A new study finds Wisconsin ranks second in the United States in binge drinking.
The report from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Population Health Institute looks at both federal and state health data.
Noted: The legislation applies to municipalities, Marquette University and University of Wisconsin campuses. Families of special agents employed by the Department of Revenue and State Fair Park police officers also are eligible for the continued benefits.
The facility is funded by a program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Bridget Mouchon-Humphrey, program director for the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program Inc., helped write the grant, which covers Iowa, Lafayette, Grant, Green and Richland counties.
Quoted: “When it comes to diversity in STEM studies, we act clueless. We don’t take our scientific mindset or approach to these issues,” said Angela Byars-Winston, the first black woman to become a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
“If you look at national numbers, this age group is one of the least vaccinated against influenza. But we’ve made it pretty easy for students going out to places on campus and having a walk-in clinic here,” Bill Kinsey, UW-Madison Health Services Medical Director said.
The Director of the Center for Healthy Minds, Dr. Richard Davidson, developed the mindfulness-based “Kindness Curriculum” for preschoolers to help them pay closer attention to their emotions.
Quoted: “The marketplace has stabilized quite substantially in the last couple years. Insurers are making money,” explained Donna Friedsam, a health policy director for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Institute for Research on Poverty. “There were substantial (profit) margins in some cases. In the last year we saw a couple of the insurance carriers giving rebates to consumers.”
Madison West High School freshman Erin Tormey leaned over and looked closely through the otoscope, seeing gray in the ear of University of Wisconsin-Madison physician assistant student Violet Weibel.
The long-term complications from uncontrolled diabetes include the increased risk of a heart attack or stroke, nerve damage that causes tingling or numbness, kidney failure, blindness, and losing toes and feet to amputation.
Yet an estimated 17% of adults under the age of 65 who had diabetes were without health insurance before the expansion of coverage through the Affordable Care Act, according to a recent study by Rebecca Myerson, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and colleagues at the University of Southern California.
Three years ago, a group of health-tech entrepreneurs, investors and others familiar with UW-Madison’s painfully sluggish clinical trial process delivered a plea to campus leaders with the power to make changes.
Quoted: “These changes come out of huge health care systems like Kaiser Permanente,” says Byron Crouse, who retired last September from his job as associate dean for rural and community health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How do you scale that down to a small, rural practice?”
Fresenius Kidney Care, which operates 2,400 dialysis facilities nationwide, has assumed majority ownership of two Wisconsin Dialysis Inc. clinics in the Madison area.
The program, Suicide Prevention Training for UW-Madison Students, is an online training that suicide prevention graduate assistant Rachel Dyer said takes about 90 minutes to complete.
Quoted: “These changes come out of huge health care systems like Kaiser Permanente,” says Byron Crouse, who retired last September from his job as associate dean for rural and community health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How do you scale that down to a small, rural practice?”
Column: The $386 million Wisconsin Partnership Fund for a Healthy Future shouldn’t be considered secret.
Quoted: Communication scholar Dietram Scheufele at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said that at any point in time, roughly five issues tend to dominate a person’s memory. A constantly shuffling set of concerns struggle endlessly for one’s attention.
Quoted: University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering professor Robert Radwin studies workplace ergonomics. He was not involved in the University of Pittsburg study but he instructs students on the qualities of sit-stand desks which he feels have gotten a lot of hype. He does not have one.
“I think they have their place. If people suffer from discomfort from sitting at their desk and they feel standing is beneficial, then such a desk might be helpful but you should be careful not to expect that a sit-stand desk is going to make sedentary work much healthier than if you just got out and exercised,” Radwin said.
Most University of Wisconsin System campuses ban e-cigarettes in and near campus buildings, but university officials say enforcement of anti-smoking policies is relatively lax.
The former Dean Clinic cardiothoracic surgeon stopped seeing patients in 2004 but refocused his passion for medicine to teaching ensuing generations of physicians at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
Noted: According to the UW-Madison College of Engineering website, Albert researches “modeling and solving real-world discrete optimization problems with application to homeland security, disasters, emergency response, public services, and healthcare.”
The research on emergency response, for example, focuses on how to match the right resources with the right needs at the right time. In one aspect of this research, Albert looks at how to get the right mix of vehicles to an emergency.
The only rural OB-GYN residency program in the nation is expanding. The program at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health will add Western Wisconsin Health to the rotation.
Across the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, simple, yet powerful symbols of hope and help can be found. They’re in dining halls and dorms, classrooms and labs, sports facilities and student unions.
It’s a commonly known fact that by the age of thirty-five, two-thirds of men will experience some form of balding. That figure only increases as males age and hair thinning progressively increases.
Quoted: “Family planning was an achievement for the People’s Republic at its 60th anniversary, there was an awkward silence at the 70th anniversary,” said Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a long-standing critic of China’s birth restrictions.
Maureen Smith is a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She along with other members of the school developed a report to show health care disparities in Wisconsin. They gathered information from 25 different health systems across the state.
Quoted: It isn’t clear whether the greater prevalence of reported ADHD and ASD cases is necessarily a bad thing. According to Maureen Durkin, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, in an editorial appearing accompanying the study in Pediatrics, greater awareness of the disorders and better diagnosis might be largely responsible for the higher numbers.
Diagnoses of those two conditions increase with maternal education, points out Maureen Durkin, professor of population health sciences and pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Durkin was not involved in the study but wrote an editorial accompanying the work3.
UW Health Psychologist Shilagh Mirgain shares healthy and effective ways to grieve, whether it’s the loss of a job, a loved one or dealing with a serious illness.
Noted: Last week I was primed for a conversation with Jennifer Gaddis, the author of “The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools.” I had just eaten a lukewarm cheeseburger (the cheese was totally unmelted) and then moved on to the accompanying banana, since I couldn’t stomach the wilted iceberg lettuce that was called “salad” or the soggy, undercooked fries that came with the “meal.”
But the public-school culinary experience isn’t what makes Gaddis’ new book important. It is required reading for anyone who wants this part of our students’ school day to be nourishing — not only for the kids, but for the women who feed them.
“So much of the work of feeding children is gendered — the majority of workers in food service, especially frontline food service, are women,” Gaddis told me. “Whether it’s happening at school or in the homes of the millions of students who take lunch from home to school, feeding students is typically done by women.”
“In Wisconsin today, 19 individuals will die of a disease directly caused by smoking cigarettes,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, who directs the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, in a Sept. 17, 2019 interview on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time.
“My concerns for students is that those that would get influenza will be probably so sick they will have difficulties certainly getting into class for a week or so,” UHS Director Bill Kinsey said. “And considering a semester is only 15 weeks, missing a week or more of school is a problem.”
Dr. Katherine Gast became the first surgeon in recent memory at UW Hospital, and in the state, to offer the full range of transgender surgeries when she came to Madison in August 2017.
Jennifer Gaddis, assistant professor at UW-Madison and author of The Labor of Lunch spoke with America’s Work Force on Sept. 17 about getting better school lunches in schools.
Noted: Author Jennifer Gaddis discusses her new book about The National School Lunch Program.
Noted: The report was described as an enhancement of the nationwide County Health Rankings & Roadmaps compiled through a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.
“Tackling the disparities should not only include focused efforts but should also include systemic efforts that get at root causes such as social determinants of health — poverty, housing, environment, transportation,” said Dr. Maureen Smith, director of UW-Madison’s Health Innovation Program, which helped produce the report.
Quoted: This discovery, like most, raises at least as many questions as it answers. “It’s a beautiful piece of science,” says Ann C. Palmenberg, a University of Wisconsin, Madison biochemist and enterovirus expert who was not involved with the research. But “don’t throw away your chicken soup just yet,” she says
“Which aligns with our understanding that younger and older folks are particularly vulnerable to the health harms posed by climate change,” said Limaye, who holds a doctorate in environmental epidemiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Slattery, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health, serves as director of the UW Anxiety Disorders program, which she established 15 years ago. The program helps people of all ages with anxiety, but the Wisconsin native specializes in working with children and adolescents.
Patients at Mile Bluff Center in Mauston can walk in and have a retinal photograph taken in a matter of minutes. Dr. Yao Liu is an assistant professor of opthalmology at the UW School of Medicine.
The task force recommended UHS hire more providers, increase space at the clinic, improve accessibility, provide resources to prevent staff burnout, and evaluate data around student mental health and then adjust services accordingly.
Magnesium is abundant in the body. Hundreds of biological processes, including the creation of new proteins, energy production in cells, and DNA synthesis, depend on it, explains Colin MacDiarmid, a senior nutrition scientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Patients at Mile Bluff Center in Mauston can walk in and have a retinal photograph taken in a matter of minutes. Dr. Yao Liu is an assistant professor of opthalmology at the UW School of Medicine.
According to the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention website, electronic cigarettes and other vaping devices are battery-powered products designed to deliver nicotine, flavor and other chemicals to users. They turn chemicals, including nicotine, into an aerosol that is then inhaled by the user.
Quoted: The lung illness “gets worse really quickly,” said Jeffrey Kanne, a radiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which has had patients. On scans, “these are like what you see with acute lung injuries,” such as inhaling toxic substances in an industrial accident.
Letter to the editor: The State Journal’s August 31 article, “White coats mark special entry”, noted that 71% of the class at the UW School of Medicine hailed from Wisconsin. If the administration of UW-Madison cared about meeting the state’s medical workforce needs, the percentage would have been over 90%.
But now a study has found most small polyps detected during screening will never become cancerous and treating them is unnecessary. Taking a new tack, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have come up with four markers for the pre-cancerous forms of colon cancer most likely to develop into the disease.
Associate Director of Strategic Engagement and Wellbeing Alex Pierce said University Recreation and Wellbeing will focus on two main aspects for the new semester: providing support for students’ mental health, as well as food and nutrition education.
Quoted: “I would not be surprised at all if I woke up tomorrow to hear that the measles outbreak had reached Wisconsin. Not surprised at all,” said Malia Jones, an assistant scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory.
“I would say that if a child was given the facts themselves and told what these diseases would be like to go through, they would choose to be given something that would not make them have to go through that disease,” said James H. Conway, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Another BIG announcement from the Wisconsin Leadership Summit: Madison Common Council president Shiva Bidar will moderate the panel titled “Together We Stand: Building Community Across Ethnic Lines.”
In her role as the first Chief Diversity Officer for UW Health, Shiva provides vision, coordination and strategic leadership for the design and implementation of UW Health’s initiatives related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Although chronic digestive disruptions warrant a doctor’s attention, “generally about 80 percent of patients will benefit from doing some sort of diet intervention,” says Melissa Phillips, a clinical nutritionist at the University of Wisconsin Health System’s Digestive Health Center.
UW-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health holds its “white coat ceremony” each year, welcoming the incoming class of medical students and presenting them with a hip-length, cotton white coat.
“We begin to see stabilization of changes in the brain after 1,000 to 1,500 hours of meditation practice,” Dr. Richard Davidson, PhD, William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds, tells Bustle. “You can think of it as learning a musical instrument; if you got 24 hours of training in playing the violin, you still wouldn’t be very good at playing it.”
Hot liquids help move mucus and germs out of your system. They “increase the mucociliary clearance rate,” explains Bruce Barrett, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the department of family medicine and community health at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Basically, it helps your body sweep mucus and germs out of your body.
Quoted: Despite the publicity of CTE, doctors cannot predict whether a child will have it later on, says Julie Stamm, Ph.D., LAT, ATC, who researched the issue at the Boston University CTE Center. “We do not understand why one person gets it and the other does not get it,” adds Dr. Stamm, also a clinical assistant professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: “Optimism is one important psychological dimension that has emerged as showing some really interesting associations with health,” said neuroscientist Richard Davidson, professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds.
New pencils, notebooks and backpacks may be on the checklist as the summer winds down and kids gear up for a new school year, but Dr. Shilagh Mirgain says it’s also an important time of year to check in with kids on how they’re feeling about heading back to school.
“We spend a lot of time preparing our kids for school by buying them school supplies or back-to-school clothes, but our families should equally spend time preparing kids mentally for the start of the school year and pre-school jitters and anxiety,” said Mirgain, a clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.
A Madison company that makes software approved to gauge treatment response in breast and prostate cancer patients plans to submit a second product, for blood cancers, for approval by early next year.
AIQ Solutions, which is based on technology developed at UW Carbone Cancer Center, raised $3.2 million in equity financing, the company announced this month. Capital Midwest Fund led the round, which also involved Rock River Capital Partners, 30Ventures and Wisconsin Investment Partners.
Written by Robert Enright, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Board Member of the International Forgiveness Institute, Inc.
Bridget Ravis grew up in Richland Center, where she spent her summers performing musical theater with the Community Players of Southwest Wisconsin. Now the 26-year-old UW Hospital nurse finds herself singing to patients if she discovers they share her passion for show tunes, and if she feels it might brighten their day.
