Monday night: Contested Illnesses and the Future of the #Environmental #Health Movement

At Northeastern:

Contested Illnesses and the Future of the Environmental Health Movement

 

Dr. Phil Brown Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies; Director of the Community Engagement Core of the Superfund Research Program at Brown University

Monday, February 27th | 5:30-7:15 pm 10 Behrakis | 30 Leon Street Northeastern University RSVP

Phil Brown is the Director of the Community Engagement Core of Brown’s Superfund Research Program and the Community Outreach and Translation Core of Brown’s Children’s Environmental Health Center. His newest book is a collection, Contested Illnesses: Citizens, Science and Health Social Movements.  His current research includes household exposure to chemicals, chemical  policy and regulation, ethics of reporting data to study participants,  and health social movements

BU on Jewish doctors and the Holocaust

The new issue of BU’s Bostonia has a piece on research into the jewish medical workers during the Holocaust:

Among the Jews who survived the Nazi horror of Auschwitz was Gisella Perl, a gynecologist born in Transylvania in 1905. In interviews and in an unsparing memoir, Perl described her efforts to care for her fellow inmates when pregnancy among Jews was punishable by death. The doctor knew that at the Third Reich’s largest and most notorious concentration camp, the systematic execution of pregnant women was often preceded by grisly torture. To save lives, Perl, who the Jerusalem Post dubbed “the Angel of Auschwitz,” made choices that haunted her until her death in 1988, at 83.

Perl’s is one of 40 first-person accounts written by Jewish medical workers in concentration camps and ghettos and collected so far in an anthology-in-progress by Michael Grodin, a School of Public Health professor of health law, bioethics, and human rights.

More here

Video

How can college students help improve health delivery in Boston’s inner city? #BU #BC #NU #tufts

A lot of my students at local universities belong to organizations that do fundraisers. Often, it feels like little thought goes into these projects. The event feel like excuses for parties and resume entries. Which is fine. But if they really want to do some good, they might consider this program, HeathLeads. I requires more than a tux or an afternoon behind a table in the student union. Note that two of the Boston volunteers won Rhodes scholarships this year.

This video is about the Baltimore project. Click here for more on Boston effort.

How to understand “Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care”

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Nature Boston: Who in town is getting funded to do biomedical? #research #NIH

Nature Boston takes a trip through the NIH grants database and finds that the number of new grants dropped quite a bit last year.

While the agency funded 403 new projects in Massachusetts in 2010, that number dropped to 335 in 2011.

Does that make the grant winners super superstars? Or was the research in the labs at the right place at the right time? So many variables go into NIH funding, it can be hard to tell. Still it’s worth looking at where the money is going.

The 11 new winners so far for 2012 are looking into influenza, herpes, DNA replication timing, structural vaccinology for malaria and the search for biologically active antitumor and anti-infective agents in natural products. Our data is current as of this morning, but the numbers change constantly as NIH adds new grants to the database.  Grants went to Boston University, UMass med school and Brandeis University. But, Harvard-linked researchers – and infectious disease — dominate the list.

For more, head over to NB. While you are there, check out the site’s well-curated list of science events.

 

Is the #nurse #shortage real? That and more from the #Health Wonk Review

Boston’s Dave William question the validity of the nurse shortage in the new edition of issue of the Health Wonk Review:

David Williams is running on the idea that the much-hyped nursing shortage might be exaggerated.  We’ve all heard that there is a shortage of nurses all across the country that is predicted to grow rapidly over the next couple of decades as our baby boomer population ages.  But David points out that the economy doesn’t work that way.  As demand grows, so does supply.  And he notes that it’s possible that the stories of nursing shortages might be started (or at least spread around) by people with a vested interest in turning out more nurses.

Also see a link to this relevant the Health Affairs post:

Sharon Long‘s camp is calling foul over Senator Santorum’s erroneous claims regarding health reform during the last Republican debate.  The specific focus is on Mass. health reform and how the state’s healthcare system has fared over the past six years (hint:  it’s nowhere near as bad as Senator Santorum would have people believe), and Sharon points out the progress the state has made as well as areas that still need work.