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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Chicago Tribune
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Jennifer Mundt: Sleep is getting more respect – as a way to increase productivity. We need a better mindset.
Sleep is finally having its moment. I’m a sleep researcher and clinician, and it’s exhilarating to see broader recognition that sleep is important, yet I am often dismayed about the framing of why sleep is valuable. Messages equating sleep with laziness have long been woven into our cultural consciousness, with aphorisms such as “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” and “the early bird gets the worm” reflecting our fears that sleep is a hindrance to success and accomplishments, says Jennifer Mundt, PhD, professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. We now know that sleep is connected with every aspect of our health including our cardiovascular health, pain, mood and immune system. Sleep is a pillar of health but has long been neglected in comparison to its more popular cousins — diet and exercise.
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US News & World Report
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Tips for ‘Stomaching’ the Holidays If You Have IBS
Stress affects gut health and intensifies pain, which — for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) — can make traveling to see family during the holiday season excruciating. “People living with IBS often say the holidays are especially stressful, above and beyond the typical holiday stress most people report having,” said Tiffany Taft, medical social scientist and clinical psychologist at Northwestern Medicine, in Chicago. For the 15% of Americans who live with IBS, Taft offered some tips as they gather for the season. “Stress directly affects IBS through the gut-brain axis, which includes parts of the brain that are part of the body’s fight-flight-freeze response,” she said. “Stress can amplify pain, alter the motility of the gut — either speed up or slow down, depending on the person — and change the composition of the gut microbiome.” Taft said the holidays can create stress because some people have family members who aren’t understanding or supportive about IBS. They may worry or be anxious about asking for changes to the holiday menu because of dietary needs. Rather than have an unpleasant conversation, the person with IBS may eat foods that don’t agree with them, Taft said. In addition, she pointed out that “traveling can be stressful for patients, including worries about having symptoms while flying or driving long distances. In short, the holidays can place a spotlight on a person’s IBS, and strategies the person may have to keep IBS symptoms in check may become compromised, which can become incredibly stressful.” If you have IBS and are stressed out about traveling, practice relaxation strategies beforehand, she advised.
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Doctors who want to defy abortion laws say it’s too risky
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, thirteen states have banned abortion except in the case of a medical emergency or serious health risk for the pregnant patient. But deciding what cases quality for a medical exception can be a difficult judgement call for doctors. Still, there may be some middle ground for doctors, between going to jail and failing to provide the care they feel is needed, argues Katie Watson, professor of medical education, medical social sciences and obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. In many of the reported cases in which patients were endangered because doctors denied or delayed necessary care, she says civil disobedience wasn’t called for. Instead, doctors need to become more comfortable working up to the limits of the law. “My perspective is that interpreting life and health exceptions to be consistent with standard medical practice is not lawbreaking,” she says. Those laws are generally intended to block elective abortions, and most have exceptions for medical emergencies. Plus, the federal government requires hospitals to stabilize patients, including when they need abortion procedures.
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WTTW
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Dry Shampoo Brands Face Voluntary Recall, Lawsuit
A number of dry shampoos have been voluntarily recalled over high levels of a cancer-causing chemical, benzene, which has been linked to leukemia and other blood disorders, according to the Food and Drug Administration. But a class-action lawsuit says Unilever, the company that makes the products, knew about the chemical long before the recall. “It’s always been known that this is a dangerous drug,” said June McKoy, MD, MPH, professor of medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine. “I cannot believe that Unilever can say that they were not aware of it. They knew, or should have known, because the public knows benzine at this point is dangerous.” Benzine is a popular chemical, McKoy said, found in gas, shampoos, pesticides and in the workplace. “We know that what benzene does, it can get into the bone marrow, the soft portion of the bones, where blood cells are made and they can actually change the genetic makeup of the bone marrow,” she said. Changing the DNA makeup is what can lead to leukemia. “Failure to warn. Failure to actually pull the product from the market early enough exposed people who would normally not have been exposed from that period of time when they claimed that they were made aware of it, placed those people in harm,” McKoy said. McKoy suggests that individuals who used the recalled products should stop using them, and get tested to ensure proper red and white blood cell counts, as well as platelets.
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WBEZ Chicago
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Experts are concerned Thanksgiving gatherings could accelerate a ‘tripledemic’
The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) began surging unseasonably early this year, infecting babies and young children who had little or no immunity to that virus, which wasn’t circulating all that much over the past two years, in part, because of COVID-19 precautions. At the same time, an unusually early and severe flu season is surging, dominated by the H3N2 strain, which often strikes kids and older people especially hard. People should consider Zooming for Thanksgiving if they’re sick, testing for COVID-19 before gatherings (especially those involving older friends and relatives and other vulnerable people), and even consider putting that mask back on as much as possible. “If you’re not eating or drinking it’s probably a smart idea to protect the immunocompromised, the infants, as well as the older individuals in the household,” says Tina Tan ,MD, an infectious disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. There are hints that RSV may already be peaking, and the flu could also peak early, before any new COVID-19 surge emerges. That would help relieve at least some of the pressure on hospitals.
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USA Today
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Black women make up the majority of new HIV cases among women. But they aren’t getting care.
Though men remain the largest group of people diagnosed with HIV, Black women make up the majority of new HIV cases among women. Seven thousand women diagnosed with the virus in 2018, and Black women made up more than 4,000 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which reports transgender women in a separate category. Despite the staggering rates, experts say, there is less awareness of Black women’s burden of the virus, which is associated with men who have sex with men. One in 9 women are unaware they have the virus, the CDC reports. Numerous barriers contribute to the disparities in diagnosis and treatment, including structural racism, stigma, discrimination, homophobia and healthcare access. Those assigned female at birth, Black people and teens/young adults have the lowest percentage of HIV medical care. Epidemiologist Maria Nicole Pyra, PhD, assistant professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine said researchers missed an opportunity to reach at-risk women because it wasn’t determined until later that PrEP therapy is safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women. “Information about safety during pregnancy was gathered later on in the process. We do a disservice to women, and we saw this in COVID as well, when we don’t find ways to safely include pregnant people because we don’t have the information to counsel them,” said Pyra, who teaches at the university’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing at Feinberg School of Medicine.
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WBEZ Chicago
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As the temperature drops, Chicago hospitals are fighting rising numbers
As the “tripledemic” maintains its hold on Chicago’s healthcare system, hospitals are fighting back. Anisha Kshetrapal, MD, emergency medicine physician at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine shared information on when to take your child to the ER. She said there are three signs that parents should be looking out for. These include difficulty breathing, dehydration (children not drinking liquids or no tears when they cry) and having difficulty waking your child up. Kshetrapal says we’ve been seeing higher numbers of infections in the ER due to children being masked for the past two years and not having been exposed to normal viral infections. With the upcoming holiday, Kshetrapal says it’s important to have received your flu shot and bivalent booster, especially if taking care of a child. Further, if attending any holiday gatherings, caretakers should ensure no one at the event has symptoms and tests themselves before attending.
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TIME
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Vaccines Helped to Control COVID-19. But the Global Rollout Is Still Broken.
As successful as the COVID-19 vaccines have been in curbing the pandemic, their benefits haven’t been enjoyed equally by people around the globe. Throughout the pandemic – and even now – vaccine development and distribution has been undeniably lopsided, skewed in favor of developed countries with the resources to create, test, manufacture and distribute shots when the need arises. In the third year of the pandemic, while nearly 70% of people worldwide have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, in low-income countries, only 24% have. In its latest report on the global vaccine market, which includes an assessment of vaccines against COVID-19 and a variety of infectious diseases, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls upon both governments and companies to reshape the vaccine market to equalize these discrepancies. However, governments can’t accomplish this alone. Companies should create new pathways for sharing intellectual property and opening doors that are currently closed by proprietary priorities, the report says. That’s a big ask, says Robert Murphy, MD, executive director of the Havey Institute for Global Health at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Big pharma is not going to do this,” he says. “There has to be more technology transfer.” Murphy points to efforts by vaccine maker AstraZeneca, which developed a COVID-19 vaccine based on research from Oxford University, and took steps to share its technology with countries who were willing to capitalize on that knowledge. The company worked with a Brazilian research institute to allow scientists in that country to produce the vaccine for its citizens. WHO has also designated that institute as a hub for making mRNA vaccines in Latin America.
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Chicago Tribune
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Health care specialists: In a triple epidemic, masks could save kids’ lives
Emergency department waiting rooms are bursting at the seams with children suffering from fevers and difficulty breathing. This is the face of an out-of-season surge of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, compounded by an early start to the influenza season: sick children, worried parents, exhausted healthcare workers and a struggling pediatric health care system. Although RSV can infect people of any age, a record number of children are infected with this potentially deadly virus during the respiratory illness season. The CDC reports that RSV infections are leading to a high hospitalization rate of 13.0 patients per 100,00 people and 145 per 100,000 for babies younger than 6 months. “Given the lack of capacity, staff and funding for medical care and public health, we need to take measures to prevent people from requiring scarce hospital resources in the first place. Fortunately, we have two effective public health tools at hand: vaccines and masks,” say both Seema Shah, associate professor of pediatrics (advanced general pediatrics and primary care), and Michelle Macy, associate professor of pediatrics (emergency medicine) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Although the flu and COVID-19 have safe and effective vaccines, the CDC reports that fewer than 30% of children have received the seasonal flu vaccine and only 10% have gotten the bivalent COVID-19 booster. RSV has fewer options, with only an expensive monoclonal antibody treatment to prevent severe infection in children at high risk and unapproved vaccines that are still undergoing testing. The second tool is masking. With low rates of vaccination and high transmission rates, the most effective way to stay healthy is to wear high-quality masks in indoor settings, a response that a recent New England Journal of Medicine study shows was effective in public schools. This protects not only the wearer but also others, including people who are too young or who medically cannot receive a COVID-19 or flu vaccine.
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US News & World Report
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Illinois Study Show Big Jump in Suicide-Linked ER Visits by Teens
Illinois has seen a recent surge in the number of kids arriving in the emergency room for suicidal thoughts — both during and shortly before the pandemic, according to a new study. Experts said that while the findings come from one state, they reflect what’s been going on nationally. They also highlight a sobering fact: U.S. children and teenagers have been showing a deterioration in their mental health for years. “It’s absolutely not the case that this started with the pandemic,” said senior researcher Joseph Feinglass, PhD, and research professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Over the past two decades, suicide deaths have risen by more than 50% among U.S. teens and adults younger than 25. And a 2019 government study found that about one-third of high school students said they felt persistently sad or hopeless — a 40% increase from a decade before. He speculated that school-related stress could be one reason behind the national trends in suicide deaths of the past couple decades. But there could be many other things going on, too, Feinglass said. He pointed to the economic downturn and housing crisis that began in 2008, because when families suffer those strains, kids are affected, too. Social media is another potential culprit, Feinglass said. One way it could affect kids’ mental well-being is through the constant comparisons they make between themselves and others — not only with the peers they know, Feinglass noted, but with countless strangers online. Kids are not alone in their worsening mental health. Feinglass noted that so-called “deaths of despair” — from suicide, drugs and alcohol — have been rising for years among U.S. adults, particularly those who are working class and lack a college degree. That also means more kids living with parents or other family members with substance abuse problems and other mental health conditions, Feinglass said. “I do think there’s something about the broader American culture contributing to this,” he said. “There’s a social disintegration factor.” Both experts said it’s critical for kids to have caring adults in their lives. And that’s something many may lack, Feinglass said. “We need to surround kids with a community of adults who support them,” he said.
