School of Medicine

Richard Heinzl, M.D., founder of Doctors without Borders, Canada, will present a talk, “Lessons from Abroad: The Opportunities of a Borderless World” at 7:30 p.m., Monday, Nov. 8 at Graham Chapel on the Danforth Campus.The event is co-sponsored by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy, the Gephardt Institute for Public Service and the School of Medicine

Your DNA influences how much you smoke and whether you will develop lung cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A study, led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, is the first large-scale effort to match genetics with smoking, lung cancer and COPD combined. The investigators studied 38,000 smokers and found that two groups of gene variants on chromosome 15 influence the risk for all three problems.

A study of Missouri girls in foster care found that about half of them had become pregnant or had given birth by age 19. To address this startling statistic, Washington University is launching a regional pregnancy prevention program for this high-risk population. The project will serve an estimated 600 teens in foster care in the St. Louis region.

The Department of Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will celebrate its 100th anniversary Thursday, Oct. 21, with a symposium from noon to 5 p.m. in the Moore Auditorium. Six of the department’s former heads, faculty or alumni have won Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine.

Emily Jungheim, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is studying how insurance coverage and mandates influence ART practice patterns and outcomes.

Washington University School of Medicine’s Ryan White Part C/D program, the largest provider of services for children, youth and adults living with HIV in the region, received a visit Oct. 14 from Mary Wakefield, PhD, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis will host a symposium titled “What Hurts, What Works, and What Have We Learned in Eliminating Health Disparities” from 8 a.m.-noon on Thursday, Oct. 21, at the Eric P. Newman Education Center on the Medical Campus.

Outlook, the magazine for the School of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, is debuting a new, enhanced online edition Oct. 19. 

When Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, went to medical school, he was struck by the kinds of patients he saw in the hospital. Too many were suffering from heart attacks or lung cancer — conditions linked to smoking. “It made me wonder: Couldn’t we do a better job at prevention?” he says.

Standard cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) involves alternating chest compressions with rescue breaths. But heart attack patients who receive CPR from bystanders fare better if their resuscitators skip the rescue breaths and do only chest compression, according to a study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.