2019, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office partnered with the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee — one of the oldest public-interest law firms in the nation — for a project called the Public Interest Justice Initiative. They reviewed the cases of 50 people sentenced to life in prison for crimes committed when they were children to determine eligibility for early release and parole.
The initiative was launched after the Remington Center at the University of Wisconsin Law School found that more than half the 128 inmates serving life sentences for juvenile offenses were from Milwaukee County. The idea is to see if adjustments should be made, said District Attorney John Chisholm.
Noted: Diets high in plant-based carbs and fats and low in meat and processed food may be best for longevity, according to the researchers, Valter Longo, a professor at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, and Rozalyn M. Anderson of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
In September 2020, just as the first major peak of COVID-19 transmission began, Dr. Michael Repplinger opened Monarch Health, an addiction treatment clinic in Downtown Madison. An emergency room doctor at UW Hospital who also works at ERs in Darlington and Portage, Repplinger said he was prescribing initial doses of the addiction treatment medication buprenorphine, or Suboxone, to ER patients who had overdosed to help them avoid withdrawal and cravings. But he said he couldn’t find clinics to send them to for follow-up care.
Noted: An hourly wage of $35.80 equates to about $74,400 in annual income. The average hourly wage stood at $31.73 in March, or about $66,000 annually, according to the latest government data. That means many families are falling behind in their ability to afford the basics, said Marjory Givens, co-director at the County Health Rankings, which is a program of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
Newly released rankings on the health of people in each county in the United States has Black Hawk and Bremer counties on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The rankings, put together by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute using new data, are meant to help people “understand what influences how long and how well we live.”
A family and college community are mourning the loss of a 21-year-old track star at University of Wisconsin-Madison who died by suicide. Sarah Shulze, a cross-country athlete, died on April 13, according to a statement from her parents and two sisters.
A million-dollar grant will help pay for a new collaboration designed to help combat the rise in substance abuse and addiction. The effort, dubbed Wisconsin Rural Health & Substance Use Clinical Support (or RHeSUS, for short), kicked off this month and targets improving care for patients in rural areas.
The Wisconsin Hospital Association and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health are partnering to help rural Wisconsinites get access to substance abuse treatment.
Noted: At the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s school of nursing, Associate Deans of Academic Affairs Barbara Pinekenstein and Lisa Bratzke said several students graduating this year had already accepted job offers at the end of the fall semester.
Admissions applications are also starting to stack up. Though it may be too soon to tell if the pandemic has caused more people to be interested in nursing as a career, Rentmeester said 367 people applied for Bellin College’s undergraduate and graduate nursing programs for the upcoming fall, up from a usual of about 320 pre-pandemic.
Saturday’s event was about raising awareness and providing potentially life-saving healthcare.
Ryann DeGraff, chief operating officer at the hospital, explained that the name better reflects what it offers to the patients and community. This includes surgical and emergency care.
According to UW Health, head and neck cancers tend to be very curable, especially when they are found early. However, Dr. Tiffany Glazer, a head and neck cancer surgeon at UW Health, said that more and more people are coming in with severe cases and during late stages of the cancer.
About 66,000 cases of head and neck cancer are diagnosed each year. Unfortunately, Dr. Tiffany Glazer said recent patients with these illnesses have come in with more severe and later-stage cases.
From Mars missions to moon colonies, the human species has some ambitious travel plans in the works — ones that stretch way beyond our planet.
“Space exploration is the big challenge of this century,” said Elena D’Onghia, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
DeVon Wilson, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the School of Letters and Science at UW-Madison, experienced deep loss and grief near the beginning of the pandemic with the passing of one of his best friends. He says, “grieving during a pandemic is difficult … I learned that I couldn’t do it alone.” In this episode of Black Oxygen, DeVon discusses his journey to Wisconsin, the difference in community needs between Beloit and Madison, and his experience of navigating grief after losing a dear friend. Near the end of the episode, DeVon shares, “grief is an indicator of the positive impact folks had on your life.”
April is Minority Health Month. In recognition of the month, the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Center for Community Engagement and Health Partnerships is getting as much information as possible out about health to communities. The Center houses two major programs, the UW All of Us Milwaukee site and the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute Regional Milwaukee Office. Dr. Bashir Easter, associate director for UW All of Us Milwaukee and Dr. Nia Norris, associate director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute and administrative manager with UW All of Us
Milwaukee join us to talk about their efforts they believe are crucial to keeping the community healthy.
Quoted: “It is an honor and a privilege to be here today to celebrate a revolutionary change, a revolutionary paradigm shift,” said Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor of population health sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and co-chair of the Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance of Dane County. “It is a program and this is a process that’s going to center the lives of Dane County’s Black women and birthing people in solving our persistent and frankly shameful disparities in birth outcomes.”
UW-Madison is welcoming a new club that is launching the week of April 22nd. IfYou’reReadingThis.org is a national organization whose purpose is to create a support network for mental health for students by students. It currently has twelve chapters at universities throughout the country, and its thirteenth is in the process of being established on our very own campus.
On the University of Wisconsin campus, the decrease in STI testing has caused concern among advocacy groups such as Sex Out Loud, a peer-to-peer resource on campus that uses sex-positive language to promote sexual health on campus, according to their website.
Wisconsin doctors are seeing a steady increase in the number of children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes — a disease that primarily affects adults — which may be linked to COVID-19.
Data released last week by UW Health Kids shows a nearly 200 percent increase in the number of cases of Type 2 diabetes over the past four years.
While this is a trend medical experts have noticed for years, Dr. Elizabeth Mann, a pediatric endocrinologist and director of the Type 2 Diabetes Program at UW Health Kids, said it’s taken a worrisome turn recently.
Noted: Anne Marsh serves in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health. Her 8-year-old son Ryan is transgender.
“Our son has grown up in a household where from the day he shared with us who he is, he has faced nothing but unconditional love and welcoming and celebration of who he is,” Anne said. “How do you teach a child that the world is going to perceive them differently and treat them differently? It’s a hard conversation to have with a young child as a parent.”
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study finds many cannabidiol, or CBD, products sold in southwestern Wisconsin don’t deliver what they promise on the label. One of the study’s authors says a lack of regulation and oversight is to blame.
Shereen Siewert welcomes vaccine expert Dr. Jonathan Temte, of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, for a review of the latest science surrounding vaccination, boosters, new treatments and the state of the COVID-19 pandemic.
UW Health Kids Type 2 Diabetes Program Director Dr. Elizabeth Mann said the percent of new onset diabetes patients with Type 2 at UW Health Kids went from 5.8% in 2018 to 16.4% in 2021.
An increase in children at UW Health being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which is mostly seen in adults, could be tied to isolation and decreased physical activity from the COVID-19 pandemic, a UW doctor said.
Noted: With rapid at-home tests becoming much more widely available since late 2021, an unknown but potentially large number of positive test results are going unreported. While this dynamic may pose a challenge to public health officials tracking COVID-19, the challenge is not insurmountable. That’s according to Ajay Sethi, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“The fact that we have home-based testing is a good thing,” Sethi said. “While it may compromise our ability to have a good record of cases that are in the community, we don’t necessarily want to abandon this very important way that people can test and take action, so we have to find a workaround.”
Quoted: The report’s findings confirm other research that has shown the link between poverty and COVID-19, says Tiffany Green, a University of Wisconsin economist who researches the impact of race and economics on health.
“This is not about individual behavior,” Green said in an interview. “It’s about what kinds of social conditions place people at risk.”
Early in the Wisconsin pandemic, outbreaks occurred in the meatpacking industry in Brown County. “And because of the way our occupational system is structured, they were disproportionately likely to be Hispanic immigrants,” Green says. “And they were working under conditions that were not properly regulated, that were not safe, when it comes to trying to prevent COVID.”
If you’ve been paying more for eggs recently, you have the bird flu to thank, according to egg producers.
UW-Madison scientists say they are fighting back.
Across the nation, tens of thousands of birds have had to be put down in recent weeks as the bird flu ravages flocks, and farmers say while it’s already making eggs expensive, it won’t stop there.
UW-Madison scientists say this is an issue that comes and goes, which is why they’re looking to bring a vaccine for the birds to market.
“Knock on wood, we’ve been doing okay in Wisconsin. We’ve had two outbreaks here in Wisconsin,” said UW-Madison Poultry Specialist Ron Kean.
Pregnant women with mild high blood pressure and their babies can benefit from treatment, according to a large study co-authored by a researcher at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
The findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine Saturday, could change guidelines to make treatment of mild chronic hypertension the standard of care for pregnant women as it is for other people, said the UW doctor who led the local arm of the study. “This is clear evidence that treating women at a lower threshold for their chronic hypertension effectively reduces maternal risk and is safe for the baby,” said Dr. Kara Hoppe, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
UW Health provided $700,000 in tuition reimbursement for its nurses in the past year and has created a nursing care partner job, spokesperson Emily Kumlien said. The role is like an inpatient version of SSM Health’s clinical support assistant. UW Health’s rolling 12-month turnover rate for nurses is 13.8%, compared to the national average of more than 21%, Kumlien said.
Noted: In a 2011 study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison compared the impact of enhanced, high-empathy medical care with what they called “standard care.” When patients with colds rated their care “perfect in empathy” they had shorter and less serious illness than peers who rated their care less than perfect, an indication that even the perception of empathy makes a difference.
Moreover, the body’s own chemistry reflected the difference in care. Patients who perceived their care to be high in empathy showed higher levels of neutrophils ― a type of white blood cell that fights infections ― than those given standard care.
The difference between the standard and the more empathetic care affected the doctors, too.
“When they pulled the card to provide standard care, they felt terrible. When they pulled the enhanced care card, they felt great,” said David Rakel, lead author of the study and chairman of the department of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The study was published in the journal Patient Education and Counseling.
