As the COVID-19 pandemic enters a new phase, punctuated by emerging hot spots and continuing global spread, a new analytical tool developed by RAND Corporation researchers allows policymakers to predict regional risks of importing cases of COVID-19. The tool, which melds information on infection rates with global air traffic data, has already produced a number...
As people take to the streets in protest during the COVID-19 pandemic, Keck Medicine of USC experts share advice on how the public can protect both their mental well-being and physical health during this time. The importance of acknowledging the trauma many Americans experience “During this time when the American public is already mentally stretched...
Public health scientists predict that school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States. Andrew Rundle, DrPH, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues expect that COVID-19-related school closures will double out-of-school time this year for many children in...
Few novel or emerging infectious diseases have posed such vital ethical challenges so quickly and dramatically as the novel coronavirus. An early-view essay in the March-April 2020 Hastings Center Report offers guidance at a time when health care institutions and governments are desperately confronting these challenges. The authors are Prof. Lawrence O. Gostin, director of the O’Neill...
Pauline Lawrence is 63, an age that puts her at increased risk if she contracts COVID-19. Yet, three days a week, she spends 16 hours with someone at even greater risk: a 97-year-old man who depends on her and two other home health aides to survive. “Somebody has to take care of him,” said Lawrence,...
By March 5, Andrew Cencini, a computer science professor at Vermont’s Bennington College, had been having bouts of fever, malaise and a bit of difficulty breathing for a couple of weeks. Just before falling ill, he had traveled to New York City, helped with computers at a local prison and gone out on multiple calls...
Historic research based on group movements of humans and animals suggest three simple rules: move away from those that are too close. move toward those that are far away. match the direction of the movement of their neighbors. This research is especially used for air travel where there is an increased risk for contagious infection...
Female eggs exposed to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, have an impaired ability to produce viable embryos, and are significantly less likely to result in a viable pregnancy, according to an animal study accepted for presentation at ENDO 2020, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting. The abstract will be published in the Journal of the...
As novel coronavirus cases continue to increase across the nation, health professionals on the front lines face frightening realities, rising anxiety and the very real potential for burnout. “Health care providers are under tremendous pressure right now,” said Dr. Jud Brewer, director of research and innovation at the Mindfulness Center at Brown University. “Physician burnout...
People living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared to people without HIV. Data linking HIV and CVD, CVD risk factors and CVD risk assessment come predominantly from North America and Europe. However, of the estimated 37.9 million people living with HIV worldwide, two-thirds (25.6 million) live...
