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.

  • The New York Times

    Abortion Is Found to Have Little Effect on Women’s Mental Health

    “What I think is incredibly interesting is how everyone kind of evens out together at six months to a year,” said Katie Watson, a bioethicist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study. “What this study tells us about is resilience and people making the best of their circumstances and moving on,” she said. “What’s sort of a revelation is the ordinariness of it.”

  • Huffington Post

    Petroleum Jelly Might Be The Answer To A $3.8 Billion Health Problem

    Now, new research suggests that a solution under $10 might be able to help prevent the condition from developing in the first place. The fix? Moisturizing newborns with petroleum jelly until they are six months old. “We could really save a lot of newborns ― and save families ― a lot of suffering,” researcher Dr. Steve Xu, a resident physician in the department of dermatology at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, told The Huffington Post.

  • Freakonomics

    Bad Medicine, Part 2: (Drug) Trials and Tribulations

    How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of a larger population. On the other hand, sometimes the only thing worse than being excluded from a drug trial is being included. WOODRUFF: Diethylstilbestrol, or DES, was manufactured in the early part of 1900s. That’s Teresa Woodruff, who’s been telling us the thalidomide story. WOODRUFF: I am the Watkins professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University. Woodruff also founded, and directs, the Women’s Health Research Institute at Northwestern. And she’s an advocate for something called oncofertility.

  • U.S. News & World Report

    What Is Scleroderma?

    “It’s actually probably many similar but different diseases that cause scleroderma,” says Dr. John Varga, director of the Northwestern Scleroderma Program at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who points to advances in precision medicine as promising for the disease’s treatment. “That’s going to lead to much safer treatments and much better outcomes.”

  • CNBC

    Rising number of rural American babies born with opioid withdrawal

    The rates of babies in rural American areas born with symptoms of opioid withdrawal has skyrocketed, illustrating another symptom of the ongoing opioid epidemic spreading through parts of the United States. The research team was comprised of members of several U.S. institutions, including University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Minnesota School of Public Health; Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago, Illinois; Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Departments of Pediatrics and Health Policy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.

  • The New York Times

    One Weight-Loss Approach Fits All? No, Not Even Close

    He tried, repeatedly, to lose weight with elaborate diet and exercise programs that typically lasted about a week. Finally, he went to Dr. Robert Kushner, an obesity medicine specialist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “The first message was that all that matters is calories,” Mr. Scarmardo said. Dr. Kushner insisted that Mr. Scarmardo keep a detailed log of what he ate, weighing and measuring every morsel.

  • U.S. News & World Report

    How Much Do Doctors Learn About Nutrition?

    Already, some progress is being made at the medical school level. “New models like culinary medicine, which teaches medical students how to cook so they can pass along that skill to patients, show real promise,” Katz says. The Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane University has set up “teaching kitchens” that provide hands-on training for medical students through culinary medicine classes. (Others such as Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have followed suit with similar programs.)

  • The Wall Street Journal

    Nation’s Death Rate Rises as Progress Against Heart Disease Stalls

    Americans are dying from heart disease at a faster rate, stalling four decades of gains against the nation’s leading killer and driving up the U.S. mortality rate overall. Researchers say the obesity epidemic, which took off in the 1980s, is probably mostly to blame for the higher death rate from heart disease, because it has driven increases in rates of hypertension, diabetes and other heart-related problems. “We’re reaping what we’ve sown,” said Donald Lloyd-Jones, head of preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “It’s a clear causal chain.”

  • New York Magazine

    How the Way You Breathe Affects What You Remember

    Together, the researchers argued, the results suggest that one of the key elements of the fight-or-flight response — the rapid breathing that allows us to supply our bodies with extra oxygen — may also have a mental benefit, helping us both to spot threats quickly and to effectively file them away for later recall. “If you are in a panic state, your breathing rhythm becomes faster,” co-author Christina Zelano, an assistant neurology professor at Northwestern University’s medical school, said in a statement. “As a result you’ll spend proportionally more time inhaling than when in a calm state …”

  • CNN

    Study: More than a quarter of medical students are depressed, suicidal

    Before students start medical school, their quality of life is higher than that of age-matched peers, but after they start, their quality of life quickly becomes lower,” said Dr. Joan Meyer Anzia, residency program director at Northwestern University/Feinberg School of Medicine. Anzia was not involved with the current study. Sadly, the problem doesn’t stop when school ends. “Physicians suicide more than people in any other profession,” Anzia said.