Dear freshmen, First and foremost, congrats on making it through your first semester, and to those of you who are in Baltimore, welcome to campus! School-imposed quarantine, illegal parties and an otherwise confusing beginning to this semester aside, I know many of you guys are hoping to create a normal-ish experience for yourselves this semester.
When Dr. Daniela Pimentel Maldonado, a first-year neuroimmunology fellow at the School of Medicine, began her career in neurological research, clinical trials prioritizing the recruitment of underrepresented individuals in cognitive research were few and far between.
Last fall, A Woman’s Journey, the women's health program at the School of Medicine, surveyed more than 25,000 adults to identify the three COVID-19-related concerns that most interested U.S. citizens.
When not researching COVID-19, Hopkins Economics Professor Nick Papageorge investigates factors surrounding adherence to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment regimens. For those living with HIV, taking prescribed medications has not only a personal health benefit but a public health benefit, as it decreases the likelihood of transmitting the disease.
The Hopkins Center for Global Health hosted its new virtual seminar series on Feb. 3 with the first of a two-part seminar titled “National Pandemic Pulse: Findings from a U.S. Representative Survey in December 2020.” National Pandemic Pulse is part of an initiative by the University’s Inequities in COVID-19 project tasked to monitor the effects of the pandemic on low-income and minority groups in the United States.
The widespread effects of the pandemic that first impacted the U.S. over a year ago are still being studied, and scientists are constantly unearthing revelations about how it has impacted various populations all across the country.
Last Friday, Paul Fuchs gave a lecture as a part of the Hopkins at Home series titled “How the Ear Hears, and What We Can Do About It.” Fuchs is a David M. Rubenstein Research Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the School of Medicine. His laboratory researches the structure and function of the inner ear.
Jan. 22 marked one year since the launch of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (CRC). Upon its launch, the website became a preferred source for the general public and news media over the world, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
On Jan. 28 the Center for the Law and the Public’s Health and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute hosted a discussion on “Climate Change, Public Health, and the U.S. Supreme Court.” Guest speakers included the Baltimore Chief of the Affirmative Litigation Division Sara Gross, University of Maryland Environmental Law Professor Robert Percival and University of Maryland Public Health Professor Amir Sapkota.
On Jan. 19, the Equal Access in Science & Medicine seminar committee at the Hopkins Disability Health Research Center hosted Dr. Chad Ruffin as a speaker for their monthly lecture series.
Team Polair, a Hopkins team of 25 undergraduate Biomedical Engineering students, took runner-up in the XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge, winning $250,000 for the design of a clear, adaptable face mask. The four-month international contest, sponsored by California nonprofit organization XPRIZE, challenged participants to design face masks that are user-friendly and safe for the environment.
In September of 2018, National Public Radio (NPR) published a story about a Hopkins team of researchers studying barn owls in an attempt to understand why people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder struggled to focus.
The News-Letter published “A closer look at U.S. deaths due to COVID-19” on Nov. 22. The article was written to recap a webinar held on Nov. 13, where Genevieve Briand, the assistant director for the Master’s in Applied Economics program at Hopkins, presented data she had downloaded from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and plotted independently. The analysis presented in the webinar was not a published, peer-reviewed study; it contradicted data published by Hopkins, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC.
As the year wraps up, I think most of us would agree that 2020 was a year of many things: quarantine, masks, social injustice, wildfires, political polarity, cynicism, sadness. It is also the year that you can probably name more than two sitting governors because the media actually cares about them now.
In late January, Hopkins launched its COVID-19 Dashboard, a project created by Civil and Systems Engineering professor Lauren Gardner and her graduate student, Ensheng Dong. This tool allows the public to visualize and track the spread of COVID-19.
Team Polair, a Hopkins team of 24 Biomedical Engineering (BME) undergraduates, has developed a clear, adaptable face mask for the XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge. The team is among five finalists in the global competition.
Hopkins alum Vijay Ramasamy was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship on Nov. 21 and was one of 32 students to become part of the American Rhodes Scholar Class of 2020.
Last week, it was reported that cyberattacks on U.S. hospitals and health systems have increased this year. Clinical trials for the COVID-19 vaccine have been disrupted and hospitals’ access to patient records have been blocked as a part of ransomware attacks.
Environmental equity is a pressing issue in America. Many low-income areas and communities of color face the brunt of pollution, as their neighborhoods are often the designated locations of factories, refineries and incinerators.
Editor’s Note: After The News-Letter published this article on Nov. 22, it was brought to our attention that our coverage of Genevieve Briand’s presentation “COVID-19 Deaths: A Look at U.S. Data” has been used to support dangerous inaccuracies that minimize the impact of the pandemic.
