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Category: Health

Ants could someday save your life

WISN-TV, Milwaukee

A medical breakthrough that might save millions of lives could be crawling in your backyard.AdvertisementWISN 12 News’ Kent Wainscott investigates the groundbreaking research in Wisconsin aimed at stopping deadly, antibiotic-resistant superbugs with actual bugs.

Suburban drug overdoses fuel spike in premature death rate

USA Today

These young people are a “largely invisible” population that represent an “untapped social and economic opportunity,” says Marjory Givens, an associate scientist with RWJF’s county health program at the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute.

Match day makes its way to UW Madison

NBC-15

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) — As most people were looking for luck on St. Patrick’s Day, the students at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health found it on Match Day.

Funky headbands for Onalaska girls soccer team part of concussion study

WIZM-FM, LaCrosse

They’ll be wearing headbands, but it won’t be a fashion statement. Half the Onalaska High School girls soccer team will wear the equipment as part of a concussion study. The headbands – which look more like ankle braces but on one’s head – were made to absorb contact, hopefully lessening the impact that leads to concussions. All of it as part of a study being performed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What happened when UW Hospital cafeteria made eating healthy easier?

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It started with the removal of sugar-sweetened drinks and deep-fat fryers back in 2014.Poof! They were gone. But the culinary staff for the University of Wisconsin Hospital system were just getting started. By the time they were done with a major overhaul of their cafeterias’ food offerings, healthy salads, alternative grains, ethnic specialties and local farm-fresh fruits and vegetables would rule the day, and the plate, for the system’s nearly 15,000 employees and other diners.

Tired of the Ups and Downs of Yo-Yo Dieting?

HealthDay News

Anyone who has been on a diet knows the real challenge comes later, when you’ve got to fight tooth and nail to keep from regaining the lost weight. Now, a new trial finds that regular “diet coaching” may help keep the weight off. People were more likely to maintain successful weight loss if they took part in a series of post-diet coaching sessions conducted mostly by phone, said study author Corrine Voils. She is scientific director of the Wisconsin Surgical Outcomes Research Program at the University of Wisconsin.

Youth soccer concussions on the rise

WBMA-TV, Birmingham

Noted: The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is conducting a study of up to 3,000 high school soccer players to determine whether headgear can help reduce the number of concussions in soccer. It’s the first scientific study of its kind.

Maternal Health Care Is Disappearing in Rural America

Scientific American

Noted: The blueprint for addressing the situation remains obtuse at best. Some medical schools think part of the solution is to train more doctors for rural work. The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health is launching the nation’s first official obstetrics–gynecology residency program for “very rural” areas, with the first resident slated to be selected next month. “Increasing the physician workforce is important,” says Ellen Hartenbach, residency program director for the school’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “A large percentage of people practice in the same area after residency, so the theory behind our new training track is to get people training in the smaller communities and increase their exposure,” she says. (ACOG says about half of all residents practice in the state where they trained.)

Human Gene Editing Receives Science Panel’s Support

New York Times

Noted: “It is essential for public discussions to precede any decisions about whether or how to pursue clinical trials of such applications,” said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leader of the panel that wrote the report. “And we need to have them now.”

Science panel okays one day editing human embryos

The Verge

Noted: “It is not ready now, but it might be safe enough to try in the future,” R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who co-chaired the committee, told NPR. “And if certain conditions are met, it might be permissible to try it.”

Human Gene Editing Receives Science Panel’s Support

New York Times

Noted: “It is essential for public discussions to precede any decisions about whether or how to pursue clinical trials of such applications,” said R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a leader of the panel that wrote the report. “And we need to have them now.”

UW Initiative to End Alzheimer’s works toward cure

WISC-TV 3

In research labs, work is being done to make the UW Initiative to End Alzheimer’s a realization. For the man who directs that research, finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease is personal. Dr. Sanjay Asthana lost his father to Alzheimer’s.“I’m absolutely sure that one day we will get there and the amount of research that’s going on right here at UW-Madison actually is making some very important contributions,” says Dr. Asthana, associate dean of gerontology at UW-Madison.

From Wisconsin to Africa, UW nurse changes classrooms, but not curriculum

Badger Herald

Spending time in Nairobi, Kenya teaching young adolescents about the importance of reproductive health care may not seem like a typical day for most, but for Susan Gold, it’s just that. Gold, who works at University of Wisconsin as an HIV nurse, recently received the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders for her work in with reproductive health.

Cardinal View: Campus health services vital in light of threats to Planned Parenthood

Daily Cardinal

Among a myriad of other injustices, the overall health of our nation faces stomach-sinking danger, and the threats to U.S. sexual, reproductive and women’s health are substantial. But we, as students at UW-Madison, are in a privileged position to access services and education to protect our minds and bodies and it will become increasingly important to protect and support them as threats to public health rise.