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Hear Saketh Guntupalli talk about his new book, Sex and Cancer: Intimacy, Romance and Love After Diagnosis and Treatment. The seeds of this work were planted at Spotlight Health two years ago, when Guntupalli participated in a conversation about flibanserin, then a newly approved drug nicknamed “Viagra for women.” A gynecologic oncologist, Guntupalli realized the drug migh...
Cancer is on the rise in Africa, with the World Health Organization predicting that by 2020, it will take the lives of one million people a year across the continent. The most common forms of the disease in Africa -- breast, cervical and prostate cancers -- are also the most treatable, but drugs have been in scarce supply, and the price of treatment remains a huge obstacle...
Whether the headlines describe a “cancer moonshot” or a “war on cancer,” they capture a yearning and determination to eliminate the scourge of malignancy. Artificial intelligence, huge genomic data sets, and expanded access to clinical trials are pushing forward knowledge about the package of diseases we call cancer. As the treatment arsenal expands, it highlights both the...
In 2021—five decades after President Richard Nixon declared a War on Cancer—some 1.9 million new cancer cases were diagnosed and the scourge killed more than 600,000 Americans. Yet we have made extraordinary progress on the battlefront in the same time frame. Childhood leukemia can often be cured, death rates for colorectal, cervical, and prostate cancer have fallen by hal...
When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed legislation giving birth to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1937, he brought a decade of political wrangling to a close and created the world's foremost cancer research and training infrastructure. Eighty years later, with an annual budget of some $5 billion, NCI remains at the forefront of investigations into cancer biology and cli...
Advances, limitations, and potential at the cutting-edge of cancer care.
In some communities, the laundromat has become a place to get a mammogram, a blood test, or a skin cancer screening. Mental health counseling is being offered at churches, health insurance sign-ups are taking place in libraries and parks, and barbers are raising awareness of hypertension and the risk of colorectal cancer as they snip and shave. When the doctor’s office is...
Music exists in every human culture and drives a multibillion-dollar industry, and yet the vast majority of people who enjoy music do instinctively, without any formal training. So where does music come from, and what is is good for? Drawing from studies in neuroscience, psychology, clinical science, and data science, Dr. Psyche Loui will discuss why we feel emotions in re...
Technology is transforming how we provide medical care, improve diagnostics, share information, and extend the reach of public health. From disposable syringes that deliver a calibrated dose of medicine before self-destructing to 3-D printers that recreate the facial structures of combat-injured veterans, seemingly intractable problems are being met with cutting-edge solut...
Virtual Presentation: Imagine a doctor being able to watch, in real time, as white blood cells attack cancer cells in a patient, or seeing exactly how the leukocytes replicate as they fight off the cancer. It would fundamentally change how they understand and treat disease. Today, the technologies that would enable this kind of understanding do not exist—nor do the academi...
The Affordable Care Act became law because five congressional leaders made it happen. These committee chairs — two from the US Senate, three from the House of Representatives — share the stage to talk about the passage, impact, and future of the ACA. As the law’s key architects, all five bring insider knowledge of the maneuvering, negotiation, and compromise that led to it...
Having both survived cancer and lost loved ones to the disease, tennis legend Chris Evert and media icon Katie Couric are on a mission to educate others about screenings and early detection. Oncologist Lisa Newman joins the conversation to shed light on the latest breakthroughs in fighting the disease dubbed the Emperor of All Maladies.
When it comes to biomedical research, Earth’s gravity can be an obstacle, making it harder to program stem cells into viable organs, obscuring the crystalline structure of proteins, and interfering with cellular communication channels. The possibility of using space to advance science is no longer an exercise in imagination as biotech start-ups begin sending experiments in...
Williams, Jordan, James, Brady. They’re among a growing class of the superstar athletes delivering career-best performances well past what's been considered peak age for their sports. As this phenomenon becomes more common, it begs the questions how and why now? How are experience and maturity winning out over inevitable, natural physical decline? Athletes in the 30s and 4...
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) haunts some 300,000 veterans who have returned from Afghanistan or Iraq. Drugs and psychotherapy provide only partial relief. Increasingly, vets are turning to other techniques, including meditation, yoga and breathwork, to heal their trauma, sense of isolation, and anger, and to reclaim their lives. Researchers have shown that Sudarsh...
Organs are in desperately short supply. In the US alone, more than 124,000 people are on transplant waiting lists, and as many as 30 Americans die every day waiting for a donated organ. Trafficking in human body parts and transplant tourism are big business around the world, and “body bazaars” that bring together wealthy organ buyers and impoverished organ sellers are thri...
Best known to the public as the Trump Administration’s White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, physician Deborah Birx is a clinical immunologist who has also served as US Global AIDS coordinator and a colonel in the US Army. Challenged to speak the truth about COVID-19, she balanced candor and political pragmatism to get out accurate information. Her new book, Sile...
This interactive session led by Ideo.org recognizes that little is more personal than the health of our minds and bodies and that deciding to seek out healthcare is to acknowledge vulnerability. Our cultural backgrounds and intersecting identities, often combined with prevailing stigma or previous experience with insensitive systems, complicates the ability to trust those...
Kids can be a mystery to their parents even at the best of times. But when they are dealing with serious illness, figuring out what they most care about, both physically and emotionally, becomes that much harder. Now, a panel of kids offers some answers. Listen to the voices of young people who have survived cancer and heart disease, lost limbs, or are facing a lifetime...
Advances in women’s health have led to breakthroughs in breast cancer imaging, hormone therapy, and longer lives for many women. Yet much of medical research does not take into account gender differences, and women-specific health needs are often not addressed. Health outcomes for black women, in particular, fall far behind those of white women, and maternal mortality rate...