The U.S. remains on track to spend twice as much for health care as for food, yet millions are without insurance or uninsured. “Health insurance premiums also continue to rise – on average another 9 percent in 2011,” says Merton Bernstein, JD, leading health insurance expert and the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. “Medical care costs can change direction if policy makers stop whistling past a significant contributor – non-benefit costs.”
A field of 18 teams was narrowed to just eight finalists during the annual Olin Cup “elevator pitch” competition Nov. 10. Forty teams began the competition in September, vying for $70,000 in seed money to start a new company, but 12 were eliminated in an earlier round of judging.
Telecommunications Facilities Corp. (TFC) is currently working to replace the voice mail system used by the School of Medicine. In preparation for the Nov. 18-20 change, employees are asked to make some changes before Friday, Nov.18 at 9 a.m.
Undergraduate students were in St. Louis Nov. 9-12 for the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students, designed to encourage undergraduate, post baccalaureate and graduate underrepresented minority students to pursue advanced training in the biomedical and behavioral sciences. Washington University, under the leadership of the Division of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, hosted a visit the Danforth and Medical campuses for about 200 students.
John A. Cooper, MD, PhD, has been named interim head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The WashU Bhangra team performs at Edison Theatre this past weekend as part of the Diwali “Festival of Lights” celebration. Ashoka, the university’s South Asian student association, presents the annual event, one of the largest student-run productions on campus.
A new study shows that adolescent girls with a family history of breast disease – either cancer or the benign lesions that can become cancer – have a higher risk of developing benign breast disease as young women than other girls. And unlike girls without a family history, this already elevated risk rises with increasing alcohol consumption.
The following are among the new faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis: Colin Burnett, PhD; Marie Griffith, PhD; Musa Gurnis-Farrell, PhD; Ron Mallon, PhD; Jacob Montgomery, PhD; Carl Sanders, PhD; Leigh Schmidt, PhD; Rebecca Wanzo, PhD; and Hayrettin Yücesoy, PhD. Others will be introduced periodically.
An operation for preventing repeat strokes in high-risk patients has failed in a multi-institutional clinical trial, led by Colin P. Derdeyn, MD, professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine. Results are reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The School of Law is hosting a screening and discussion of the award-winning documentary Made In India at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 16, in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall. The event is free and open to the public. The film explores the practice of “outsourcing” surrogacy arrangements to countries in which poor women agree to gestate pregnancies for intended parents from the U.S.