Public Health in the News – November 23, 2014

Global

• India’s Prime Minister has created a new ministry to support traditional health practices. However, many of these practices are not evidence-based.
• OpenStreetMap, a crowdsourced global map, was used by many volunteers in the Philippines to chart damage after a typhoon. However, the assessments ended up being very inaccurate. Now, crisis mappers are collaborating with other citizen science groups to improve their methods so that they can better help aid workers in future disasters.
• Malaria parasites are great at evolving resistance to whatever we throw at them. The Mermaid’s Tale describes some of the research that is attempting to combat this.

National

• Scientists have developed a method to make brains transparent and are using this model to study brain circuits involved in cocaine addiction and fear.
• Should minors be able to give consent for medical procedures? Virginia Hughes explores the scientific and legal considerations behind personhood.
• A new study helped people smoke fewer cigarettes by exposing them to aversion therapy – participants wore a mask while sleeping that emitted the smell of cigarette smoke paired with the smell of rotting fish!
• Scientific American has a blog post explaining the Movember movement, in which men grow mustaches during the month of November to raise money for prostate cancer research.
• How can we make better flu vaccines? By using computers to model how our immune system responds to the flu.
• Some viruses may actually be beneficial to us. New research shows that the murine norovirus can mimic the gut microbiome and help mice develop healthy digestive systems.

Chicago

• As we’ve mentioned before on the blog, our city has a great public health initiative – Healthy Chicago – that aims to improve the health of all Chicagoans. In a Huffington Post article, CDPH Commissioner Bechara Choucair talks about the progress we’ve made as a city and discusses ways that we can continue to improve, especially when it comes to health disparities between different groups.

Northwestern

• Researchers at NU have developed a new therapy for an incurable pediatric brain cancer.
• Northwestern physician Ravi Kalhan, MD, was quoted in a Times article about ways to keep your lungs healthy.

Cover Photo by Tookapic via Pexels: Creative Commons

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