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.

Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, an attending physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, was the lead author of a 2017 review of research studies looking at the impact of racism on children’s health. Too often, she said, studies control for race without considering what experiences are structured into society by race.

“Twenty years ago, people went to bed earlier,” says Marc Weissbluth, professor emeritus of clinical pediatrics at Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. Yesteryear’s children also spent more time napping. There are many reasons for this, including naps cut short in day care and working parents who postpone bedtime to spend time with their children, says Weissbluth, author of Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Another culprit: Many parents are sleep-deprived themselves — getting by on six or seven hours a night — and don’t recognize the condition in their children. Research shows that regular sleep deprivation has serious — and lasting — side effects for kids, including behavioral problems, weight gain, hypertension, headaches and depression.

Those are some of the conclusions of Lori Post, a sociologist and epidemiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine who studied nearly 100 mass shootings in the United States since 1982. “They’re coming at a faster clip,” said Post, who’s also director of the Buehler Center for Health Policy and Economics. She believes mass shootings will continue to devastate communities across the country unless access to military-grade weapons is restricted and law enforcement agencies become better at tracking people with specific risk factors, she said.

The researchers don’t know exactly why there was a decline in cognition in the participants who had surgery. “It’s widely considered that anesthesia may affect long-term cognition, but this has not been strongly supported by the recent literature,” Sanders said in an email. The new report offers “good news and bad news,” said Sandra Weintraub, a professor and clinical core director at the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

Don’t dodge the hard conversations. If you suspect your kids know about an incidence of mass violence, you should ask them what they have heard, said Dr. Nia Heard-Garris, M.D., an attending physician at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. “You don’t want to give so much information that you’re introducing trauma yourself,” Dr. Heard-Garris said. But “you also want them to trust you,” that you’re not hiding difficult things from them. If you start with what they know, you “can try to address any misconceptions, or rumors, any anxieties right then and there,” she said.

Perhaps the most important evolutionary mechanisms behind the emergence of atherosclerosis is that protection from our ancient adversaries — infection, injury and starvation — now allows us to live long enough to gain prolonged deadly exposure from our modern lifestyles. “Because we adapted so well to these other threats, we now live long enough to be exposed to risk that we haven’t had time to genetically accommodate to,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy, a professor at Northwestern University and Chief of Cardiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “Is it possible that lifestyle changes can overcome the inclinations we have developed?”

“Our study shows sesame allergy is prevalent in the U.S. in both adults and children and can cause severe allergic reactions,” Dr. Ruchi Gupta, professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, a physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “It is important to advocate for labeling sesame in packaged food. Sesame is in a lot of foods as hidden ingredients. It is very hard to avoid.”

Meanwhile, mental health experts accused Trump of focusing on mental illness to avoid taking politically risky steps like banning high-powered weapons like the ones that were used in the El Paso and Dayton massacres. “These events are tragic, but are not predictable because many people have the propensity to perpetrate mayhem,” said Linda Teplin, a professor of psychiatry at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “They must have the weapons, not only the inclination. We are complicit because we make rifles with high capacity magazines available to all.”

“It’s really just scapegoating people with mental health issues,” says Dr. Seth Trueger, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University. And while rates of mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and suicidal behavior are on the rise in the U.S., Trueger says other nations have similar problems and experience far fewer mass shootings. “Other countries have the same kind of mental health issues we have, the same kind of violent video games we have, the same religiosity that we have. All that stuff is just a distraction” from the need for better gun control, he says.

Framing mass shootings as a “mental health issue” certainly could lead to policies aimed at improving mental health, but “that won’t prevent the next shooter,” said Lori Ann Post, a professor of emergency medicine and medical social sciences at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who studies violence and policy. It’s estimated that less than 5% of shootings are committed by people with a diagnosable mental illness, Post said.

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