The State Department of Health’s respiratory virus snapshot, which tracks the activity of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19, showed a significant decrease in cases statewide last week, especially for the flu. At the same time, cases on the Kenai Peninsula were shown to be rising, the only one of all 10 regions seeing an […]
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Football is in full swing. Basketball season is fully underway. That also means a full-court press from advertisers in one of the greatest ironies of public health: During actual games, the fittest people on the planet slice through defensive lines, soar above the rim and sear the memories of mere mortal fans with inconceivable contortions […]
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Throughout her time at MIT, senior Abigail Schipper has volunteered as an EMT with MIT EMS, a student-run ambulance supporting the MIT community as well as Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Boston. As a first responder, she witnessed a troubling paradox: During the daytime, she would learn about state-of-the-art medical technology in her biomedical engineering classes; however, […]
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There were fewer drug overdose deaths in Alaska in 2022 than in 2021, a newly released update by the Department of Health says. The 2022 Drug Overdose Mortality Update was published by the department’s Alaska Health Analytics and Vital Records Section and Office of Substance Misuse and Addiction Prevention. The report is compiled using the […]
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Life expectancy is up in Alaska amid a decline in the number of deaths and births in the state, according to the Alaska Vital Statistics 2022 Annual Report, published Monday by the State Department of Health. The annually published report details trends in a variety of “Alaska resident vital events,” the report says. These include […]
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Decarbonization of national economies will be key to achieving global net-zero emissions by 2050, a major stepping stone to the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (and ideally 1.5 C), and thereby averting the worst consequences of climate change. Toward that end, the United States has pledged to […]
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This year, the Black maternal health crisis took center stage at The Root Institute. We sat down with some of the leading experts in this field — including Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan, Dr. Uché Blackstock, and Oriaku Njoku to tackle one of the greatest threats to Black pregnant people, the state of our […]
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This year, the Black maternal health crisis took center stage at The Root Institute. We sat down with some of the leading experts in this field — including Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, President of the National Birth Equity Collaborative, Myechia Minter-Jordan, MD, MBA, CEO of CareQuest Institute for Oral Health, Dr. Uché Blackstock, Founding CEO of […]
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Two large studies in Sweden examined the outcomes of mammography-based breast cancer detection. One included more than 80,000 women, and the other nearly 56,000 women. In both cases, mammogram results for a control group were analyzed by two radiologists (the standard in Sweden), while results for the AI test group were analyzed by one radiologist […]
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An updated booster vaccination against COVID-19, approved and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week, will be available to residents of the Kenai Peninsula by the end of the month. According to a Sept. 12 press release from the CDC, the updated vaccine is recommended for everyone 6 months or older. […]
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Encouraging immigrants to visit primary care doctors creates a striking decline in costly emergency room use, according to a new study co-authored by an MIT economist. The findings are from a New York City program that helped arrange medical appointments for undocumented immigrants with limited incomes, from May 2016 to June 2017. Those who received […]
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The classic computer science adage “garbage in, garbage out” lacks nuance when it comes to understanding biased medical data, argue computer science and bioethics professors from MIT, Johns Hopkins University, and the Alan Turing Institute in a new opinion piece published in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The rising […]
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Cases of respiratory syncytial virus are being identified in the southeastern United States, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health Advisory says, and though cases haven’t yet been identified in Alaska, the State Department of Health says new prevention tools will be available this respiratory illness season. Nirsevimab, a long-acting monoclonal antibody that has […]
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RNA vaccines against Covid-19 have proven effective at reducing the severity of disease. However, a team of researchers at MIT is working on making them even better. By tweaking the design of the vaccines, the researchers showed that they could generate Covid-19 RNA vaccines that produce a stronger immune response, at a lower dose, in […]
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Vaccination against influenza is recommended for everyone 6 months old or older, and September and October are “the best times for most people to get vaccinated,” an Epidemiology Bulletin published Aug. 30 by the State Department of Health says. The bulletin says that recommendations are based on the guidance of the Advisory Committee on Immunization […]
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MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is launching the Clean Air and Water Labs, with support from Community Jameel, to generate evidence-based solutions aimed at increasing access to clean air and water. Led by J-PAL’s Africa, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), and South Asia regional offices, the labs will partner with government […]
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Getting results from a blood test can take anywhere from one day to a week, depending on what a test is targeting. The same goes for tests of water pollution and food contamination. And in most cases, the wait time has to do with time-consuming steps in sample processing and analysis. Now, MIT engineers have […]
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