Dean Donald S. Burke's third annual address to the school on the state of the nation's opioid overdose epidemic looks at one of the most pressing issues facing our region. Burke highlights his team's research recently published in Science ( Changing dynamics of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States from 1979 through 2016 ), as well as details Pitt Public Health's efforts to confront the crisis and how you can get involved. Click...
WPXI - TV - We've long heard that an aspirin a day can help lower the risk of heart disease. A new study using participants from Pittsburgh suggests that isn't always the case. The study looked at 19,000 people worldwide, including 178 people from Pittsburgh. "People who took aspirin and people who did not take aspirin had an equal likelihood of having a long healthy life," said EPI's ANNE NEWMAN.
ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION - The first dementia prevalence data from a large population of lesbian, gay, and bisexual older adults was reported at the 2018 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Chicago by JASON FLATT (BCHS '13) and colleagues. "We really need to think about providing more LGBT affirming services that are going to meet people where they're at but also acknowledge who they are," said Flatt.
UPMC HEALTH NEWS – In the late 1990s, new and highly potent anti-HIV drugs emerged— including protease and reverse transcriptase inhibitors—which could for the first time control HIV infection. For this 1998 World AIDS Day, Pitt IDM AIDS researcher Charles Rinaldo and the late Bridget Murtagh of the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force address transmission, drug resistance, and the radically prescient question of whether HIV could be cured.
In Sen Toomey's weekly e-newsletter, he announces that the Senate Finance Committee adopted his amendment, the Encouraging Appropriate Prescribing for Victims of Overdose in Medicare Act, to require Medicare to notify a doctor if their patient has suffered a non-fatal opioid overdose. Toomey references a study by experts including JULIE DONOHUE, HPM professor, in his discussion about the need to inform doctors of patient overdoses.
IDM's DERRICK MATTHEWS explains Pitt Public Health's work on HIV/AIDS and where we are today. "If your’e a black gay man in the U.S., you have a one in two change
in your lifetime of becoming HIV positive…short of the cure that we’re looking for, the biology is way ahead of the social implementation science."
IDM's DERRICK MATTHEWS demystifies infectious diseases and microbiology with a basic overview of the fields, how they are practiced, and how disease is spread.
HUGEN's RYAN MINSTER talks about how his interest in body composition and obesity led him to Samoa. "Polynesians and Micronesians have some of the highest rates of overweight and obesity in the world." He and his lab explored genetic factors that could be leading to increases in weight in a sample of Samoans.
Much of the work being done in epidemiology is about translating data into practice, explains EPI's ASHLEY NAIMI. One way of doing that is through causal inference. "Causal inference is not actually about providing causality from observational data. It’s about identifying the conditions that we need in order to infer causality.” He also discusses his work with aspirin and whether it can help with fertility and child birth.
In this talk, JULIE DONOHUE discusses five key factors about the Affordable Care Act. She touches on medicaid expansion, which increased insurance coverage in the U.S. for over 20 million people, and she talks about the uninsured rate. "[The ACA] has led to the biggest reduction in the uninsured in history and we have the lowest level of uninsured that we’ve ever recorded at about 10%."
Doctoral candidate, DIANA DeLUCIA (IDM '19), presented some of her dissertation research on how the cholesterol levels in immune cells might be impacting HIV infection and disease progression to AIDS. It was found that antigen-presenting cells in nonprogressors have lower cholesterol levels which is associated with their inability to pass virus on to other cells.
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On behalf of BCHS doctoral student, SARA BAUMANN (BCHS '19), JESSICA BURKE presented their work in combining filmmaking with community based participatory research. They developed collaborative filmmaking to study chlaupadi in Napal. “It is a local practice where women are banished to sheds during menstruation.” This technique was an effective way to generate knowledge about the menstrual practices and involve participants in the process.
SisterFriend and the Department of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences hosted an event to encourage discussions about menstrual hygiene in the region and to raise awareness about it as a critical public health issue. Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, the author of Periods Gone Public , gave a talk about her first-hand account in the fight for menstrual equity.
CHONGYI WEI (BCHS '09) recently moved from the University of California, San Francisco to join the faculty at the Rutgers School of Public Health. His primary research focuses on the epidemiology and prevention of HIV/AIDS among men who have sex with men (MSM) in Asia and in the U.S. He is interested in creating innovative strategies to increase HIV testing uptake among MSM and improve access to care and treatment among HIV-infected MSM.
NASDAQ SUNDAY BUSINESS - Pitt’s LifeX initiative, founded by HUGEN's DIETRICH STEPHAN, will fight large unmet health needs by translating research into new companies offering new solutions for patients. LifeX brings together a combination of resources that young companies need to grow to scale, lab space, co-working office, mentorship, legal and venture capital advice.
UPMC/PITT HEALTH SCIENCES NEWSROOM - Public health and dental medicine geneticists from the University of Pittsburgh found that at least 49 genes underlie earlobe attachment. What does this research mean and why is it important?
YOUTUBE - IDM's Mailliard presents his research on “kick and kill” strategies at the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science, the world's largest open scientific conference on HIV and AIDS-related issues. The work demonstrates that naïve T cells have the ability to effectively target the HIV-1 reservoir, highlighting the importance of directing HIV-1 curative strategies towards the induction of de novo rather than memory HIV-1-specific CTL responses.
CBS PITTSBURGH - Alumnus DAVID SALCIDO (EPI ’08), resuscitation specialist and assistant professor in Pitt’s Department of Emergency Medicine, is hoping his app can help save lives in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County. The free app, called Pulse Point, is connected to the Allegheny County 911 system, so that those who know CPR to get to those in need before paramedics arrive. Listen to the interview and learn more about the app.
KD/PG SUNDAY EDITION - KDKA’s Stacy Smith and the Post-Gazette’s Jerry Micco discuss present-day challenges in the worldwide fight to eradicate polio with PETER SALK, visiting professor in IDM, as well as his childhood growing up in Pittsburgh while his father's team developed the first injectable polio vaccine in the 1950s.
The Telehealth Appalachian AIDS Education and Training Center Project, led by IDM's LINDA FRANK, provides web-based HIV education, training, clinical guidelines, and resources to Appalachian community health centers. Frank has worked to increase knowledge and awareness about HIV disease in underserved communities in the hope of preventing discrimination and delivering more care to those who need it.