Category Archives: Medical School

Dr. Auerbach said it was imperative never to get too comfortable when dealing with the whims of nature. You have to be afraid when you go into work, he said. You have to stay humble.

Paul Stuart Auerbach was born on Jan. 4, 1951, in Plainfield, N.J. His father, Victor, was a patents manager for Union Carbide. His mother, Leona (Fishkin) Auerbach, was a teacher. Paul was on his high school wrestling team and grew up spending summers on the Jersey Shore.

He graduated from Duke in 1973 with a bachelors degree in religion and then enrolled in Dukes medical school. He met Sherry Steindorf at U.C.L.A., and they were married in 1982. (In the 1980s he worked part-time as a sportswear model.) Dr. Auerbach studied at Stanfords business school shortly before joining the universitys medical faculty in 1991.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Brian and Daniel; a daughter, Lauren Auerbach Dixon; his mother; a brother, Burt; and a sister, Jan Sherman.

As he grew older, Dr. Auerbach became increasingly devoted to expanding the field of wilderness medicine to account for the uncertainties of a new world. In revising his textbook, he added sections about handling environmental disasters, and, with Jay Lemery, he wrote Enviromedics: The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health, published in 2017.

Last year, shortly before he received his cancer diagnosis, the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, and Dr. Auerbach decided to act.

The minute it all first happened, he started working on disaster response, his wife said. Hospitals were running out of PPE. He was calling this person and that person to learn as much as he could. He wanted to find out how to design better masks and better ventilators. He never stopped.

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Dr. Paul Auerbach, Father of Wilderness Medicine, Dies at 70 - The New York Times

Media top headlines July 19

The White House getting blasted for supporting Big Tech 'collusion' on banning COVID 'misinformation' spreaders, a reporter's candid assessment of progressives on Cuba, and President Biden getting roasted on MSNBC round out today's media headlines.

Dr. Anthony Fauci argued Monday that the decision by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to recommend all children aged 3 years and older wear masks when schools reopen regardless of vaccination status was "a reasonable thing to do."

Appearing on CNN's "At This Hour," Fauci said that because there was a "substantial proportion of the population" that was unvaccinated, he understood why the organization would make such a decision.

DESANTIS SAYS FLORIDA CHOSE FREEDOM OVER FAUCI-ISM, URGES CONSERVATIVES TO HAVE A BACKBONE

"I think that's along the same lines as what weve seen with the health authorities in Los Angeles that when you have a degree of viral dynamics in the community, and you have a substantial proportion of the population that is unvaccinated, that you really want to go the extra step, the extra mile, to make sure that there's not a lot of transmission, even breakthrough infections, among vaccinated individuals," Fauci said after host Kate Bolduan asked what he thought about the AAP's decision.

"For that reason, you can understand why the American Academy of Pediatrics might want to do that. They just want to be extra safe," he added.

Fauci admitted the recommendations by the AAP were a "variance" from the official CDC guidance on wearing masks, but he said the CDC "always leaves open the flexibility" for local agencies, enterprises and cities to make their own judgment calls.

FORMER SURGEON GENERAL SAYS CDC MASK GUIDANCE PREMATURE AND WRONG

"So, I think that the American Academy of Pediatrics, theyre a thoughtful group, they analyze the situation and if they feel that that's the way to go, I think that's a reasonable thing to do," he said.

Bolduan suggested the contradiction between the AAP's recommendations and official CDC guidance could cause confusion, and that the CDC should be "leading a little harder" after receiving criticism for unvaccinated people following guidelines intended for those who've been vaccinated.

"That is an understandable criticism," Fauci said, adding it made sense for more localized groups to want "to be more safe rather than sorry."

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"But youre absolutely correct, that does lead to some sort of confusion sometimes when people see an organization making one recommendation, in general, for the whole country and then local groups, local enterprises, local organizations, in order to get that extra step of safety, say something different. And youre right, that does indeed cause a bit of confusion," he said.

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Fauci supports medical group's call to mask 3-year-olds and older in school: 'Reasonable thing to do' - Fox News

TAMPA, FL (July 15, 2021) The incoming first-year students to the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine (MCOM) represent the strongest class academically and the most diverse group of students in the colleges history.

As the Class of 2025 begins coursework July 26, it will set academic records for the medical school by having scored the highest median MCAT score in MCOMs history, 517, as well as earning the highest average GPA, 3.83. In addition, the incoming class is more diverse than previous first-year classes, with a record 20% from those groups traditionally underrepresented in medicine (URM).

We could not be more excited to welcome this exemplary new class of medical students, said Charles J. Lockwood, MD, senior vice president of USF Health and dean of the Morsani College of Medicine. I have long said that USF Health is bringing the best and brightest minds to Tampa Bay, and this record-breaking class is further evidence of the growing strength and reputation of the Morsani College of Medicine. Not only is this the highest achieving cohort in our history, but it is also the most diverse, and we cannot wait to see all that they will achieve in medical school and beyond.

Across the last several years, each of MCOMs first-year classes has outpaced the class before it with higher MCAT scores and stronger GPAs. This years median score of 517 places this class in the 94th percentile ranking for scores across the country.

And compared to seven years ago, when only 6% of the class was from URM groups, this incoming class includes a far more diverse student body, with 20% from URM groups. Also improving this year is the acceptance and matriculation of more Black men. In 2014, the class included 2% African Americans, and they were all female. This years class included 12% Black students, including 11 males.

The MCOM Class of 2025 was selected from a record 6,400 applications, the most applicants in the colleges history, which makes it the most competitive class in the colleges history. Of the nearly 53,000 applicants attempting to find spots this year in the roughly 150 allopathic medical schools in the U.S., more than 6,400 applied to MCOM, which means that each new MCOM students chance of being a part of this class was less than 2.8%.

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Academically competitive and diverse: Incoming medical class makes history for USF Health Morsani College of Medicine - USF Health News - University...

Newswise PHILADELPHIA The Cardio-Oncology Translational Center of Excellence at Penn Medicine has been awarded $2.9 million by the American Heart Association as part of a larger effort to reduce disparities in cardio-oncology and increase understanding of cardiovascular disease among cancer patients and survivors from minority populations. As part of this newly established research program, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and other institutions will study patients with breast or prostate cancer, the most common cancers in women and men, respectively, with a focus on Black and Hispanic communities.

Nearly half of the approximately 17 million cancer survivors today have battled either breast or prostate cancer, and Black and Hispanic patients with these cancers are at an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease. Bonnie Ky, MD, MSCE, the Founders Associate Professor of Cardio-oncology, scientific director of the Thalheimer Center for Cardio-Oncology, and Director of the Penn cardio-oncology translational center of excellence in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is leading the study as primary investigator.

This award opens up a whole new area of research in cardio-oncology, where there has been a dearth of evidence, Ky said. It is time to more fully address disparities in healthcare in cardio-oncology. With this research we hope to understand why Black and Hispanic patients are disproportionately impacted by cardiovascular diseaseand what additional measures we can take to overcome this.

With this funding over the next four years, the team of about 30 researchers nationwide will work to increase physical activity among high-risk breast and prostate cancer survivors and improve health. Through basic and clinical research, they will also assess how genetics, socioeconomic status and environment affect a persons heart health, and determine whether these relationships differ according to race.

In addition, the research team plans to build a training curriculum on race and disparities with a focus on building empathy, cultural humility, and competency among trainees in cardiology and oncology. As part of this initiative, researchers will partner with Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, the nations largest, private, historically Black academic health sciences center, to develop a medical student summer program that will help build the next generation of diverse physician-scientists and leaders in cardio-oncology.

Ultimately we hope to define how the sociologic construct of race and genomic ancestry are associated with and determine cardiotoxicity in breast and prostate cancer, said Kevin Volpp, MD, PhD, director of the Penn Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics, who is co-leading the Population Science portion of the project. Using a range of innovative approaches like gamification and digital health, we want to deliver new ways to bridge disparities in care in historically underserved Black and Hispanic cancer survivors.

With Ky at the helm, this initiatives leadership team also includes, Clyde Yancy, MD, MSc, aprofessor of Medicine, chief of Cardiology, and vice dean of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and associate director of the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute; and Saro Armenian, DO, MPH, director of the Center for Cancer Survivorship and Outcomes at City of Hope.

The initiative is uniquely positioned for success because of its connection to experts at Penn Medicines Abramson Cancer Center, which is continuously leading research and clinical trials to push boundaries in treating cancer.

These efforts are an important part of a continued focus on racial disparities in cancer for Penn Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center, said Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, director of the Abramson Cancer Center. More equitable care and improved health for minority communities is the goal. And with our unmatched expertise and commitment, the Penn team, along with institutional partners, are poised to give us a better understanding of cardio-oncology risks and care to help get there.

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Penn Medicineis one of the worlds leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of theRaymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nations first medical school) and theUniversity of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $8.9 billion enterprise.

The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top medical schools in the United States for more than 20 years, according toU.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $496 million awarded in the 2020 fiscal year.

The University of Pennsylvania Health Systems patient care facilities include: the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Presbyterian Medical Centerwhich are recognized as one of the nations top Honor Roll hospitals byU.S. News & World ReportChester County Hospital; Lancaster General Health; Penn Medicine Princeton Health; and Pennsylvania Hospital, the nations first hospital, founded in 1751. Additional facilities and enterprises include Good Shepherd Penn Partners, Penn Medicine at Home, Lancaster Behavioral Health Hospital, and Princeton House Behavioral Health, among others.

Penn Medicine is powered by a talented and dedicated workforce of more than 44,000 people. The organization also has alliances with top community health systems across both Southeastern Pennsylvania and Southern New Jersey, creating more options for patients no matter where they live.

Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2020, Penn Medicine provided more than $563 million to benefit our community.

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Penn Medicine-Led Research Team Awarded $2.9 Million to Study Heart Disease and Cancer in Black and Hispanic Communities - Newswise

For patients in the throes of serious mental illnessand for their familieslife can be hard, at times agonizing. Clinical care givers, repeatedly called on to provide insight and offer compassion, face their own wrenching difficulties. And yet the challenge of caring for the mentally ill can also be a call to action. So it was for Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Stanford University whose memoir, Projections (Random House, 231 pages, $28), describes his experience as a clinician and researcher, offering up case studies from his practice and exploring the biological underpinnings of his patients conditions.

Dr. Deisseroth tells us that he entered medical school planning to become a neurosurgeon but found himself unexpectedly captivated by his student psychiatry rotation, drawn both to the human drama and to the scientific imperative to understand the mechanistic basis of psychological dysfunction. For many patients, he soon realized, nobody could give answers to the simplest questions about what their disease really was, in a physical sense, or why this person was the one suffering, or how such a strange and terrible state had come to be part of the human experience.

On his worst days, he says, he wanted to leave medicine entirely, unable to bear the extremes of suffering he was encountering. It is not just the magnitude of the pain but also its incessancethe unrelenting descent into the abyss, day after day, year after year. Yet on balance he found engaging with patients both intriguing and essential. In contrast to ailments like a fractured leg or a badly pumping heart, he notes, psychiatric problems cant be directly monitored. Its the brains hidden communication process, its internal voice, that struggles, he writes. There is nothing to measure except words, the patients communications, and our own.

At times, the words can be revealing. Winnie, an intellectual property lawyer, tells her doctors that she had started worrying about the information vampires around her and has taken to lining her room with metal to prevent a neighbor from accessing her thoughts. Her condition suggests the onset of schizophrenia. Then theres Mr. N., a dour older patient who can barely muster any words at all and evinces a lack of interest in his own granddaughter. These symptoms may point to the anhedonia of depression,the inability to find reward or motivation in lifes natural joys. Patients with a slippery condition called borderline personality disorder, we learn, are often emotionally manipulative and engage, entwine, and draw in others, as least for a time. Meanwhile, patients with autism, Dr. Deisseroth explains, struggle with the rate of information flow, a difficulty that complicates the many social interactions that are rich in data and require rapid processing.

Dr. Deisseroth is best known in scientific circles as a pioneer of optogenetics, a technique that allows researchers studying so-called model organisms (like fish or mice) to examine how particular neurons contribute to complex behaviors. First, through genetic engineering, specific brain cells are made responsive to light. Then scientists activate the cells using fiber-optic lasers threaded into the recesses of a living brain. Applying this approach in mice, for instance, researchers have shown that distinct groups of neurons are responsible for different components of anxiety, like rapid breathing and risk avoidance. For the author, these studies suggest a way to think about the precise separability of one element of an inner state.

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Projections Review: Psychiatry in Extremis - The Wall Street Journal

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Independence Science has been recognized by the National Federation of the Blind for technology that makes science more accessible to blind students.

The company received a 2021 Jacob Bolotin Award on July 10 during the National Federation of the Blind's virtual national conference. Independence Science created the Sci-Voice Talking LabQuest 2, a hand-held, talking data logger that connects to more than 75 sensors and probes. The sensors and probes collect quantitative data across subject areas including biology, chemistry, physics, and earth and space sciences.

Michael Hingson, spokesman and business development analyst at Independence Science, said blind students listen to the data as it is being collected. They also have access to the data afterward for additional analysis.

"Blind students remotely control the Sci-Voice TLQ2 device that is connected to the teacher's host computer. They can start and stop data collection, graph data and explore data tables," Hingson said. "By sharing audio in the virtual meeting platform, the JAWS audio feed made possible by our partner VISPERO comes through the blind student's speaker on their home computer. It is this interface that made scientific data collection possible during a global pandemic."

The Jacob Bolotin Award is named for the first documented blind doctor in the United States, living in Chicago in the late part of the 19th century. Hingson said Bolotin faced ignorance, prejudice and discrimination in medical school and his medical practice. Bolotin was driven to remove barriers to the inaccessible medical education he was faced with, and to educate classmates, faculty and eventual colleagues about the capabilities of the blind in medicine.

"We are extremely honored to receive this award, which recognizes us as being a pioneering positive force in the lives of blind people," Hingson said. "This award is a testimony to Independence Science's commitment to raising the bar for what is possible in science access for the blind in a remote laboratory science learning context."

Independence Science is headquartered at the Purdue Research Park of West Lafayette. It conducts demonstrations and presentations at conferences and offers free webinars on its products and services. It also offers remote and on-site consultations to train teachers and/or students on its science access methodologies.

Writer: Steve Martin

Source: Michael Hingson

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Independence Science receives award from National Federation of the Blind for making science more accessible - Purdue News Service