Media Coverage
The work done by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine faculty members (and even some students) is regularly highlighted in newspapers, online media outlets and more. Below you’ll find links to articles and videos of Feinberg in the news.
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NBC News
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HIV-prevention program that uses soap operas and games shows results
“Keep It Up!” is made up of different modules involving interactive games, exercises, a simulation at a bar and a soap opera. “We start the program by hearing from other gay and bisexual men, talking about their connections to family, community, dating and sexual health,” said Brian Mustanski, lead author of the study and director of the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Northwestern University. “So we start by this realization that we’re not just talking about HIV, we’re talking about your lives.” The study, conducted by the institute, was published last week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. When the HIV prevention program was developed, researchers compared its style of education to more traditional HIV education models made up of powerpoint slides and instructional videos.
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The Washington Post
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From apps to avatars, new tools for taking control of your mental health
IntelliCare, developed at Northwestern University’s Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies, is based on a similar methodology aimed at depression and anxiety and includes a suite of programs. Some of these mini-apps give advice, others offer a checklist. “When you start, the app gives you a brief screening to find out the severity” of the user’s problems, said psychologist Stephen Schueller, one of IntelliCare’s developers and an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern. Individuals who are depressed and likely to stay in bed all day might be prompted with “goals” to get out of bed, brush their teeth and eat something. “So you check them off as you do them,” Schueller said, “and as you check them off, you’re given harder things to accomplish. People really like being challenged.”
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Chicago Tribune
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Northwestern students give ‘freedom’ by retrofitting motorized cars for kids with disabilities
The Feinberg School of Medicine and McCormick School of Engineering students were collaborating on a project for the course Clinical Management of the Complex Patient, which offers various hands-on workshops. The workshops focus on a range of topics from pediatrics to women’s health. This is the first year students have modified the motorized cars that will be donated to the kids as part of the pediatrics series, said Jennifer Kahn, a physical therapist and the course director. “We can teach them everything on paper, everything on a PowerPoint, but to really have that interaction with the kids gives them a whole new skill set,” Kahn said. The five kids receiving the modified cars were referred to the class by various organizations, including Lurie Children’s Hospital, and physical therapists.
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Reuters
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People with allergies often leave life-saving epinephrine at home
Most people with severe allergies have filled their prescriptions for epinephrine auto-injectors, but fewer than half carry the devices with them, a new study suggests. About 40 percent of study participants reported having a severe allergic reaction when their auto-injector was unavailable. “Many patients at-risk of potentially life-threatening anaphylaxis do not routinely carry their prescribed epinephrine auto-injectors, despite having experienced severe reactions in the past,” coauthors Christopher Warren and Dr. Ruchi Gupta told Reuters Health in a joint email.
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National Public Radio (WBUR-Boston)
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Want To Prevent HIV Among Young Gay And Bisexual Men? Try Turning Sex Ed Into A Game
The multimedia program, called “Keep It Up!,” was created by researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. It’s the first entirely online HIV prevention program to show a biologically relevant outcome — reduction in sexually transmitted infections. The trial results were published this week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “We were expecting maybe we would see a 10 to 15 percent reduction,” says Brian Mustanski, director of Northwestern’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing and lead author of the study. “We were really, really pleasantly surprised.”
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National Public Radio
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‘Fundamental Shift’ Needed To Protect Miners From Deadly Black Lung
“We still have to sample more people and we have to sample them more frequently,” says Dr. Robert Cohen, a pulmonologist and black lung researcher at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who reviewed drafts of the report. Also, the new dust monitors do not provide real-time sampling of silica dust, which is created when mining machines cut into sandstone and is far more toxic than coal dust alone. Cutting sandstone has occurred more often in Central Appalachia as large coal seams are mined out and the thinner seams that remain have sandstone mixed with the coal.
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CNN
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Just 23% of US adults get enough exercise, CDC reports
“You can have a physically active job, but certainly, if one is out as a contractor, aspects of being a fireman or firewoman, such jobs have physical aspects to them in a way that sitting in a job do not,” said Daniel Corcos, a professor of physical therapy and human movement sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, who was not involved with the report. “But there are virtually no jobs out that require the heart to be elevated continuously at more than 100 beats per minute and also strengthen the muscles in a way they do in leisure-time physical activity that includes both aerobic and resistance activity.” It’s imperative for people to find ways to exercise and take ownership of their health if they want to ward off the many illnesses associated with a lack of physical activity, such as hypertension and diabetes, Corcos said.
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HealthDay
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Drug May Help Keep Aggressive Prostate Cancer in Check
These study results show that the drug can also be useful in containing prostate cancer that is threatening to spread beyond the prostate gland, but has not yet done so, said lead researcher Dr. Maha Hussain. She is deputy director of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, in Chicago. The drug’s developers, Astellas Pharma and Pfizer, funded the new trial. They have also already asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve enzalutamide’s use in treating non-metastatic prostate cancer, Hussain said. “From a medical perspective, it can be used now,” she said. “While some patients have already been getting this drug covered by their insurance, clearly FDA approval is needed to ensure broader coverage for patients.”
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Chicago Tribune
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New treatment lowers risk for death from aggressive prostate cancer by over 70 percent, study finds
Some of the 165,000 U.S. men who are estimated to receive a new diagnosis of prostate cancer this year will develop resistance to hormonal therapies for the disease, but a new study by a doctor now at Northwestern Memorial Hospital points to use of an existing drug to help treat them. This kind of aggressive cancer has challenged doctors, as effective treatment to improve outcomes for these men hadn’t existed previously. But a clinical trial led by Dr. Maha Hussain, now an oncologist at Northwestern Memorial, showed that taking a drug, enzalutamide, resulted in a 71 percent lower risk of cancer spread or death, compared to those taking a placebo during the three-year trial. The patients involved all had prostate cancer that hadn’t spread but that also had not responded to hormone treatment.
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Crain’s Chicago Business
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Northwestern Medicine gets $25 million gift
Northwestern Medicine announced this morning that its Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute got $25 million from the Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation. Part of the gift will fund a center using “artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance the study and treatment of cardiovascular disease,” according to a statement. “I’m incredibly gratified that an increasing number of people have access to the very best care,” Neil G. Bluhm, founder and president of JMB Realty, said in the statement. “My support of Northwestern’s cardiovascular program has always been about sparking transformation and creating one of the top programs in cardiac care in the nation.” In 2005, Bluhm provided the first donation that created the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. “Bluhm’s gifts have allowed us to rapidly improve our options for better and safer care for the many patients who face the life-threatening condition of heart disease,” Dr. Patrick McCarthy, the institute’s executive director, said in the statement.
