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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Crain’s Chicago Business
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Northwestern Medicine launches bipolar disorder center with $25 million gift
Northwestern Medicine is launching a new behavioral health institute with a focus on bipolar disorder with a $25 million gift from Kent and Liz Dauten and the Dauten Family Foundation, the health system announced this morning.
The gift is transformative in three ways, said Dr. Sachin Patel, chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern Medicine.
First, it allows Northwestern to deliver care “in a much more coordinated, synergistic way,” he said. “We can integrate care to make sure our patients in all parts of the state get the best care. That’s something we’ve been working on for a while, an this will help get it done.”
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Associated Press
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There’s no proof each strike on alleged drug boats saves 25,000 lives, as Trump claims
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that military strikes on suspected drug boats his administration has been carrying out for more than two months in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.
Lori Ann Post, the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, explained that “there’s no empirically sound way to say a single strike ‘saves 25,000 lives,’” even if the statement is interpreted more broadly to mean preventing substance use disorders and resulting ripple effects. Among the issues she pointed to are a lack of verifiable cargo data or published models linking such boat strikes to changes in drug use, as well as markets that will adapt to isolated supply losses.
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New York Times
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Can SAD Lamps Help With Seasonal Depression?
More recent analyses of clinical trials on light therapy, including one published in 2020 and another in 2024, concluded that light therapy was better than placebo treatments at improving the symptoms of seasonal depression.
“The research is really quite compelling,” said Dr. Dorothy Sit, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine.
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US News & World Report
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Online Tool Helps Younger Adults Plan For Their Long-Term Heart Health
— Usually, it’s not until late middle age that folks start worrying about heart disease.
But a first-of-its-kind online calculator is now available to help adults as young as 30 forecast their risk of heart problems decades out, researchers reported Nov. 17 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“We don’t want to wait until it is too late, and someone has had an event” like a heart attack or stroke, senior researcher Dr. Sadiya Khan, a professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in a news release.
“Consider it like saving for retirement,” Khan said. “We have to start now.”
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NBC News
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New heart disease calculator predicts 30-year risk for young adults
A new online heart risk calculator could help younger adults learn whether they’re likely to develop heart disease, as much as 30 years in the future, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on Monday. That’s a significantly longer time period compared with traditional screenings, including the Framingham risk calculator or the ASCVD Risk Estimator Plus, which measure a 10-year risk for people ages 40 and older.
“This tool was motivated by helping younger adults understand their long-term risk for heart disease,” said senior study author Sadiya Khan, the Magerstadt professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “We all procrastinate, but prioritizing health has to start today — and can with this tool.”
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Wall Street Journal
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Hormone Therapy Without the Black Box: What Women Need to Know
About 70% to 80% of postmenopausal women experience urinary tract and vaginal symptoms that are lifelong and get progressively worse, says Dr. Lauren Streicher, clinical professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
A significant percentage of women given a prescription for local estrogen read the black-box warning and decide not to take it.
“For local vaginal estrogen that label was never appropriate in the first place,” Streicher says.
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NBC
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Botox helping to ease pain for Ukrainian war amputees
Doctors from Northwestern University’s School of Medicine are using a Botox-like substance injections to help treat Ukrainian soldiers who are experiencing phantom pain after amputations.
Steven Cohen, MD, said, “In your brain, you have a representation of your entire body, and then you lose your leg, then your brain reorganizes. You can have pain in the phantom because it’s not reorganizing.”
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Crain’s Chicago Business
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FDA decision on menopause treatment lacks nuance, Northwestern expert says
Dr. Lauren Streicher both applauded and questioned the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s announcement earlier this week that it would eliminate 20-year-old warnings about the use of hormone therapy to treat symptoms of menopause.
Streicher, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, has some reservations about federal health officials’ methods and motives in suggesting they’ll universally strip warnings about side effects of estrogen therapies like cancer, heart disease, blood clots and dementia.
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NPR
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Is hormone therapy for menopause right for you? 6 things to know
Women should not suffer through menopause with hot flashes, night sweats and poor sleep. That’s the message from FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
How long should you be on hormone therapy?
“We don’t take someone off [hormone therapy] just because it’s been three to five years,” says Lauren Streicher of Northwestern University. She points to differences in how long menopause symptoms persist, noting that Black and Hispanic women tend to experience symptoms for longer time periods.
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ABC Chicago
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Food Allergies, Treatments And Possible Prevention
About one in 13 children have food allergies, and at least 40% have been treated in the emergency room for reactions to those food allergies, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Reactions include hives, swollen airways, digestive problems, and in some people, they may be more severe, even life threatening. However, researchers says there are potentially ways to prevent peanut allergies.
Dr. Ruchi Gupta is the director of the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at Northwestern University. She says we’re seeing more children with food allergies than in the past.
