News

12/28
New York Times
Who Thrives After Surgery?
A new tool called the Frailty Index, developed by Dean Linda P. Fried and colleagues, shows great promise in predicting whether an elderly person has the resilience to respond well to surgery. A study by Dr. Fried and Dr. Martin A. Makary of Johns Hopkins showed that elderly patients scored as frail on the Index had 2.5 times the complication rate as patients who were not frail.

12/21
Washington Post
Teen birth rate hits record low
As the nation continued to struggle in the recession in 2009, the rate at which U.S. women are having babies continued to fall, pushing the teen birth rate to a record low. "Although the data are preliminary, it looks like improved contraceptive use is again driving the decline in teen birth rates," said John Santelli of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

12/20
Bloomberg
Gold Rush in Nigeria Kills Children as Miners Belatedly Discover
At least 284 children under the age of five have died from lead poisoning in Nigeria’s Zamfara state as a result of small-scale gold mining. "Health effects from lead poisoning, including brain damage and miscarriages, will plague the area for years," said Joseph Graziano, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York. “I’m stunned to learn of an epidemic of this severity and magnitude…” said Graziano, who with two colleagues discovered the lead-treatment drug now being used in Nigeria.

9/7
Bloomberg News
Cheaper HIV Treatment From Boehringer Beats Abbott's in Infants
Sept 7, 2010 - More children in Africa are likely to start receiving anti-AIDS drugs after a previous study showed they do better when treatment begins earlier, researchers led by Louise Kuhn at Columbia University wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

7/27
New York Times
Advance on AIDS Raises Questions as Well as Joy
Research findings by Salim S. Abdool Karim and Quarraisha Abdool Karim, both professors of clinical epidemiology at the Mailman School, were welcomed as "the best AIDS prevention news in years."
After more than a dozen microbicide failures, news about the vaginal gel - which has demonstrated significant protection for women against HIV/AIDS - sparked "cheering and standing ovations for the researchers" at the Vienna AIDS Conference. Anthony Fauci of the NIH expressed joy that the data was "statistically significant any way you slice it." But there remain many questions including: how to make the gel affordable, whether different dosages would raise its efficacy, and whether it's safe for pregnant women.

New York Daily News
Parched in the Bronx
The Bronx is thirsty…The city's new Water on the Go program is touring the five boroughs, providing New Yorkers with free water bottle refills on sweltering hot summer days. Ten portable fountains, each with several faucets, rotate between public spaces and areas with heavy foot traffic. Water on the Go was created to encourage people to switch from sugar-packed beverages like soda to natural, calorie-free water. "The possibility of being overweight in New York City is 86% higher in the Bronx than in Manhattan," said Andrew G. Rundle, associate professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University.

6/28
Time
Admiral Back on the Gulf Coast for Spill
The admiral in charge of the spill response was headed back to the Gulf Coast a day after Mississippi's governor said he would press BP and the federal government for more help because oil started washing up on the shoreline of his state. …For some, the relentless spill is bringing back feelings that are far too familiar still dealing with the physical and emotional toll wrought by Katrina five years ago. "This is a second round of major trauma for children and families still recovering from Katrina. It represents uncharted territory," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and a member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters who has worked with Katrina survivors.

6/26
UPI
1 in 5 Bangladeshi Deaths Due to Arsenic
One in five deaths in Bangladesh stems from arsenic in drinking water, which the World Health Organization describes as the largest mass poisoning in history. ... Dr. Joseph Graziano, the study leader, and colleagues at the Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Chicago said the arsenic-related deaths were due to heart disease and other chronic diseases in addition to the more common arsenic exposure - skin lesions, and cancers of the skin, bladder and lung.

6/22
Time
The Oil Spill's Psychological Toll
Since the beginning of the oil spill - 70 days ago, unbelievably - most of the focus has been on the environmental damage...But there are growing fears about the spill's impact on human health - both the 34,000 workers and volunteers cleaning the oil, and on coastal residents who will be living with the disaster for months or longer.

That's what Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health found when he visited affected coastal communities in southeastern Louisiana. Redlener - the president of the Children's Health Fund and the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Mailman School of Public Health - was surprised and disturbed by what he saw when he spoke with Gulf residents, including a number of children. There was significant frustration on the part of coastal residents. They didn't know whether they were at risk from the spill, and they didn't know whom to ask. "There was just overwhelming anxiety from people there," Redlener told me. "There was enormous concern about what would happen to them."

6/21
FOXNEWS.COM
Why Skin Cancer Is on the Rise
For years and years now, millions of sun worshippers across the country would hit the beaches during summer to work on the perfect, golden tan…Indoor and outdoor tanning can be dangerous, because the same ultraviolet radiation that provokes a tan also damages DNA. In fact, exposure to the mid-day sun can produce as many as 40,000 DNA errors an hour, said Regina Santella, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health in New York.

6/8
The New York Times
Enlisting Patients in the Fight to Cut Costs
A recent analysis of the Childhood Asthma Initiative suggests that aggressive management of chronic diseases by a primary care provider can produce better outcomes while reducing costs. The study, published in The Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, estimated that the program saved $4,525 in annual health care costs per patient — 11 times the cost of the intervention, estimated at $420 per patient, said Dr. Irwin Redlener, the paper’s senior author, who is a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia and also president and co-founder of the Children’s Health Fund.

“We need to say to doctors, ‘If you follow these guidelines — developed by your peers — you’ll see better outcomes in terms of the management of the illnesses and the well-being of your patients,’ ” he said. But Dr. Redlener agrees that if physicians are going to be asked to spend more time with their patients, they need to be paid for their time, and pay practices must incorporate incentives that tie reimbursement to best practices and better outcomes. “Meaningful health reform without fundamental changes in reimbursement policies may be a nonstarter,” he said. “If we don’t change the incentives, we’ll get more of what we already have, and drive physicians toward volume, rather than quality.”

5/8 and 5/10
National Public Radio and UPI.com
The Biological Effects of Traumatic Events
Research conducted on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by Sandro Galea, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology, has been cited in major news outlets including NPR and UPI. According to his findings, which are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), traumatic experiences “biologically embed” themselves in select genes, altering their functions and leading to the development of PTSD.

Dr. Galea and colleagues analyzed blood samples of 100 Detroit residents, 23 of whom have PTSD. They looked at methylation patterns, which may alter the activity of specific genes, and found that participants with PTSD had six to seven times more unmethylated genes than unaffected participants. As UPI reported, “People who experience severe trauma exhibit a normal stress response, but the researchers suggested that with PTSD, the stress response system becomes deregulated and chronically overactive resulting diminished immune functioning.”

4/27
Newsweek
Animal Instincts
A recent Newsweek article makes the point that animal-based diseases account for 75 percent of newly emerging infectious diseases, including H1N1. A little over one year ago, Dr. Anne Schuchat director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, spoke at one of the government's first press conferences about this new flu outbreak. Today, these same experts are asking can health agencies work together to stop the spread of these infectious diseases?

When the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced the launch of a $400 million, five-year Emerging Pandemic Threats program in November 2009, with the goal of preempting or combating newly emerging animal diseases that pose a risk to human health, one major component was Predict, a project that focuses on improving wildlife surveillance. PREDICT is led by Mailman School of Public Health’s Stephen Morse, who is referred to as a pioneering expert in zoonoses. "We really don't understand the ecology of these diseases," says Morse. "I don't think we fully understand the magnitude of possibilities." Predict, he says, "begins the fulfillment of a longstanding dream, which is to better understand what's out there and how we can identify and anticipate the next AIDS before it happens."

4/20
The New York Times
With AIDS, Time to Get Beyond Blame
You don’t hear much about AIDS in America anymore. … As Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, the MacArthur “genius”-award-winning AIDS expert at Columbia University, wrote with colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine last month, new H.I.V. infections are now increasingly concentrated in specific pockets of the United States. They move among the poorest of the poor, the disenfranchised and socially marginalized, where substandard education means no escape.

4/14
USA Today
Nuclear Blast Victims Would Have to Wait
The White House has warned state and local governments not to expect a "significant federal response" at the scene of a terrorist nuclear attack for 24 to 72 hours after the blast, according to the "Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation" which was developed by a task force headed by the White House Homeland Security Council. Disaster experts say local governments aren't prepared for a nuclear attack. "There isn't a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event," says Irwin Redlener of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The message for families is simple, he says: Stay put. Wait for instructions. If you've been outside, dust off, change, shower. "What citizens need to know fits on a wallet-sized card," Redlener says. "A limited amount of information would save tens of thousands of people."

4/7
MSN and HealthDay
Gulf War Syndrome Is Real, But Causes Unclear: Report
The cluster of symptoms experienced by some veterans of the 1991 Gulf War is a real disease, but its causes, treatment and potential cure remain unknown, concludes a new report from U.S. experts at the Institute of Medicine IOM Committee member Dr. Ezra S. Susser, a professor of epidemiology at Mailman School of Public Health and professor of psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City, noted that symptoms observed among Gulf War veterans are "clearly deployment-related." "This doesn't mean that only people in the Gulf War get these symptoms, but they are at much higher risk than people who were not deployed to the Gulf War," Susser said.

3/19
The New York Times
A Ruinous Meltdown
Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician who is president of the Children’s Health Fund in New York and a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, is quoted on the cuts in services to children and how this affects children. “This all points to a very grim future for these children who seem to be taking the brunt of this financial crisis.” Dr. Redlener issued a warning nearly a year ago about the “frightening” toll the recession was taking on children. He told me last April, “We are seeing the emergence of what amounts to a ‘recession generation.’ ”

3/15
The New York Times
For Obese People, Prejudice in Plain Sight
Dr. Peter A. Muennig, an assistant professor of health policy at Columbia, says stigma can do more than keep fat people from the doctor: it can actually make them sick. “Stigma and prejudice are intensely stressful,” he explained. “Stress puts the body on full alert, which gets the blood pressure up, the sugar up, everything you need to fight or flee the predator.”
Over time, such chronic stress can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes and other medical ills, many of them (surprise!) associated with obesity. In studies, Dr. Muennig has found that women who say they feel they are too heavy suffer more mental and physical illness than women who say they feel fine about their size — no matter what they weigh.

3/14
The New York Times
The Obesity-Hunger Paradox
When most people think of hunger in America, the images that leap to mind are of ragged toddlers in Appalachia or rail-thin children in dingy apartments reaching for empty bottles of milk. Once, maybe. But a recent survey found that the most severe hunger-related problems in the nation are in the South Bronx, long one of the country’s capitals of obesity. … The Bronx has the city’s highest rate of obesity, with residents facing an estimated 85 percent higher risk of being obese than people in Manhattan, according to Andrew G. Rundle, an epidemiologist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. … Poor people “often work longer hours and work multiple jobs, so they tend to eat on the run,” said Dr. Rundle of Columbia. “They have less time to work out or exercise, so the deck is really stacked against them.”

3/4
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Same-sex Marriage Ban Increases Anxiety
U.S. researchers found an increase in psychiatric disorders among the lesbian, gay, bisexual population living in states that ban same-sex marriage. Senior author Deborah Hasin, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and colleagues at the New York state Psychiatric Institute and Harvard University analyzed data from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions. Participants were initially interviewed from 2001-2002 and again during 2004-2005, at which time participants' sexual orientation was assessed.

2/17
CBS News
Health Advances May Not Mean Good Health
Americans are taking more pills, having more procedures and getting more scans than ever before. But is more healthcare making us healthier? Experts warn popping pills can't replace healthy habits. "It's easy and attractive to take a pill [and] often they make a big difference, but they're never enough," said Dr. Linda Fried, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. "We have to learn how to be more physically active. We have to learn how to eat less and eat more healthy food."

The Associated Press
CDC: MRIs, Other Medical Scans in ER Quadruple
The use of high-tech diagnostic imaging in emergency rooms has quadrupled since the mid-1990s, according to a new government report released Wednesday."There's a question of whether we're getting our money's worth," said Dr. Linda Fried, dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

2/14
Boston Globe
No to Sex
Earlier this month, shockwaves rattled partisans of the long-flaring feud that has ensnarled sex education in the United States. A study offered perhaps the most convincing evidence ever that young adolescents might actually heed messages to delay their first sexual encounters - especially if those messages aren’t preachy. Critics charged that (earlier) abstinence campaigns were thinly veiled morality lessons that misled teenagers about other methods of protection, spreading false notions, for example, about the reliability of condoms.“They just didn’t get their scientific facts right,’’ said Dr. John Santelli, of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Or they had a very strong moral tone that the world of ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ from the ’50s was right for everybody.’’

2/6
The Washington Post
In Haiti, Cooperation Among Aid Groups is Unprecedented
There has been an unprecedented degree of cooperation among aid groups in Haiti, especially in comparisonwith the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, the only rival to this catastrophe in terms of outpouring of medical help.In the tsunami, injured survivors tended to have problems that were not life-threatening, mostly deep cuts.
In Haiti, fractures and crush injuries predominate…"I have never seen an event with so many injured survivors," said Ronald Waldman, a physician and professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health who helped manage the U.S. government's tsunami response and has the same role here.

2/2
WNBC-TV
Spike in Rabid Raccoons in Manhattan A Cause for Concern
According to the city health department, from January 6, 2010 to January 28, 2010, there were 23 rabid raccoon sightings. Officials from the New York City Health Department have warned pet owners to be especially cautious. “Most raccoons do not want to have anything to do with people, they’re busy going through garbage and that is the extent of it.” said Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “But if you have a raccoon that is deliberately approaching people or is lying somewhere and not moving very much or is twitching or has paralyzed rear legs,” he continued, “These would be examples of abnormal behaviors that would make it suspect for having rabies."

2/2
NPR
Researchers Await Their Turn In Haiti
Not far behind all those relief workers streaming into Haiti is another group of people: disaster researchers. They're studying how well rescue efforts are working and what can be learned from the response to the Haiti earthquake. … Disaster researchers seem to have a lot more questions than answers. That's because this field of study is still relatively young, according to Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. He says more conclusive research is needed on the most basic questions about how to respond to a disaster and how to prepare for one.

12/22
New York Daily News
Teen birth rate rises in 2007 for second year in a row
More babies were born to teen mothers in 2007 than the during the previous year, making it the second year in a row that the teen birth rate has seen an increase, according to the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics… Speaking to WebMD.com, John Santelli, MD, MPH, chair of Columbia University's Clinical Population and Family Health Department, attributed the rise in teen pregnancy to the shift away from public health campaigns promoting AIDS awareness and condom use to "abstinence-only" education. “We have raised a generation of young people who don’t have basic information about contraception,” he told the website.

12/16
Reuters
Dirty air makes for wheezy kids: study
High air pollution levels have previously been linked to asthma symptoms in children living in urban areas with heavy traffic, but this study is one of the first to investigate the types of particles that may be the most harmful, the researchers point out in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Rachel Miller, co-deputy director of the Columbia University Center for Children's Environmental Health in New York City, and her team followed more than 700 children from birth to age two.

12/16
Bloomberg News
Longer Life Expectancy to Strain Retirement System
Americans are living a record 77 years and 11 months on average, as deaths from heart disease drop, according to two studies that led researchers to suggest raising the retirement age. … “We need to keep people in the workforce longer and educate them longer,” said John Rowe, the senior author of the retirement research and a professor of health policy at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, in New York.

12/15
ABC News
Manufacturer Recalls 800,000 Doses of H1N1 Vaccine; Flu Experts Not Worried
No big deal. That's what infectious disease experts are saying about drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur's recall of about 800,000 pediatric doses of its vaccine against pandemic H1N1 influenza because of low potency…"I suspect most of the consequences will be perceptual," said Stephen Morse, professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York. "But it does add to the embarrassment in a program whose glitches have already been well publicized."

12/14
Reuters
Americans may live longer and cost more: study
Americans may live significantly longer in the future than current U.S. government projections, and that could mean sharply higher costs than anticipated for Medicare and other programs, researchers reported on Monday…"If we're right we've got a problem," Dr. Jack Rowe of Columbia University's School of Public Health and chairman of the MacArthur Research Network said in a telephone interview. "Can we really afford to have everybody quit work at 65?"

12/10
Time Magazine Online
The H1N1 Pandemic: Is a Second Wave Possible?
Since early November, cases of H1N1 have continued to decline nationwide, and scientists keeping track of the numbers say that as pandemics go, 2009 H1N1 may turn out to be a mild one – at least for the time being. … "The story of pandemics, and the story of H1N1 in general, is the story of persistent uncertainty where we never quite know what we are going to get or when," says Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

11/19
CNN
Who decides about mammograms? Inside the task force
Breast cancer surgeons, cancer organizations, and even the White House are expressing concern about new screening recommendations issued by the United States Preventive Services Task Force. When the task force recommends reducing access to a diagnostic test or treatment, disease advocates and service providers generally oppose them, said Dr. John Rowe, professor of health policy at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. “They don't tell you about the adverse effects of the millions of women getting the test."

11/2
U.S. News & World Report
Chronic Inflammation: Reduce It to Protect Your Health
"In recent years, we've come to accept that inflammation plays a role in many chronic diseases, "explains Moise Desvarieux, an inflammation researcher at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. He discusses the well-established link between gum disease and heart disease and the fact that the very same bacteria that causes inflammation and swelling in the gums appears to be a source of inflammation and thickening of the arteries. Dr. Desvarieux says it's still too early, however, to firmly conclude that gum disease causes clogged arteries.

10/27
Newsweek
The Future of Abstinence
In the beginning, although nestled in the heart of the Bible-Belt, the public-health community of McLennan County, Texas was open to programs. The United States did, after all, have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the developed world. "There was open-mindedness then, that it might work" says John Santelli of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

10/24
Associated Press and ABC News
Tips to have a flu-free party this holiday season
Is it safe to party when swine flu threatens to crash your bash? Dr. Stephen Morse, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health says, "Probably the greater danger is people getting together when they talk to each other. If someone has the flu, they will undoubtedly through close contact give it to others far more than food. Though you obviously want to be careful."

10/23
CNN
Got A Swine Flu Question? The doctor’s in.
Professor Irwin Redlener of Columbia University answers FAQs on twitter of the H1N1.

10/15
Newsweek
Katrina’s Kids
Dr. Irwin Redlener estimates that 20,000 Louisiana children "remain at some serious level of uncertainty with respect to stable housing and access to essential services." Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, where he teaches, have been tracking thousands of people displaced or otherwise affected by the storm, and they've found that constantly shifting policies over the past four years—particularly with regard to housing—have left the storm's victims emotionally and financially adrift.

10/13
United Press International
Home healthcare poses risks to nurses
Researchers say the fastest growing U.S. healthcare sector -- home care -- may pose greater risks for nurses. "Although professionally and personally rewarding for many, home care nursing can be both physically and emotionally demanding," study leader Dr. Robyn Gershon of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University says. "These types of injuries are serious as they can result in infection with bloodborne pathogens, such as hepatitis."

10/1
Reuters
Mandatory tests cut alcohol-related truck crashes
The risk of alcohol-associated crashes involving truck drivers has declined about 23 percent since the U.S. implemented mandatory alcohol testing for commercial truck drivers, researchers estimate. Since 1995, when mandatory alcohol testing began in the US, "the number of fatal crashes per mile of travel for motor carriers has also decreased significantly," Dr. Guohua Li, of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health noted.

9/17/09
New York Daily News
Senate's new health insurance proposal is step forward, but babysteps, NY experts say
New York-based health experts say the Senate's new health insurance proposal is an imperfect step toward expanding access to care. "It's not a perfect bill, but I think there's no question that it would help large numbers of Americans, and that would be a good thing," said Dr. Michael Sparer of Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Irwin Redlener described it as a "huge step forward" but didn't anticipate an end to the debate just yet.

9/13/09
Bloomberg
Deadly Bleeding Virus, Previously Unknown, Identified in Study
The Lujo virus that killed four of the five people it struck in an outbreak in South Africa last year has been identified as part of a family of viruses humans can catch from rats. It was genetically identified as an entirely new arenavirus with the help of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and disease sleuth W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York. Lipkin was first to identify West Nile Virus in the U.S.

9/1/09
PBS
Dr. Linda Fried on frailty and how to fight it
Dr. Linda Fried, dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and a professor of geriatric medicine, tells Robert Lipsyte about why frailty is a part of aging-and what we need to know to preserve our body's resilience and slow down the aging process.