In the News

Fall Edition 2017

(May 2012) Stephen Daniels, MD, chair of the Department of Pediatrics, was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and other publications discussing government recommendations that all children be tested for high cholesterol before they reach puberty. Daniels, a professor with the medical school and a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, chaired the panel that wrote the new guidelines.

Colorado Public Radio interviewed John Moyer, MD, about the tragic loss of his son, Andy, and the remarkable events that followed. The Moyers donated Andy’s organs and over the years have become friends with several of the recipients. Moyer talks in the radio interview about the power of these  vents, and how he uses that in teaching our students as a clinical faculty member. The radio interview was an expanded version of a story that ran in CU Medicine Today a year ago. You can see that article and listen to the interview online.

Colorado Public Radio (CPR) also featured Marion Downs, distinguished professor emerita and a pioneer in testing children’s hearing. At 97, she gave an energetic and wonderful interview. CPR got the idea after reading about her in the fall issue of CU Medicine Today in an article that began, “Hundreds of thousands of people are living normal, productive lives thanks to Downs’ firm belief and dogged determination that children should be tested for hearing loss at birth so they can begin to learn anguage early, preventing communication and cognitive problems as adults. Once that was a radical notion. Now nearly all infants in the United States are hearing tested at birth, a policy initiated by Downs, who became CU School of Medicine’s first director of audiology in 1959.”

Before walking, Andrew Freeman, MD, talks about health.

In an article on exercise and weight loss, The New York Times last November cited the work of University of Colorado medical school researchers. Edward Melanson, PhD, an associate professor in the Division of  Endocrinology, found that people who exercised moderately one day did not burn extra calories the next—the “afterburn” effect. The Times also wrote about Andrew Freeman, MD, a medical school  assistant professor and National Jewish Health cardiologist who founded a group called Walk With a Doc, which encourages people to get out and “stroll the city with their physicians.”

Marion Sills, MD, showed that overcrowded emergency departments fail to deliver efficient and adequate pain medication to children suffering long-bone fractures. The story was picked up around the planet and was carried in nearly 8,000 publications and websites. Sills, associate professor of pediatrics at the CU School of Medicine, and her colleagues focused on fractures of kids’ arms and legs because they are common and painful. The study was  published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine.

In March, The New York Times wrote about a blog entry posted by Daniel Matlock, MD, in which he detailed an incident that had rattled him. Matlock, an assistant professor in the CU medical school and a geriatrician who specializes in palliative care, had been called in to consult when a woman in her 70s arrived at a hospital after a major stroke. She had a notarized advance directive rejecting life support, or artificial nutrition. Another doctor ordered intravenous fluids. Matlock objected. The doctor took Matlock on in language that, Matlock says, evoked Nazi Germany. In an online report, The Times explores the incident under the headline, “Among Doctors, Fierce Reluctance to Let Go.” Colorado Public Radio interviewed Matlock in April.

Frank Accurso, MD, a CU medical school pediatrics professor who practices at Children’s Hospital Colorado, was honored by the Clinical Research Forum for his work in pioneering a genetically based treatment for cystic fibrosis (CF). The clinical trial Accurso led resulted in federal approval of the new treatment in January. Already, dozens of children are being treated with the drug Kalydeco in Colorado. The clinical trial showed the new treatment helps about 4 percent of CF patients by targeting the genetic mutation. The New England Journal of Medicine published the research results. Accurso hopes as many as 90 percent of CF patients eventually will benefit. He was one of 10 recipients nationally of the Forum’s Clinical Research Achievement Awards, which received widespread news coverage. 

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