Cell Biology
Broken Hearts May
Mend After All
Neuroscience
Breathing Restored After Severe Spinal-cord Injury
Immunology
Insulin Prods Development of Type 1 Diabetes
Publishing
Publishing Partnership Issues First Six Consumer Health Books
Overweight Undermines Health
Gene Network Discovered Supporting Cell Migration
Voracious Kudzu Drains Thirst for Alcohol
Proceedings of the HMS
Faculty Council
HMS and Children’s Announce New Endowed Chairs
Three HMS Professors Elected to NAS
New Appointments to Full Professor
New Members Join Academy of Arts and Sciences
Gawande to Speak on Class Day
In Memoriam
Unexpected Tragedy in a Little
Girl’s Expected Death
Publishing Partnership Issues First Six Consumer Health Books
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“For 30 years, Harvard Medical School has included education of the public as part of its educational mission. Our faculty have an extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge about maintaining good health and treating disease, and many are skilled at conveying their knowledge to a lay audience. HMS is reaching, literally, millions of people with high-quality health information,” said Anthony Komaroff, editor in chief of Harvard Health Publications and an HMS professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He invited members of the faculty interested in writing consumer health books to send brief descriptions of their ideas to publishing director Ed Coburn.
Among the first books to be published, Living Through Breast Cancer by Carolyn Kaelin, director of the Comprehensive Breast Health Center and HMS assistant professor of surgery at BWH, draws on the author’s experience both as a breast cancer surgeon and a breast cancer patient. Kaelin gives advice on obtaining the best diagnosis and treatment options, self-esteem issues, and other challenges faced by breast cancer patients.
Through his work in diabetes, David M. Nathan, director of the Diabetes Center and an HMS professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, has demonstrated that changes in lifestyle can go a long way toward preventing and treating the disease. In Beating Diabetes, he and the chief dietitian at the center, Linda Delahanty, an HMS instructor in medicine at MGH, outline a program of exercise and diet to sharply improve glucose tolerance and prospects for long-term health.
High cholesterol, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and ways to manage it are the subject of Mason Freeman’s Lowering Your Cholesterol. Freeman is chief of the Lipid Metabolism Unit at MGH and an HMS associate professor of medicine at the hospital.
Research on pain associated with disease by Ralph Metson and colleagues revealed that people with chronic sinusitis reported higher levels of pain than those with heart disease, lower back problems, and other conditions of the study subjects. These and other findings by Metson, an HMS clinical professor of otology and laryngology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, are the basis of the book Healing Your Sinuses, which addresses quality of life, new treatment techniques, and computer-enhanced sinus surgery.
Focusing on another quality of life issue, loss of memory, Aaron Nelson, HMS assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at BWH, describes what the latest research and practice teaches about preventing memory loss in his book, Achieving Optimal Memory.
In Eat, Play, and Be Healthy, W. Allan Walker, director of the HMS Division of Nutrition and the Conrad Taff professor of pediatrics at MGH, guides parents in forming healthy eating habits for their children through the stages of growth from birth to 8 years old.
These HMS consumer health books are available at bookstores and online booksellers.