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HIGHLIGHTS
Economist Urges Focus On Nonmedical Determinants of Health
The economist Victor R. Fuchs (above), the Henry J. Kaiser Jr. professor emeritus of Stanford University, opened the Second Annual Marshall J. Seidman Lecture in Health Policy on April 29, saying he would like to be remembered for changing health policy from medical economics to health economics. In his talk, "The Non-Medical Determinants of Health," Fuchs emphasized that the interplay between variables such as genes, environment, and behavior--each in itself a potential contributor to disease--is highly complex: the compound risk of lung cancer from smoking and asbestos exposure, for example, far exceeds either risk factor alone. Fuchs predicted that the U.S. will spend tens of billions of dollars in the coming decades in search of drugs to target specific genes, but little will be learned about nonmedical interactions. "Yet, if I'm certain of anything in health," he said, "it is that the interplay of nonmedical determinants and genes is as important or more so than strictly medical interventions." (Photo by Liza Green, HMS Media Services)
Yerby Recipient Presents IOM Findings on Health Disparities
A month after the Institute of Medicine issued "Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care," a co-vice chair of the IOM committee that developed the report visited HSPH to accept the 9th annual Alonzo Smythe Yerby Award and to comment on the findings in her Yerby Award lecture. In the April 25 talk, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey (above), senior vice president at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said that "the evidence was overwhelming that this is a problem." Committee members documented evidence of disparities in cardiovascular disease, cancer, renal transplantation, HIV/AIDS, and other areas. The main value of the report, Lavizzo-Mourey said, is that "the weight of the Institute of Medicine is now behind the notion that there are disparities." The award is named for the chair of the HSPH Department of Health Services Administration from 1966 to 1975, the first African American to head a department at the School. (Photo by Christina Roache)
Martinos Center Adds Tools to See Brain in Action
The Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital-East, a collaboration of MGH, HMS, and MIT, installed two major pieces of imaging equipment last month that will combine to provide moving pictures of the brain at work. The new 7-tesla magnetic resonance imaging system--one of three in the world--is fine enough to resolve anatomic detail smaller than 100 microns and to localize brain regions associated with functions like memory, language, and reward. The system's magnetic field is so powerful that it requires a 460-ton steel shield to contain it. The typical patient scanner is about 1.5 tesla. The other equipment, a 306-channel magnetoencephalograph (MEG) system, features a whole-head neuromagnetometer (above) and provides for 128-channel EEG recording. It can detect the minute magnetic field given off by activated neurons "with unprecedented temporal resolution," said Bruce Rosen, director of the center and an HMS professor of radiology at MGH. Since the precision of the machine is affected by magnetically "noisy" surroundings, it is encased in a massive triple layer of magnetically shielded iron. Research with the two systems aims at improving treatment for substance abuse and mental illness and, ultimately, preventing these disorders. A grant from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy supported purchase of the MRI system, while the MEG equipment was acquired through a partnership with the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery (MIND) Institute. (Photo by L. Barry Hetherington) |
