Author: Diane Duke Williams

Some of the Danforth Campus, School of Medicine and BJC HealthCare mail operations will share space beginning June 15 to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

The Duncan Avenue entrance to the St. Louis Children’s Hospital (SLCH) staff parking garage will reopen June 1, a few days later than had been planned due to weather and other delays regarding a Metropolitan Sewer District storm-sewer line upgrade.

David G. Mutch, MD, the Ira C. and Judith Gall Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine, has been elected chairman of the Foundation for Women’s Cancer board of directors.

John VanderHeyden, a mechanic at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, said he is lucky to be alive after collapsing recently in a parking lot on the Medical Campus. He was revived by School of Medicine security officers, who immediately began chest compressions and used an automated external defibrillator (AED), a portable device that provides an electric shock to restore a heart’s normal rhythm.

Tiffany Osborn, MD, associate professor of surgery and of emergency medicine, and her colleagues published a paper April 2 in The New England Journal of Medicine about septic shock. The paper was chosen for the NEJM’s online forum and drew more than 23,000 views and several thousand podcast listeners.

From May 4-15, contractors will clean, mill and repave Duncan Avenue between Boyle and Newstead avenues. During this time, Duncan will be closed in two phases.

Philip Needleman, PhD, former chair of the Department of Pharmacology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Washington University School of Medicine and the Brown School have received a $4 million grant to study whether a new model of providing family planning services can reduce unintended pregnancies and births. As part of the study, they are recruiting 10,000 women of child-bearing age in the St. Louis area to participate.

While in Ethiopia as a Fulbright scholar, L. Lewis Wall, MD, DPhil, met a woman who is trying to change the experience of adolescent girls in rural Ethiopia by providing them with reusable sanitary pads and education about menstruation. Wall and his wife, Helen, decided they had to do something to support the mission.

Over the next several months, construction projects at and near Washington University Medical Center will continue to affect traffic flow and shuttles as improvements to parking and intersections continue.