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Category: Health

What Is Telehealth and Is It Right for You?

Care Dash

Noted: A study conducted by the Wisconsin School of Business found that increased use of e-visits might have unintended consequences.

“Our study shows that giving patients email-like e-visit access to their doctors, does not reduce the patients’ use of office or phone visits,” said Hessam Bavafa, study author and Assistant Professor of Operations and Information Management. “In fact, we find that e-visits lead to more office visits without obvious improvements in patient health. We also found that doctors accepted fewer new patients after they started using e-visits.”

Depression and Caregiving

Wisconsin Public Radio

Caregivers of cancer patients are just as likely to be depressed as the cancer patients themselves, but a new study finds that they’re less likely to seek treatment. We talk with a researcher about the study and what we can do to take better care of caregivers. Interview with Kristin Litzelman from the School of Human Ecology.

Here’s why it’s so hard to make a better flu vaccine

NBC News

One vaccine in the works makes use of one of the less-changeable parts of the flu virus called M2. The ReDee vaccine made by FluGen, a spinoff from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is not meant to be a completely universal vaccine, but might protect better against a range of flu strains.

High cancer-related expenses take a toll on quality of life

Reuters

“When cancer patients spend more on their cancer treatment and other health care, they have less to spend on activities they enjoy and other needs, which can negatively affect their well-being,” said coauthor Joohyun Park, a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Pharmacy.“It turns out that financial burden is directly related to health and well-being,” Park told Reuters Health by email. “The more a cancer patient spends on health care, the worse the quality of life and mental health.”

Recovery coaches added at UW Hospital

Wisconsin Radio Network

An effort bringing help to overdose survivors before they leave the hospital is expanding to UW Hospital in Madison. It’s a program already in place at other hospitals in the state. Tonya Kraege is program coordinator and recovery coach manager for Safe Communities, which is working with UW Hospital.

How to close the female orgasm gap

The Guardian

This silence has real consequences. Almost 30% of college-age women can’t identify their clitoris on an anatomy test, according to a study from University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin’s Place In The Backbone Of U.S. Flu Surveillance

WisContext

As Wisconsinites push through a hard flu season, public-health officials are following a distinct mix of influenza strains and worrying about the effectiveness of this year’s vaccines, but they’re also thinking a lot about an intricate disease-tracking network that’s been built up over time.

UW Health opens clinic for lupus

Eau Claire Leader Telegram

UW Health is bringing social workers, pharmacists and doctors together in a new clinic for lupus, an autoimmune disease that often strikes women at childbearing age.

Vitamin D May Help Ease Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Healthline

Quoted: Dr. Arnold Wald, a professor of gastroenterology at the University of Wisconsin, is one of many who regularly request tests of patients’ vitamin D levels. “I do check vitamin D deficiency in many of my GI patients and I’m often rewarded by finding it,” he told Healthline. “It’s very inexpensive to order and very inexpensive to treat.”

Living donors help UW Hospital set liver transplant record

Wisconsin State Journal

Dr. Luis Fernandez, UW’s surgical director of liver transplants, said the hospital expanded its living liver donor program in recent years to help patients who may not be able to get deceased donor transplants quickly enough to save their lives.

Wisconsin man struggles with effects of football injuries

Minneapolis Star Tribune

Noted: Ann McKee, an Appleton native who got her undergraduate degree at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been on the forefront of the research, noticing the degradation of a boxer’s brain years ago, she said. She was fascinated by the patterns of CTE, and how it affected brains.

A California City’s Plan to Turn Indebted Millennials Into Local Doctors

Politico Magazine

Riverside’s death rates from cancer, liver disease, and heart disease are well above the state average, for example. In 2016, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ranked each California county by overall health outcomes, and pegged Riverside at 40th out of 57. (Fellow Inland Empire counties San Bernardino and Imperial counties fared even worse.)

UW Program Recognizes Community Health

Wisconsin Public Radio

Wisconsin Healthy Communities Designation will be recognizing communities across the state for their work to improve health. There are gold-, silver-, and bronze-level designations available, each with different criteria.

Wisconsin starts Healthy Communities designation

Wisconsin State Journal

The Wisconsin Healthy Communities Designation, launched by the UW Population Health Institute, plans to gather letters of interest through the end of January, accept applications in the spring and announce its first designations in the summer.

Stressed Out, Anxious or Sad? Try Meditating

Wall Street Journal

Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman—well-known for his 1995 book “Emotional Intelligence”—spent almost two years combing through more than 6,000 academic studies on meditation with a team of researchers to sort through the hype and discover the real benefits. He wrote about his findings in a new book, “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain and Body,” which he co-authored with Richard J. Davidson, a neuroscientist who directs a brain lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Why Current Patient-Doctor E-Communication Guidelines are Not Good Enough: One Researcher Speaks Out

Healthcare Informatics

Noted: Researchers from the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison recently stated in a paper that although there are plenty of frequently suggested benefits of “e-visits” and of electronic communication between providers and patients, such as enabling providers to give patients a low-cost alternative to visiting the doctor’s office, there could also be unintended consequences involved.

The Unspoken Health Effects of the Republican Tax Bill

The Atlantic

Barbara Wolfe, a professor of population-health sciences at the University of Wisconsin, explained to me that this is what economists call an income-inequality hypothesis: Your health is influenced not only by your own level of income, but by the level of inequality where you live. Sociologists have described a similar socioeconomic-inequality hypothesis: As socioeconomic disparities grow, overall health metrics decline.

UW Health to cut $80 million from budget

Wisconsin State Journal

UW Health plans to cut $80 million or find equivalent new revenue in its $3 billion annual budget over 18 months, a move expected to include a workforce reduction of at least 225 full-time positions, Dr. Alan Kaplan, CEO, said Thursday.