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.

It’s safe for most people to return to health care facilities, said Mercedes Carnethon, an epidemiologist and vice chair of the department of preventive medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. “Health care delivery teams have been thoughtful about setting up their offices in a way to reduce the probability of exposure by wearing protective health equipment such as masks and gloves, reducing the number of patients in the waiting room at any single time and converting those visits that can be done remotely to telehealth. In most cases, the health care provider’s office will welcome questions about safety from patients,” she said.

“I’ve spent the last several months of my life imploring and exhorting people to protect themselves, to reduce the spread of this virus and save lives,” said Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, a cardiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who is African American. But after Floyd’s death under the knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, he said, “it dawned on me that my greatest risk is not COVID-19. It’s the color of my skin.”

“We already are seeing new patients” hobbled by overly enthusiastic recent workouts, says Dr. Monica Rho, the chief of musculoskeletal medicine at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago) and an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

COVID-19 is spread from someone’s mouth or nose through particles in the air. If two people are wearing a mask, the risk of transmission is reduced by over 90%, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist and cardiologist at Northwestern University School of Medicine. “But not all masks are completely impervious to particles going in and out, and some people might not be wearing their mask correctly at all times, so there’s risk there,” she said.

Women who had COVID-19 while pregnant showed evidence of placental injury, suggesting a new complication of the illness, researchers say. The good news from the small study of 16 women is that “most of these babies were delivered full-term after otherwise normal pregnancies,” said study senior author Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein. He’s assistant professor of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“Some surgeries can be postponed by a little bit, but this was certainly striking,” said Dr. Al Benson, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. “This will continue to be a challenge, because as the pandemic begins to subside and we begin to schedule more normally, there’s going to be a lot of catch-up. We don’t want people to further postpone screenings, and we certainly don’t want to postpone surgeries.”

“The hospital was an ominous, nerve-racking and scary place for patients even before COVID,” said Dr. Lisa VanWagner, a transplant hepatologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. “Now you take a stressful situation like a pandemic and you tell people that they cannot have their normal support system while they’re in the hospital, and that really magnifies those fears.”

Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said the granular study of patient records bolstered cruder public health reports of higher Covid-19 death rates among black Americans. The data confirm that socioeconomic factors play an outsize role in influencing health status and vulnerability to infection, he added. “Where and how we live contributes greatly to our health,” said Dr. Yancy, who has written about health disparities and the pandemic.

“If he were to chase the record books, it would need to occur pretty soon,” Dr. Wellington K. Hsu, an orthopedic spine surgeon at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital who has studied athletes after spinal fusion operations, said on Friday. “It’s more likely he would have success now rather than three, four or five years down the road. At least based on medical science.”

Dr. Edward Schaeffer, chair of urology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said the new study adds to earlier research, including his own 2016 study, that raised concerns about an increasing incidence of advanced prostate cancer. Though the explanation is unclear and could potentially include environmental, lifestyle or other factors, he said he believes the changing screening guidelines were a driving factor. “When you relax screening, these are the downstream effects,” he said.

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