News and Highlights
August 2011
Media and Publicity
Dr. Mirella Salvatore Provides “The Healthy Vacation Checklist”
Mirella Salvatore, MD, Assistant Professor of Public Health and Medicine and Acting Director of the Travel Medicine Service of the Division of Infectious Diseases at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was interviewed in a recent medical college press release about how to prepare for a vacation in order to stay healthy. Dr. Salvatore discussed getting needed vaccinations and medical clearance, following basic safety precautions, and bringing necessary medications and supplies. Dr. Salvatore’s advice was included in articles in news-medical.net, healthcanal.com, and newsblaze.com.
Media Attention for Telemedicine Study
2010).
The findings were covered in a medical college press release, as well as in Federal Telemedicine News, healthnewsdigest.com, news-medical.net, healthcareitnews.com, ihealthbeat.org, medecision.com, and Pharmacy Choice.
Dr. David Calfee Quoted on Use of Surgical Masks
David P. Calfee, MD, Chief Hospital Epidemiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health, was quoted in The New York Times, The Denver Post, and ThirdAge.com about the effectiveness and practicality of surgical masks in preventing the spread of different types of infections.
Dr. Robert Marx Discusses Different Rates of ACL Injuries in Boys and Girls
Robert G. Marx, MD, Attending Orthopedic Surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery and Professor of Orthopedic Surgery and Public Health, discussed possible reasons that girls and women over the age of 12 suffer more ACL injuries than their male counterparts in RecordOnline.com. He also discussed rehabilitation as well as warm-up drills and stretching procedures that can help prevent the injuries.
Dr. Joseph Fins’ Article on Deep Brain Stimulation for OCD Patients Receives Widespread Media Attention
The article first-authored by Joseph J. Fins, MD, FACP, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry, (Misuse of The FDA’s Humanitarian Device Exemption In Deep Brain Stimulation For Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Health Affairs February 2011) has received widespread media attention. The article, which urges regulation of the FDA’s humanitarian device exemption in the use of deep brain stimulation to treat obsessive compulsive disorder, was featured by featured by The New York Times, CNN.com, Health News Digest, News Medical Net, MSNBC.com, Forbes.com, Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, and many other print, online, and television news outlets.
Dr. Joseph Fins Quoted about Study of Happiness of “Locked-in” Patients
Articles in the New Scientist and The Times of India feature comments of Dr. Fins about a recent study in the British Medical Journal led by Steven Laureys, MD, of the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege in Belgium. Dr. Laureys and his colleagues found that patients with locked-in syndrome are largely happier than many people would expect them to be. Dr. Fins noted that “the results show that contrary to opinion, people adapt and adjust… they can find meaning even in this state.”
Dr. Rainu Kaushal Quoted on Safety Risks Linked to Computerized Health Systems
Rainu Kaushal, MD, MPH, Chief of the Division of Quality and Medical Informatics and Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Public Health, and Medicine, was quoted in an article in the Chicago Tribune about an error in an electronic medical instruction that caused the death of a baby. Commenting on these types of errors, Dr. Kaushal said, “We see problems much more often than we would like” because many health information systems are poorly designed and difficult for doctors and nurses to use.
Dr. Oliver Fein Interview Is Posted on Big Think
An interview with Oliver T. Fein, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine and Clinical Public Health and Associate Dean (Affiliations), which was recorded in 2009, was recently posted on the website Big Think. Dr. Fein spoke about “A Health System That Works.”
Articles by Department Faculty Featured in AHRQ Research Activities
The article titled “Comparative effectiveness research: A cornerstone of healthcare reform,” by Alvin I. Mushlin, MD, ScM, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Public Health, and Hassan Ghomrawi, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor in Public Health, was featured in the March 2011 AHRQ Research Briefs. The article appeared in Transactions of the American Clinical and Climatological Association 121.
Two articles on the effect of sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension on in-hospital outcomes of noncardiac surgery were published in the July 2011 AHRQ Research Activities newsletter. Both studies were funded in part by the Weill Cornell/HSS CERT grant:
- Memtsoudis, S. G., Ma, Y., Chiu, Y. L., and others. "Perioperative mortality in patients with pulmonary hypertension undergoing major joint replacement." (2010 November). Anesthesia Analgesia 111(5), p. 1110-1116.
- Memtsoudis, S., Liu, S. S., Ma, Y., and others. "Perioperative pulmonary outcomes in patients with sleep apnea after noncardiac surgery." (2011 January). Anesthesia Analgesia112(1), p. 113-121.
Another CERT-funded study was featured in the August 2011 AHRQ Research Activities newsletter:
- Stavros G. Memtsoudis, M.D., Ph.D., Alexander Hughes, M.D., Yan Ma, Ph.D., and others. “Increased in-hospital complications after primary posterior versus primary anterior cervical fusion.” Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research (March 2011) 469(3), pp. 649-657.
Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad’s Research Featured in Nature Middle East Article on Hepatitis C in Egypt
Laith J. Abu-Raddad, PhD, Director of the Biostatistics and Biomathematics Research Core and Assistant Professor of Public Health in the Infectious Disease Epidemiology Group at Weill Cornell Medical College/Qatar, was featured in an article in Nature Middle East on hepatitis C in Egypt. This country has the highest prevalence of hepatitis C worldwide, due to a previous national campaign to control another disease—schistosomiasis—which unfortunately involved the use of non-sterile syringes. Dr. Abu-Raddad, who co-authored a 2010 study on this subject, questions why there continue to be large number of new infections with hepatitis C each year.
Dr. Abu-Raddad was also quoted in a Nature article about hepatitis C in Egypt and in another Nature Middle East article discussing the tracing of the recent European E coli outbreak to seeds from Egypt.
Department of Public Health Faculty Featured in Weill Cornell Medicine
The Weill Cornell Medicine magazine’s Winter and Spring 2011 issues include several stories and mentions of Public Health faculty.
Page 8 of the Winter 2011 issue discusses Public Health in the 21st Century, edited by Madelon Finkel, PhD, with contributions from many Public Health faculty as well as other public health experts. A “Tip of the Cap” mention of the Torald Sollmann Award for Marcus Reidenberg, MD, is on page 9. A section of the “From the Bench” feature on page 10 describes the Journal of General Internal Medicine article by Melinda Chen, MD, MS, and Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, on the amount of time physicians spend on uncompensated patient care outside of office visits. An article on page 18 about the Office of Faculty Diversity in Medicine and Science includes the work of Carla Boutin-Foster, MD, MS, who is the office’s Director of Cultural Diversity.
Public Health Department Faculty and research comprise the feature article of the Spring 2011 issue (“Standards of Care,” pages 32-37.) The article focuses on the Department’s contributions to the debate over health care reform including accountable care organizations, comparative effectiveness research, and health information technology. It discusses particularly the work of Alvin Mushlin, MD, ScM, Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, Bruce Schackman, PhD, Hassan Ghomrawi, PhD, MPH, and Rainu Kaushal, MD, MPH. Dr. Kaushal, and the work of the Division of Quality and Medical Informatics, is also featured in the Dean’s Message on page 6. Pablo Rodríguez del Pozo, MD, PhD, JD, is mentioned in the “Tip of the Cap” section on page 9 for receiving the 2011 Humanism in Medicine Award in Qatar. The “Talk of the Gown” section on page 12 features the work of Nicholas Schiff, MD, in which he compares being in a coma with being under anesthesia.
