John Sherwood, left, and Daniel VanZweden, are second-year medical students who co-wrote the winning poster.

Service learning is an integral part of the curriculum at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. While the COVID-19 changed the way medical students at WSU approach the subject, the pandemic gave students the opportunity to be part of the team behind the retool.

The efforts, presented in poster format, were nationally recognized at the 17th annual Learning Communities Institute Conference as the best student presentation by unanimous vote.

Learning Communities: Service Learning amid COVID-19, was written by second-year students Daniel VanZweden and John Sherwood, with assistance from Director of Community Engagement Jennifer Mendez, Ph.D., an associate professor of Internal Medicine; and Co-Director of Service Learning LaTonya Riddle-Jones, M.D., an assistant professor of Internal Medicine.

The poster describes how, in less than a month, faculty and students worked together at the School of Medicine to transform the service-learning curriculum into a safe and structured telecheck-in experience. Learning Communities, or LCs, comprised of six students each, used telecheck-ins to contact families in the community and used a standardized questionnaire as a guide for assessing needs. LCs then designed a resource guide and presented it to their families. A reflection was completed to share what they learned about telecheck-ins in general. Survey results show most teams spent 10 to 30 minutes with their family. Food-related resources were one of the most common requests.

The virtual conference was hosted by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School on Oct. 24. Designed for faculty, students and administrative staff, the conference featured a plenary address, workshops, oral presentations and a poster session. This years theme was Supporting Learning Communities in a Virtual Setting.

Service learning is part of the School of Medicines Patient, Population, Physician course, which includes clinical hours, project hours, outreach hours and seminars with reflections. The projects demonstrate the ability to work as a team, educate clients and/or patients during a health-screening event and reflect on the experience of care.

The poster details how we scrapped the original plans for service learning and over the course of a month designed a new curriculum that would engage medical students with community members while maintaining social distancing, VanZweden said. Telehealth was used to connect teams of students, organized by their learning communities, with the local community, and students identified any needs that families and members of the community had. They then compiled a resource guide to help families and members of the community with any problems they had during COVID-19. This was a valuable experience to serve the community, as well as educate students about social determinants of health and problems in the local community during COVID, as well as the resources available to solve some of those problems.

The winning research also was accepted by theAmerican Medical Association Health Systems Science Student, Resident and Fellows Impact Challenge and will be includedin the 2020 edition of Medical Students, Residents and Fellows Making an Impact. In June, it was featured in a keynote presentation at the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education, where it also received a special mention from the conference organizers.

All medical schools in the United States are required by the Association of American Medical Colleges to incorporate service learning into curriculum, but the School of Medicine takes the requirement several steps further, seeing it as an opportunity to make a real difference in the community while also bolstering longitudinal mentorship among the four classes, including pairing first-year learning communities with second-year students.

Read the rest here:
Students and faculty praised for collaborative project transforming curriculum amid pandemic safety concerns - The South End

Yale Daily News

Advocating for the transition of medicine away from race-based practices and toward a more race-conscious approach, Yale Medical School MD-PhD student Jessica Cerdea GRD 21, Yale Emergency Medicine physician Jennifer Tsai and Howard University PhD student Marie Plaisime recently co-authored an editorial for The Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal, this month about reforming medical education for future doctors.

The editorial characterizes the current practice of medicine as race-based, stating that physicians often infer that race has inherent biological significance, whereas in actuality race is merely a social construct. The authors say the future of medicine should move from this race-based approach to a race-conscious approach, with the end goal being a reduction in health inequities across racial lines. They advocated for emphasizing institutional inequities in healthcare during medical education, which they said would raise the cultural competency of future physicians.

Race-based medicine uses and treats race as an essential biological variable that has utility in medical education and clinical practice, Cerdea said. Race-conscious medicine understands that race is a social and power construct that changes for political utility over time, and that it is a poor proxy for human genetic variation. Instead, the more salient variable when it comes to differences in human groups that have been socially categorized in this way is the experience of racism and racialization This idea that there are biological differences between racial groups comes from colonization. This is how white supremacy operates.

The editorial was published in The Lancet after the prominent medical journal released a statement supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and its continuing commitment to advancing racial equality. This editorial was also published following a summer of racial unrest and protests around the country that advocated for putting an end to police brutality against Black Americans. The timing of the publication was significant to the authors.

Certainly we were motivated by the very apparent murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, among others, Tsai said. But also because this is a very long-standing problem that I think all three of us have been working on, thinking about and advocating against beforehand.

The article presented a wide range of examples in which race heavily influences physicians medical assessment of patients, such as the Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease risk calculator equation. This online tool determines a given patients risk of having a cardiovascular event within ten years, Cerdea said. These calculations involve categorizing the patient as either Black or not Black. If the patient is Black, the predicted risk is significantly increased, and the patient is more likely to start taking a certain medication earlier than patients of other racial groups.

The prescription dosage for certain drugs can also vary based on racial groups. According to Cerdea, medical practitioners consider East Asian people to have different metabolisms, which means that a drug like Eltrombopag, a bone marrow stimulant, is started at half the normal dose for these people. This type of race-based medicine is condemned in the article.

You cant know someones pharmacokinetics, or the way that they metabolize a drug, by looking at them, or by their race, Cerdea said. Thats the problem with race-based medicine.

The Lancet piece includes different policy recommendations for researchers, clinicians and practitioners. According to Plaisime, It was crafted with care towards its intended audience of physicians, picking and choosing words that would be most accessible. The most important step in moving forward, Tsai said, is to change the curriculum of medical schools to be more race-conscious.

The authors also wrote this editorial from the perspective of their own experiences as women of color within the American healthcare system. Cerdea is Italian and Chilean with Indigenous Mapuche ancestry, Plaisime is Haitian American and Tsai is Taiwanese American.

As a Black woman, for sure there have definitely been times where Ive been treated differently based on how I appeared in the clinical room, how I was spoken to, Plaisime said. Also being the daughter of Haitian immigrants, I know first-hand what its like to have your accent judged. Not just one isolated event that kind of sparked this, its my story, and I want to make sure that all people receive equitable care.

The authors also emphasized that even research studies are subjected to racialization, despite undergoing objective screening processes instituted by peer-reviewed journals. Although race has no inherent biological significance, countless epidemiological studies include race as a critical variable when mapping out the prevalence of certain diseases.

In their article, the authors urged clinical research journals to include instructions in their publication guidelines that denounce the use of race as a proxy for biological variables such as genetics, pharmacokinetics and metabolism.

Prestigious publications continue to allow research that [uses] problematic versions of race in their research, Tsai said. They still allow that to be published, which means this kind of data and this kind of thinking is continually generated and perpetuated.

Plaisime, who is a medical sociologist studying the impacts of race and racism in clinical decision-making processes, explained that biologizing race is harmful. Prior to this collaboration, she had published a piece about the implications of using race in medicine.

She emphasized the need for using evidence-based treatments that do not rely solely on race as a factor of consideration, as this can often be detrimental to members of racial minority groups.

The different biomarkers and tools they use arent necessarily based on science, but more on racist assumptions, Plaisime said. My work was based on how that kind of training impacts later on how patients receive care, and how medical students are trained.

Cerdea and Plaisime are both Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholars, and Tsai is completing her residency at the Yale New Haven Hospital.

Anjali Mangla | anjali.mangla@yale.edu

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Members of medical community call for shift from race-based to race-conscious medicine - Yale Daily News

First year students at Harvard Medical School will join upperclassmen on campus this spring, Dean George Q. Daley 82 said in an interview Friday.

We decided that we will bring the students back for the spring semester and have them return to some of these in-person, patient-oriented, clinical examination skill building, he said.

Hands-on experience in the clinic working directly with patients is key to students training, according to Daley: after returning students restarted their clinical rotations in the summer, they have integrated as essential members of healthcare delivery teams at various hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School.

The decision to return all medical students to Longwood contrasts with recent moves at many of Harvards other professional schools. The Law School, School of Public Health, Divinity School, and Graduate School of Design each announced they had elected to continue virtual classes last week.

Daley said that split stems from the Medical Schools unique charge.

In many ways, we have a different mission than a lot of other schools. Our mission of education also includes service service to the patients that these students will ultimately be treating for their careers as physicians, Daley said.

Several first-year students said they found classroom learning effective in a virtual format. They said the clinical courses Daley referenced, however, went less smoothly.

[The instructors] are doing the best they can, and they've adopted well, but there are some things you truly can't learn online for medicine, first-year Medical School student Abigail M. Kempf told The Crimson earlier this month.

Recognizing those challenges, Daley said the school made the decision to bring back additional students with care.

We're doing it with a tremendous amount of forethought and planning, he said. This has required, again, a tremendous collaborative effort across our students and our staff and our faculty, in order to be sure that we can do this as safely as possible.

Staff writer Virginia L. Ma can be reached at virginia.ma@thecrimson.com.

The rest is here:
First-Year Harvard Medical Students Will Return to Campus for the Spring | News - Harvard Crimson

The Foundation will manage all philanthropic donations and gifts from donors.

In an effort to streamline the donation process, the University of Minnesota Foundation will now be responsible for all monetary gifts for the M Health Fairview system.

This new agreement, approved by the Board of Regents in October, acts to create one brand for donors to give to, making the donation process more efficient. Previously, fundraising efforts were completed by two different groups, the University of Minnesota Foundation and the Fairview Foundation.

Combining all donations under one brand, the University of Minnesota Foundation, or UMF, is likely to increase the number and amount of gifts from donors, said Patricia Porter, vice president of development, medicine and health for UMF.

UMFs Driven campaign launched in 2011 and has raised approximately $3.97 billion. The campaign will end in 2021. These funds are designated for a variety of places, including M Health Fairview.

The M Health Fairview system consists of the Universitys Medical School, University of Minnesota Physicians and Fairview Health. This partnership will also extend to M Health Fairview locations around the state of Minnesota.

This change will take effect on Nov. 1. The Fairview Foundation will continue to distribute funds raised by donors prior to this date, said John Swanholm, president of the Fairview Foundation and vice president of community advancement in a statement emailed to the Minnesota Daily.

This new arrangement will especially benefit the Universitys Medical School, which often depends on donor contributions to fund new research projects. Leaders also said they hope this funding will help to increase the Medical Schools rankings over time.

The stronger the medical school is, the better off the health system does because it attracts more patients, it attracts national notoriety and it attracts more grant funding from federal agencies, Porter said. So we see this philanthropy very often helps leverage.

Continued support of the Medical School will also help to aid further research into the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you look at all the media attention that the University and our health system have had, its been about that whole spectrum, Porter said. Its been about vaccine development and antibody tests; its been about creating ventilators in garages that can be built cheaply. Its been about creating masks and shields within our own biomedical engineering departments. And then its been about the actual care, the frontline care workers, that are delivering care and taking care of patients right now.

She added that the switch is also beneficial to those who donate to the M Health Fairview system as they will now be able to make gifts to one organization rather than the two separate ones used previously.

When you have a benefactor population that feels so strongly about what we do as a University and how we can help patients, it just becomes natural that we can help them have one conversation as to how that translates into patient care, said Anette Lillegard, assistant vice president for communications at the Medical School.

These changes will not require UMF to change its operations, although staffing will expand to account for the added workload. The foundation expects to see an increase in efficiency as a result of this new agreement.

Well be expanding: we will be importing information from their database into ours and setting up some new funds, Porter said. Theres a lot of communication activities that need to go on to inform everybody on the front end so those are the things that were focused on right now.

Read more here:
UMN Foundation takes over fundraising for entire M Health Fairview system, expected to increase donations - Minnesota Daily

The best way to maximize your chances of surviving COVID-19 without hospitalization is to be healthy when you contract it.

Pre-existing conditions such as respiratory problems, vascular disease, obesity, and diabetes exacerbate the coronavirus health effects. Most of us know that so-called comorbidities raise the odds a person will end up hospitalized by the disease. And most of those conditions are preventable.

Personal fitness influences how well we tolerate most illnesses and injuries. Employers who provide health insurance know they can bring down costs by encouraging workers to take better care of themselves. But the best way to do that is not how most people might assume.

The land of the free is the land of the unhealthy, at least when compared to other societies with similar resources. The latest Global Burden of Disease Study reveals a nation where young children die at shockingly high rates, life expectancy is short, and disease-free years are too few.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: Hospitals gouge private health insurance to care for others

The mortality rate for mothers and infants in the United States is 6.5 per 1,000 births, compared to 4.9 in other wealthy countries. The number of years the average American lives in good health is 65.5 and getting shorter due to rising rates of obesity and heart disease. The average Japanese enjoys 20 additional good years.

While other countries have seen dramatic increases in life expectancy, Americans have seen no improvement in a decade.

Americans made up more than half of the worlds overdose deaths in 2019. U.S. doctors over-prescribe opioids, rehab programs do not use the best methods, and street drugs are laced with dangerous additives. But drug abuse and chronic disease are symptoms of larger problems that go beyond medical intervention.

Research has shown that social, economic and behavioral factors are far more critical than medical conditions in determining our quality and length of life, something reinforced by the latest Global Burden of Disease Study published in The Lancet medical journal this month.

An exclusive focus on health care is a mistake, the editors wrote. Health is created from a broader prospectus that includes the quality of education (primary to tertiary), economic growth, gender equality, and migration policy.

Limited access to fresh food, smoking and drugs, moldy housing and lack of transportation damage more peoples health than genetics. Life expectancies in Texass wealthiest census tracts are 17 years longer than those in the most impoverished areas, the National Center for Health Statistics found.

Research shows 80 percent to 90 percent of a persons health is determined by non-medical factors.

More than 88 percent of companies that employ more than 200 workers include so-called wellness programs with their health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But since most of the incentives focus on medical conditions, not social issues, wellness programs have shown limited benefits, according to most studies.

The problem is health insurers and employers are reluctant to address the so-called social determinants of health. They do not want to pay higher wages, remediate mold in homes, cover taxi fare to quality grocery stores, subsidize rent in better neighborhoods or provide access to better schools.

The Houston-based Episcopal Health Foundation gave $2.6 million to the Dell Medical School in Austin to research how non-medical issues affect public health in Texas. Experts hope to determine exactly how best to save money on health spending by raising living standards so that everyone benefits.

Of all the factors that determine whether or not a person or population is healthy, medical care is actually a pretty small piece, Elena Marks, the foundations CEO, told a Rice University webinar.

In 2018, the U.S. spent $3.5 trillion on health care; only 2.6 percent was spent on social factors, according to federal data. European countries that spend twice as much on social services have far healthier populations.

TOMLINSONS TAKE: The economy will recover faster if Texans contain COVID

The consequences for employer-based health programs could be dramatic. Could paying higher wages to improve a workers living standard result in lower health care costs and less missed work? Might a weekly farmers market with cooking lessons lead to fewer hospitalizations and money saved?

When it comes to COVID-19, social factors are driving the pandemic, with poor people who live in substandard housing without access to healthy food and routine health care getting the sickest. If we address those issues beforehand, no pandemic or any other crisis would cause as much economic damage.

We saw this during Hurricane Harvey and now were seeing it during COVID. Its time to do something about it, Marks said.

Ultimately, the best way to improve our collective health is to lift people out of poverty, provide them with a quality education and ensure an equitable stake in the nations health. Prevention is always cheaper than a cure.

Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.

twitter.com/cltomlinson

chris.tomlinson@chron.com

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COVID proves better pay and housing are quickest ways to better health - Houston Chronicle

Applying to schools can be a daunting process, particularly at the graduate level. As with many things COVID-19 has impacted, the application process to graduate schools is evolving under the circumstances.

At Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, interviews with applicants are now being done using video, according to Gillian Anzivino, director of admissions.

While we miss seeing candidates in person, most people are now comfortable with video interactions, she wrote in an email to the Daily. Some applicants and interviewees have enjoyed the new flexibility.

As part of the dental school application, applicants are now asked to share how they have been impacted by COVID-19. Robert Kasberg, associate dean of admissions and student affairs, has noticed a decrease in some applicants volunteer and community service hours due to the pandemic.

Candidates will have to demonstrate their ability to communicate compassionately, he wrote in an email to the Daily.

Since COVID-19 has limited the availability of hands-on experiences, Kasberg detailed how dental school applicants have simulated fine motor skills by not only working in a dental lab, but also through jewelry-making or playing the piano or guitar.

During the pandemic, there might have been more time for applicants to practice some of those micro-motor skills, he noted.

The Tufts University School of Medicines interview process has also been altered this year. The school has created a fully remote interview day, which includes virtual interviews, live and pre-recorded talks for the applicants, a virtual tour, sessions led by current students, and a session for applicants who are underrepresented in medicine (URM), along with a session for those who identify with the LGBTQIA+ community, David Neumeyer, dean of admissions at the Tufts University School of Medicine, wrote in an email to the Daily.

One of the questions added to the application is how COVID-19 has affected the applicants experiences so far. The Medical College Admission Test is also being accepted through the fall as it may have been disrupted earlier in the year. While only some applicants have had a more challenging time finding meaningful work compared to past years, Neumeyer expects more to have difficulty in gaining hands-on experience in the next cycle of applications.

Gaining the experience in medicine is really not meant as much for us as an admissions committee, but rather for you as an applicant, so you can make sure that you are ready and understand as best as you can what it means to be a physician, Neumeyer said.

Anne Moore, program specialist in the Office of Scholar Development, spoke to how being flexible with the changing times is crucial to COVID-19-impacted circumstances. One of her key takeaways is to translate hard skills into experiences that demonstrate a students values.

If you want to go to [medical] school, ultimately whats that about is helping people. And you know what people need right now, is help. It comes back to how to manifest your values most clearly, Moore said. Even though you may not be gaining those skills in the same timeline that you initially anticipate.

In addition to application changes, the medical schools admissions staff has undergone counseling to adapt to the impact of COVID-19 on students applications.

We have trained and will re-train our admissions committee to try to best understand what an applicant has to go through to be ready to apply to medical school, Neumeyer said.

Its admissions staff has also conducted further training on diversity and inclusion in the universitys quest to become an anti-racist institution.

One of the trends multiple graduate schools have noticed is an increasing number of applications. Applications to the doctor of dental medicine program at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine are up 4% from this time last year, and applications to the schools postgraduate programs are up 27% from this time last year.

Aviva Must, dean of public health programs and professional degree programs, saw increased interest in the masters of public health program, both the on-campus and online formats, which she attributes to the awareness of the importance of public health.

We had an uptick in applicants and in enrolled students, despite our on-campus program being remote, she said.

As with many things with COVID, many of us have become more extreme versions of ourselves. So if students had any hesitations about whether or not to go to grad school, I think that hesitation has become exacerbated, Moore said. I think students who have seen grad school as a key or logical next step are more motivated to go.

According to a 2018 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, during the last recession, enrollment in higher education rose by nearly 3 million. While Moore stresses the importance of having a clear reason to go to graduate school, she acknowledged that going to graduate school during a bad economy is sometimes viewed as a way to gain credentials and enter the job market when the economy has rebounded. Applying to schools when plans have gone awry can be nerve-wracking, but Moore aims to advise students on adapting to the times, emphasizing that everyone is in the same boat.

With my students, I tell them: Look, youre stuck, and youre feeling how am I going to do this, go to grad school, but the rules are changing and they always will, Moore said. So look at your feet and look for the opportunities where you are, and try to make the world better in whatever that means to you.

On the graduate counseling side, Moore has been helping students frame their landscape. I think about the future in three-to-six month blocks of time, Moore said. The question she poses allows for ebbs and flows: Whats going to make the next season allow for a set of options that look appealing?

More:
Applying to a Tufts graduate school? Here's what to expect - Tufts Daily

Media Credit: Courtesy of Harrison Jones

GW's COVID-19 vaccine research team plans to have a working vaccine completed by the end of 2020, researchers said at a press conference.

Officials from the School of Medicine and Health Sciences said they project to have an efficacious COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the calendar year at a press conference Wednesday.

Medical school administrators said GW is being assessed to be part of another COVID-19 vaccine trial, run by the Coronavirus Prevention Network, the segment of the National Institutes for Health that is running the current trial SMHS is conducting. David Diemert, the principal investigator for the trials and a professor of medicine, said the trials volunteers should be commended for pushing the research teams work forward despite national concerns about receiving a COVID-19 vaccine once it is available.

I have to say that we are particularly grateful for our volunteers given all of the negative press that has been floating around regarding vaccines, and they are really taking a step to volunteer and to control whether or not there will be a vaccine moving forward, Diemert said.

He said the trial team keeps in touch with participants on a weekly basis through telehealth visits and electronic diaries. He said several of the trials participants have developed symptoms related to COVID-19, but just one participant has tested positive for the virus so far.

After their second dose of vaccine, which is four weeks after the first, we are going to be in contact with them monthly through either in-person visits or telehealth visits, Diemert said in an interview.

Half of the vaccine trials participants are Black or Latino, surpassing the researchers goal for diversity.

Barbara Lee Bass, the dean of the medical school, said the medical community is still unsure when a widespread vaccine will be available, but theyre hopeful that high-risk groups of people, like health care workers, will be able to receive the vaccine by early 2021. She said Mayor Muriel Bowsers office has started a task force, on which an SMHS faculty member serves, to create a plan for distributing a COVID-19 vaccine once it becomes available.

I think that most people in this business think its probably going to be some time 2022 before we have widespread vaccination available, she said. Thats kind of what Im hearing, not necessarily based on inside knowledge by any means.

Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services COVID-19 vaccine development initiative Operation Warp Speed, said he is grateful to the people who have participated in the trial so far.

I really warmly thank the volunteers, the two who are with us today, but also the almost 30,000 who have participated in this particular trial of the Moderna vaccine, he said.

Slaoui said he encourages community members to participate in the trials.

There are six vaccines being tested, two of which are almost fully completed, he said. Two more are trying to restart imminently, most likely later this week, next week, and there will be two more late in December and early December.

Wilma Capriles, a housekeeper from D.C. and a participant in the study, said she wanted to participate in the trial to help a vaccine be widely available.

I recommend it to everybody, she said. I think it is safe. I think its good for everybody, especially for Latino people.

Stay up to date on GW, D.C. news related to the virus. READ MORE

This article appeared in the October 26, 2020 issue of the Hatchet.

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SMHS researchers expect effective COVID-19 vaccine by end of 2020 - GW Hatchet

Andrew Whitaker has spent his undergraduate career at Washington University in St. Louis giving back.

A biomedical engineering major at the McKelvey School of Engineering, he has danced and played with kids who have cerebral palsy so they can put on a dance recital through Dance CPSR (Cerebral Palsy Sports Rehabilitation).

A two-sport athlete in football and track, he has spent weekends with kids on the autism spectrum, guiding them through exercises to improve coordination and social skills through the Bear Cubs running program.

An Annika Rodriguez Scholar, he has traveled to Honduras for a week, helping doctors assist patients with basic medical needs through a program called Global Brigades. He also has been involved in the McKelvey Takes Responsibility Campaign and WU BLAC.

Yet when Whitaker who recently was selected as one of 22 college football players from all three NCAA divisions for the prestigious Allstate American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Good Works Team is asked what, if any, of these experiences had the most meaning for him, he responds, Whatever Im doing now.

Right now, that would be his work with the local nonprofit Asthma & Allergy Foundation of St. Louis, helping kids afflicted with a disease of the lungs that is even more dangerous in this time of COVID-19.

What began as an internship this past summer has turned into a project near and dear to this defensive backs heart. With the help of the Gephardt Institute for Civic & Community Engagement, for which he also serves as a Bob and Gerry Virgil Civic Scholar, Whitaker spearheaded a project to send medical supplies to every school district in the St. Louis area. He set up and managed a website through the foundation that school nurses could access and request kits to have on hand. And when the kits were ready to send, he enlisted his football teammates to help assemble boxes.

It was good to know that when schools opened this fall, there were kids with asthma who had a fighting chance against COVID because of these kits, he said.

All from a senior who, like his teammates and classmates, admittedly is having the toughest year of his undergraduate career. Much of his campus life this semester has been experienced from his nearby campus apartment, and the football team only recently began socially distanced practices on Francis Olympic Field. Hes also just starting to work out with the track team.

The whole year has been humbling, and it gives you so much time to reflect on what matters, he said, referring not only to the pandemic but also the social unrest that erupted this summer in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Im a senior in college, and I dont want to waste any more time, he said. Simply being around friends is meaningful the games we play, the meals we eat together. These things really matter.

And as a senior on the football team, as a captain on the track team, I now feel like if I can inspire someone, I should, he said. If I can share my experiences about being Black and get my teammates to look at things through a different lens in terms of the social injustices going on, I will.

Whitaker, a native of Cincinnati, said medical school is likely in his future, but he hopes to take a year off after he graduates to travel, maybe participate in an international fellowship of some kind, and figure out his next step.

More information about the Good Works nomination is available here, including an opportunity to vote him team captain through Nov. 22. Meanwhile, the honors keep coming. Whitaker also recently was named a semifinalist for the Campbell Trophy, awarded by the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame. Like the Good Works award, it spans all NCAA divisions and recognizes an individual as the absolute best football scholar-athlete in the nation for his combined academic success, football performance and exemplary leadership.

He continues to take all the accolades and honors in stride. You never expect to be honored at all when youre simply helping people, he said.

More:
Washington People: Andrew Whitaker | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis - Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

By Leslie Gibson McCarthy

Executive News Editor

St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 28, 2020- Senior football and track & field student-athlete Andrew Whitaker was featured in the "Washington People" section ofThe Record on this date.

Whitaker has spent his undergraduate career at Washington University in St. Louis giving back.

Abiomedical engineering majorat the McKelvey School of Engineering, he has danced and played with kids who have cerebral palsy so they can put on a dance recital through Dance CPSR (Cerebral Palsy Sports Rehabilitation).

A two-sport athlete infootballandtrack, he has spent weekends with kids on the autism spectrum, guiding them through exercises to improve coordination and social skills through the Bear Cubs running program.

AnAnnika Rodriguez Scholar, he has traveled to Honduras for a week, helping doctors assist patients with basic medical needs through a program called Global Brigades. He also has been involved in the McKelvey Takes Responsibility Campaign and WU BLAC.

Yet when Whitaker who recently was selected as one of 22 college football players from all three NCAA divisions for the prestigiousAllstate American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Good Works Team is asked what, if any, of these experiences had the most meaning for him, he responds, "Whatever I'm doing now."

Right now, that would be his work with the local nonprofit Asthma & Allergy Foundation of St. Louis, helping kids afflicted with a disease of the lungs that is even more dangerous in this time of COVID-19.

What began as an internship this past summer has turned into a project near and dear to this defensive back's heart. With the help of the Gephardt Institute for Civic & Community Engagement, for which he also serves as aBob and Gerry Virgil Civic Scholar, Whitaker spearheaded a project to send medical supplies to every school district in the St. Louis area. He set up and managed a website through the foundation that school nurses could access and request kits to have on hand. And when the kits were ready to send, he enlisted his football teammates to help assemble boxes.

"It was good to know that when schools opened this fall, there were kids with asthma who had a fighting chance against COVID because of these kits," he said.

All from a senior who, like his teammates and classmates, admittedly is having the toughest year of his undergraduate career. Much of his campus life this semester has been experienced from his nearby campus apartment, and the football team only recently began socially distanced practices on Francis Olympic Field. He's also just starting to work out with the track team.

"The whole year has been humbling, and it gives you so much time to reflect on what matters," he said, referring not only to the pandemic but also the social unrest that erupted this summer in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

"I'm a senior in college, and I don't want to waste any more time," he said. "Simply being around friends is meaningful the games we play, the meals we eat together. These things really matter.

"And as a senior on the football team, as a captain on the track team, I now feel like if I can inspire someone, I should," he said. "If I can share my experiences about being Black and get my teammates to look at things through a different lens in terms of the social injustices going on, I will."

Whitaker, a native of Cincinnati, said medical school is likely in his future, but he hopes to take a year off after he graduates to travel, maybe participate in an international fellowship of some kind, and figure out his next step.

More information about the Good Works nomination is available here, including an opportunity to vote himteam captainthrough Nov. 22. Meanwhile, the honors keep coming. Whitaker also recently was named a semifinalist for theCampbell Trophy, awarded by the National Football Foundation & College Hall of Fame. Like the Good Works award, it spans all NCAA divisions and recognizes an individual as the absolute best football scholar-athlete in the nation for his combined academic success, football performance and exemplary leadership.

He continues to take all the accolades and honors in stride. "You never expect to be honored at all when you're simply helping people," he said.

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Newswise PHILADELPHIAThe international hunt to find more genetic risk markers for testicular cancer is expanding. A team of researchers led by Katherine L. Nathanson, MD, deputy director of the Abramson Cancer Center and the Pearl Basser Professor for BRCA-Related Research in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, was recently awarded $5.4 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to continue the long-standing genomics work of the TEsticular CAncer Consortium (TECAC).

A total of nearly $7 million has been awarded to TECAC, which includes researchers from 27 institutions around the world, whose collaborative goal is understand the genetic susceptibility to testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT).

TGCT are the most common cancer in the United States and Europe in men between the ages of 15 to 45, and the number of cases has continued to rise over the past 40 years. Approximately 50 percent of the risk of disease is due to genetic factors, higher than for other cancer types.

To date, TECAC has identified 22 novel susceptibility alleles, bringing the total number of risk markers to 66. Nathanson led a study in 2017 published in Nature Genetics that identified eight of those markers in previously unknown gene regions, as well as four in previously identified regions.

Members of TECAC also were the first to identify CHEK2, a moderate penetrance gene for TGCT. Penetrance refers to the proportion of people with a mutation in specific gene. Unlike other solid tumor types (e.g. breast, ovarian), the inherited risk of TGCT is likely due to multiple variants rather than any single gene.

Our work has revealed critical roles for genetic variants and mutations in testicular germ cell tumors and defined the biology of TGCTs as associated with defects in maturation of male germ cells, but theres still much more to discover with this highly heritable disease, Nathanson said. This grant will allow us to continue to pool our resources and expertise to better understand its biology and etiology, as well as provide data that can help identify men at higher risk of the disease and in need of surveillance.

The latest round of funding will focus on three projects: identify rare and common variants using whole exome genetic sequencing from biosamples of more than 2,000 men; conduct a transcriptome-wide association study, or TWAS, to identify novel candidate susceptibility genes in nearly 250,000 men (the largest to date); and further evaluate any variants or gene discovered from those two projects using tools, such as CRISPR, in cells.

Other Penn collaborators on this grant (R01 CA164947 A1) include David Vaughn, Linda Jacobs, Li-San Wang and Mingyao Li.

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Penn Medicine Researchers Receive $5.4 million Grant to Find Genetic Drivers of Testicular Cancer - Newswise