Publisher Health

Dr. Ruth Gottesman, a longtime professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is making free tuition available to all students going forward.The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with instructions that the gift be used to cover tuition for all students going forward.The donor, Dr. Ruth Gottesman, is a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test and ran literacy programs. It is one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school.The fortune came from her late husband, David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who was a protégé of Warren Buffett and had made an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate Mr. Buffett built.The donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it is going to a medical institution in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. The Bronx has a high rate of premature deaths and ranks as the unhealthiest county in New York. Over the past generation, a number of billionaires have given hundreds of millions of dollars to better-known medical schools and hospitals in Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest borough.While her husband ran an investment firm, First Manhattan, Dr. Gottesman had a long career at Einstein, a well-regarded medical school, starting in 1968, when she took a job as director of psychoeducational services. She has long been on Einstein’s board of trustees and is currently the chair.In recent years, she has become close friends with Dr. Philip Ozuah, the pediatrician who oversees the medical college and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, as the chief executive officer of the health system. That friendship and trust loomed large as she contemplated what to do with the money her husband had left her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Single-use insulin pens changed Brian Brandell’s life.Growing up with Type 1 diabetes in the 1970s, he had to carry glass syringes and vials of insulin wherever he went. So in 1985, when Novo Nordisk debuted a disposable prefilled pen that combined several doses of medication with a syringe, Mr. Brandell readily adopted the new device.“They were a godsend,” he recalled.Brian Brandell, a biomedical engineer, is trying to do something about plastic waste from discarded single-use injector pens.Tojo Andrianarivo for The New York TimesBut more recently, he began weighing the effects of all the plastic in the pens he had thrown away over the years, and the potential harm to people and his surroundings.“I’m using this lifesaving product,” he said with frustration, “but in order for me to use it, I’ve got to be willing to damage the environment.”It’s no secret that the world has a plastic problem. The versatile, durable and cheap material is clogging the world’s oceans, leaching toxins into its biomes and contributing to climate change. Some countries have been drafting a treaty proposal that might ban select single-use products and set goals for reducing plastics production worldwide. But negotiations have snagged over opposition from the fossil fuel and chemical industries.Worldwide, the health care industry produced used more than 24 billion pounds of plastic in 2023, and is forecast to generate 38 billion pounds annually by 2028, according to BCC Research, a global market research firm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Inhalers, EpiPens, home tests for flu or Covid, mouth guards. They accumulate in our homes, and recycling methods and advice can be tricky to pin down.Most of the plastic in your medicine cabinet is high-quality, medical grade — and devilishly difficult to safely dispose of, let alone recycle.The sorting equipment at standard recycling centers typically can’t handle small items, and wishfully including them only prolongs the sorting process that then increases the recyclers’ costs without salvaging the plastic. Some at-home medical products, like needles that have come into contact with bodily fluids, should not even be relegated to household trash.Governments and big pharmacy chains offer some guidance. For example, New York state’s Department of Environmental Conservation has a map of collection boxes for safely disposing of medications, and Walgreens and CVS Health have safe medication disposal kiosks at select locations. They also sell special containers for shipping used, discarded needles and medical waste to sites for safe disposal.But when it comes to recycling plastic devices, from asthma inhalers to insulin and allergy pens, people may find themselves ping-ponging around without a solution. Some states recommend inquiring with local pharmacies, which in turn recommend checking with municipal recycling facilities.“What we really need is an evolving, specialized recycling infrastructure alongside the big five — paper, glass, plastic, metal and cardboard,” said Mitch Ratcliffe, publisher of the website Earth911. “That conversation is really picking up steam in some particular categories, but not in medical equipment at all.”A few designers and companies are exploring alternatives that are more reusable or safer for the environment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A new book explores the history of discrimination in women’s health care and how it affects diagnosis and treatment today.Six years ago, Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a breast cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in Manhattan, held the hand of a patient who was hours from death.As Dr. Comen leaned in for a final goodbye, she pressed her cheek to her patient’s damp face. “Then she said it,” Dr. Comen recalled.“‘I’m so sorry for sweating on you.’”In her two decades as a physician, Dr. Comen has found that women are constantly apologizing to her: for sweating, for asking follow-up questions, for failing to detect their own cancers sooner.“Women apologize for being sick or seeking care or advocating for themselves,” she said during an interview in her office: “‘I’m so sorry, but I’m in pain. I’m so sorry, this looks disgusting.’”These experiences in the exam room are part of what drove Dr. Comen to write “All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today.” In it, she traces the roots of women’s tendency to apologize for their ailing or unruly bodies to centuries of diminishment by the medical establishment. It’s a legacy that continues to shape the lives of women patients, she argues.Today, women are more likely to be misdiagnosed than men are and take longer to be diagnosed with heart disease and some cancers; they may be less likely to be offered pain medication; their symptoms are more likely to be written off as anxiety — or, as the book title suggests, as being all in their head.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Published15 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, PacemakerUnions representing healthcare workers in Northern Ireland are to ballot their members on a pay deal.The proposed settlement would see the restoration of pay parity with England, and includes an uplift of 5% and a one-off payment of £1,505.Unison, which represents thousands of workers, said months of industrial action had “finally yielded a result”. Health Minister Robin Swann welcomed the news as “a positive step” towards reaching a pay settlement.”I commend the constructive negotiations that have taken place with trade unions,” he said.”Staff are the backbone of health and social care services and deserve to be properly rewarded for their work.”He said pay settlements for 2023/24 were “long overdue, having been delayed by political and budgetary instability”, adding pay would be backdated to April 2023.’Considerable step forward’Speaking to BBC News NI’s Good Morning Ulster, Patrick Mulholland from NIPSA said that the move was a “considerable step forward”.However, there are still “loose ends that are not tied up; one around the issue of mileage and one around safe staffing”, he continued.”We want to see strike action come to an end, but we are preparing for further strike action if it is necessary.”Mr Mulholland said the pay deal is significant in itself, but in the wider context of public sector pay “it is the first rung in the ladder”.Rita Devlin from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that she feels “frustrated and disappointed with the lump sum, as it does not give our nurses parity with nurses in England”.”My view is that we wanted parity with England, and the pay offer does not provide that,” she added. Image source, PA MediaAnne Speed from Unison said there was still more negotiation to be done as “we are still third on the league table of pay”.”We always have the leverage of taking industrial action, if negotiations don’t go our way.”Last year, nurses in England were offered a 5% pay rise and a one-off settlement of at least £1,655.The RCN said it would be consulting members on the proposed pay settlement “shortly”.Unite said it was “encouraging members to vote yes to accept this pay offer and end the pay dispute”.”This offer ensures pay parity with NHS workers in England and Wales and will address safe staffing,” Brenda Stevenson from the union said.On 18 January, nurses, midwives and healthcare workers took part along with other public sector workers in the largest strike in Northern Ireland for 50 years.Last week, junior doctors in Northern Ireland voted to take strike action for the first time.The result of the ballot would see junior doctors taking part in a 24-hour walkout from 6 to 7 March.Transport strike suspendedMeanwhile, the Infrastructure Minister John O’Dowd has welcomed the suspension of the transport strike which was due to begin on Tuesday 27 February and would have seen all bus, rail and glider services cancelled.The 72-hour strike by transport workers from the The Unite, GMB and Siptu unions was struck off after Translink offered an improved pay offer.On Monday, Davy Thompson from Unite said: “I don’t think its good enough in terms of the percentage but that’s the deal we have on the table.”This is bite-sized chunks, we are going to a ballot we have suspended our action to allow that to happen, so let’s see what the next stages are off the back of that,” he added. More on this storyWe’re not fourth-class workers, say health staffPublished21 September 2023

Published3 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Alex Dunlop/BBCBy Rachael McMenemy & Alex DunlopBBC News, SuffolkMothers of babies who died or suffered brain damage from a Group B Strep (GBS) infection say routine screening is needed.Two mothers from Suffolk have also backed a campaign to have the infection put on the notifiable disease list.The charity Group B Strep Support has said that GBS was the most common cause of life-threatening infections in newborns.Screening has not been recommended by the UK National Screening Committee.The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said it has considered making changes to the list following a consultation last year.NHS guidance stated GBS was common in pregnant women and rarely caused any problems. It can be passed onto babies during labour.’Should be offered to everyone’Image source, Alex Dunlop/BBCNatalie Lockyer’s daughter Quinn died aged 10 weeks after developing GBS at five weeks old. Ms Lockyer, 32, from near Haverhill, Suffolk, said Quinn’s birth was “perfect” and she had no issues during labour. However, five weeks later she developed “huffy” breathing and in the days following was diagnosed with GBS after deteriorating in hospital. She was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where Ms Lockyer said medics from around the world expressed their shock that GBS screening was not routine procedure in the UK, as it was in other countries.”If they do it, why don’t we? It’s so simple,” she said. She said: “We’ll never know where she got it from because she developed it later. It probably was from me during labour.”This should not be something charities and mums who have lost or got babies in really difficult circumstances because of the disease, have to push for, it should be something the NHS offers to everyone,” Ms Lockyer added.’Albie could have been saved’Image source, Alex Dunlop/BBCRob Salmon and Becca Murcott’s son Albie was born on Boxing Day 2023 and had Group B Strep Meningitis, which has caused a brain injury.He became ill at home and was admitted to hospital where his condition stabilised.His parents, from Cockfield, Suffolk, said they had never heard of the condition prior to their son’s diagnosis.Ms Murcott said: “Potentially he’ll be severely disabled through his brain injury, but there’s also a chance he could still pass away, especially if he got an infection.””If I’d been tested before giving birth to him, I would have been given antibiotics and he would have been fine,” she said.Mr Salmon said: “We could have been tested and prepared for it and Albie could have been saved from it.”Ms Murcott said testing should be carried out in labour or shortly before.’Postcode lottery’Image source, Oliver PlumbOliver Plumb, from the charity Group B Strep Support, said it was a “small number of babies” exposed to the bacteria that developed a serious and potentially fatal infection. He said around 800 babies a year developed the infection – which is about two babies a day – and about one a week will die, while another a week will be left with a lifelong disability.”It’s a heart-breaking start to life for families and that often the first they hear of Group B Strep is when their baby is sick or in intensive care”.The charity has called for GBS to be a notifiable disease to make it a legal responsibility for infections to be reported. It added that current figures could be “missing around one fifth of the infections”. There was a “postcode lottery” in terms of how many families will hear about GBS, he said. The charity also backed calls for screening. “In the UK we don’t sadly have a routine testing programme, that’s at odds with much of the rest of the high-income world. “A DHSC spokesperson said a public consultation on the notifiable diseases list was carried out last year. “DHSC and UKHSA are considering the responses and confirmation of any changes will be published in due course,” they said.Several reasons for not recommending routine screening have been given by the committee, including that results can change in the last few weeks of labour, and that GBS does not cause infection in every baby. The decision is due to be reviewed following an ongoing screening trial.However, the charities Group B Strep Support, Bliss, The UK Sepsis Trust, Meningitis Research Foundation, Meningitis Now and The Lullaby Trust have written to the DHSC to ask for the infection to be added to the government list. Any occurrence of a listed disease must be reported to allow outbreaks and spread to be monitored.Follow East of England news on Facebook, Instagram and X. Got a story? Email eastofenglandnews@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 0800 169 1830More on this storyTV star calls for routine Group B Strep testingPublished20 September 2023‘A common bug could have killed my baby’Published8 December 2019Related Internet LinksNHS – Group B StrepGroup B Strep SupportThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Published3 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Family photoBy Caroline LowbridgeBBC News, East MidlandsA woman whose partner died from cancer while she was also being treated for the disease has thanked the local community for their help.Stacey Chetwyn found out she had cancer in her pelvis just days after her partner Stuart Ashby learned he had cancer in his oesophagus.Mr Ashby, from Syston in Leicestershire, died three weeks after being diagnosed.People donated more than £26,000 to help towards the family’s living costs.Miss Chetwyn, who has sons aged six and 10, said this had helped while she was being treated and was unable to work, and had made their family more financially secure.”Every little bit of help I am forever thankful for, whether it’s taking the kids out or helping me in the house or taking the financial strain away, that has helped massively,” she said.”I can’t even put into words how thankful we as a family will ever be for that, especially while we were trying desperately to sort things out.”Image source, Stu AshbyMiss Chetwyn had previously been diagnosed with cervical cancer in September 2020, but was treated for this and told she was in remission in April 2021.However, she was admitted to hospital on 10 September 2023 after experiencing pain and mobility problems, and was told she had cancer in her pelvis on 11 October.Meanwhile, Mr Ashby had been admitted to hospital on 24 September because of pain he was experiencing. He was told he had cancer in his oesophagus, liver and spleen on 5 October.Mr Ashby was then moved to LOROS hospice in Leicester, and died on 22 October.’Kids were the strength'”Unfortunately he just sadly deteriorated extremely fast,” said Miss Chetwyn.”We tried everything we could; the disease was too strong.”She said the loss of Mr Ashby, who was “the love of my life”, had left her distraught.”For the sake of the kids, they’re the reason I get up each day,” she said.”Without them I don’t know where I’d be. So they were the strength through the storm.”Image source, Stacey ChetwynNow Miss Chetwyn’s cancer treatment has ended, she intends to raise money for LOROS by holding an event on 2 March to celebrate her partner’s life.It has been timed to mark what would have been Mr Ashby’s 48th birthday on 29 February.”Stu was born on a leap year and in 2024 he has an actual birthday, so this will be his 12th birthday,” said Miss Chetwyn.”I’m hosting it as a charity event to raise as much money as I can for LOROS for the immense care that they provided for Stu in the short time he was there at the hospice.”‘Get it checked’The event will be held at the Avantay Banqueting Suite in Syston.Miss Chetwyn has also been encouraging women to get screened for cervical cancer through her Facebook page, called Cerviving: My Journey with the Big C.She wants to encourage men and women to get cancer symptoms checked early.”For anything that you feel is not right, just go and get it checked, because it might be nothing but it might be something,” she said.Follow BBC East Midlands on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@bbc.co.uk.More on this storyParents with cancer ‘blown away’ by donationsPublished14 October 2023Related Internet LinksLOROSThe BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Published27 minutes agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesPeople in their early 20s are more likely to be not working due to ill health than those in their early 40s, a report has found.This is “radically different” from the past, the Resolution Foundation said, when the older you were the more likely you were to not work due to sickness.Poor mental health among young people is on the rise, official figures show.This can hamper their education and lead to them being in lower-paid jobs or unemployed, the report said.One in 20 young people (5%) were economically inactive due to ill health in 2023, it said.According to the report, young people now have the poorest mental health of any age group – a reversal from two decades ago when they had the lowest incidence of common mental disorders.In 2021/22, 34% of young people aged 18 to 24 reported symptoms of a mental disorder, such as depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder.In 2000 that figure stood at 24%.As a result, more than half a million 18 to 24 year olds were prescribed anti-depressants in 2021-22.Record numbers not working due to ill healthMore illness among young affecting work abilityWho are the millions of Britons not working?Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said attention had more often been on mental health in higher education, but “what should most worry us is when poor mental health comes together with poor education outcomes”.”The economic consequences of poor mental health are starkest for young people who don’t go to university, with one in three young non-graduates with a common mental disorder currently workless,” she said. The study found that young women fare worse, and are one-and-a-half times more likely to experience poor mental health as young men (41% compared with 26%).The research also found that 79% of 18 to 24 year olds who are “workless” due to ill health only have qualifications at GCSE level or below.This compares with 34% of all people in that age group.If children aged 11 to 14 suffer poor mental health they are three times more likely not to pass five GCSEs including English and Maths compared with healthy children, the report said.Off the back of the study the Resolution Foundation, which campaigns for better living standards for those on low and middle incomes, is calling for better mental health support in colleges and sixth forms, and for more to be done to make it so that less young people leave compulsory education with low qualification levels. The research has been produced by the Resolution Foundation, but is funded by the Health Foundation – a charity which says it aims to bring about better health and care. The director of the Health Foundation, Jo Bibby, said that the “building blocks of health” are things like “good employment and education” and “cross-government action” was needed to stop the creation of a “lost generation” due to poor mental health. Many of the findings are based on the Labour Force Survey, which has recently been stopped by the Office for National Statistics because the numbers taking part had fallen.However, the Health Foundation has previously said it believes the data is still accurate enough for its analysis.More on this storyMore illness among young affecting work abilityPublished17 November 2023Record numbers not working due to ill healthPublished16 May 2023Who are the millions of Britons not working?Published15 March 2023Child mental health referrals rejectedPublished21 hours ago

Scientists have long believed that a newborn’s immune system was an immature version of an adult’s, but new research from Cornell University shows that newborns’ T cells — white blood cells that protect from disease — outperform those of adults at fighting off numerous infections.
These results help clarify why adults and infants respond differently to infections and pave the way for controlling T cells’ behavior for therapeutic applications.
This discovery was described in a paper published in Science Immunology on Feb. 23, co-led by Brian Rudd, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, and Andrew Grimson, professor of molecular biology and genetics.
For example, adult T cells outperform newborn T cells at tasks including recognizing antigens, forming immunological memory and responding to repeat infections, which has led to the belief that infant’s T cells were just a weaker version of the adult ones. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, many were surprised by the apparent lack of illness in infants, bringing this long-standing belief into question.
Interested in understanding these age-related differences, Rudd and Grimson discovered that newborn T cells are not deficient: Instead, they are involved in a part of the immune system that does not require antigen recognition: the innate arm of the immune system. While adults T cells use adaptive immunity — recognizing specific germs to then fight them later – newborn T cells are activated by proteins associated with innate immunity, the part of the immune system that offers rapid but nonspecific protection against microbes the body has never encountered.
“Our paper demonstrates that neonatal T cells are not impaired, they are just different than adult T cells and these differences likely reflect the type of functions that are most useful to the host at distinct stages of life,” Rudd said.
Neonatal T cells can participate in the innate arm of the immune system. This enables newborn T cells to do something that most adult T cells cannot: respond during the very first stages of an infection and defend against a wide variety of unknown bacteria, parasites and viruses.
“We know that neonatal T cells don’t protect as well as adult T cells against repeat infections with the same pathogen. But neonatal T cells actually have an enhanced ability to protect the host against early stages of an initial infection,” Rudd said. “So, it is not possible to say adult T cells are better than neonatal T cells or neonatal T cells are better than adult T cells. They just have different functions.”
Following up on his discovery, Rudd wants to study the neonatal T cells that persist into adulthood in humans. “We are also interested in studying how changes in the relative numbers of neonatal T cells in adults contributes to variation in the susceptibility to infection and outcomes to disease,” he said.
This work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, in the National Institutes of Health.

A new study has revealed that employees who are more mindful in the digital workplace are better protected against stress, anxiety and overload.
Researchers from the University of Nottingham’s Schools of Psychology and Medicine analysed survey data from 142 employees. The results have been published today in PLOS ONE.
PhD student Elizabeth Marsh from the School of Psychology led the mixed methods study and said: “As work is increasingly mediated by digital technology we wanted to find out the impact this is having on people’s health and whether there are ways to mitigate this. We found that being mindfully and confidently digital should be considered important elements of living a healthy digital working life in the 21st century.”
The participants in the study were surveyed about their experiences of the dark side effects of the digital workplace which were identified as; stress, overload, anxiety, fear of missing out and addiction and how these affected their health.
The results showed that more digitally confident workers were less likely to experience digital workplace anxiety, while those with higher mindfulness were better protected against all of the dark side effects. Data from 14 interviews also indicated ways that digital mindfulness can help protect well-being.
Dr Alexa Spence, Associate Professor of Psychology adds: “Digital workplace technologies like e-mail, instant messaging and mobile devices have been shown to contribute to perceptions of stress by employees and employees may experience stress when having to adapt to a constantly evolving digital workplace which can lead to burnout and poorer health.”
Mindfulness is defined as a state of consciousness that involves paying attention in the present moment intentionally and non-judgementally. The study showed that employees who were more mindful were less exposed to adverse impacts of the dark side of the digital workplace.
Professor of Digital Technology for Mental Health, Elvira Perez Vallejos comments: “The research shows that organisations need to consider how to manage digital workplace hazards alongside other psychosocial and physical risks in the workplace. Helping employees foster mindful awareness when working digitally could really help overall well-being.”
The research was funded by ESRC-MGS (Economic and Social Research Council — Midland Graduate School).