Public Health in the News – August 2, 2015

Global Health

• It’s becoming easier and easier to generate large amounts of research data – but what do we do with it? Nature interviews Jun Wang, former head of China’s BGI genome sequencing institute, about his new plans to lead projects that will use machine learning to make sense of this large amount of information.
• Imperfect vaccines may lead to more deadly strains of an infectious agent. To be clear, “this isn’t an argument against developing those vaccines, but it is an argument for ensuring that we carefully check for transmission.”
• For the first time, we have a vaccine that appears to completely protect people from contracting Ebola.

National

• Congress needs to approve a new budget – which means that scientific funding agencies may spend time in limbo.
• Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Elijah Cummings make the case that scientific research is necessary for middle class progress.
• A new mirror is being developed that will have the ability to monitor your health and predict risk of developing disease.
• Science blogger Jalees Rehman discusses a recent paper that documents the ease with which websites like Google and Facebook can find out your health information.
• An erratum has been released for a study published earlier this year that described finding pathogenic organisms like the plague and anthrax on the NYC subway – the study authors likely overstated their findings.
• Is there evidence that yoga works? Scientific studies say it’s as good for you as many other types of exercise and can reduce inflammation – but don’t count on it removing toxins or improving digestion.
• Scientists are learning how to build mini organs – not only will these help us understand how human development works, they may be able to help us fix damaged organs or screen for new drugs.

Illinois/Chicago

• The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign has reported 60 cases of mumps in the past couple months.
• There has been a large increase in the number of Chicago-area teens who have gotten the HPV vaccine.
• What can you do to protect yourself against the West Nile Virus? Get answers from the Chicago Department of Health’s Dr. Cort Lohoff.

Northwestern

• Jay Walsh, the Vice President for Research at NU, recently participated in a roundtable discussion in Washington D.C. about the importance of research funding.
• Several Northwestern Memorial Hospital units were recently recognized for their efforts in reducing hospital-acquired infections.