Playing With Toys and Saving Lives

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/playing-with-toys-and-saving-lives

Tina Rosenberg

The New York Times

29 January 2014

Text / 1500-3000 Words

Many different people are inventing health devices for resource-poor settings, but some organizations - like M.I.T.’s Little Devices group - are empowering developing communities and increasing access to healthcare by building medical devices that nurses and doctors in very poor settings can adapt themselves — or kits for making their own, often harvesting parts from toys to cleverly rig up medical equipment. It’s part of a major idea shift, one that’s transforming the design of foreign aid.

Scientists search Palau's coral reefs for new anti-cancer drugs

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-24/scientists-search-palaus-coral-reefs-new-anti-cancer-drugs

Ari Daniel Shapiro

Public Radio International (PRI)

24 February 2014

Radio / 5-15 Minutes

Often it is faster and easier to harvest molecules for medical purposes from nature than to make them in a laboratory. A scientist is looking for cancer-fighting molecules in coral and sponges in the tropical Pacific.

Helping New Drugs Out of Research's ‘Valley of Death'

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/helping-new-drugs-out-of-academias-valley-of-death

David Bornstein

The New York Times

2 May 2011

Text / 1500-3000 Words

Despite significant increases in funding and advances in biomedical research, the rates of new treatments and drugs for illnesses that reach the market every year have plummeted. A group called the Myelin Repair Foundation, along with several other foundations, uses an intensely goal-directed and collaborative method to tackle the bottleneck.

How to Beat Dengue and Zika: Add a Microbe to Mosquitoes

http://theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/08/how-to-beat-dengue-and-zika-add-a-microbe-to-mosquitoes/494036

Ed Yong

The Atlantic

8 August 2016

Text / Over 3000 Words

The dengue virus is spread by mosquito and infects 400 million people every year with no vaccine or successful treatment. Scientists have started to inject mosquitoes with a bacteria they have found to stop the virus to prevent and control the spread of dengue. Trials have shown success in Australia, so the project is in the process of scaling to other countries that have dengue more widespread, and new experiments will begin on whether it can effectively stop the spread of the Zika virus.

To Reduce Shootings, Hospitals Vow to Treat the Wounds Doctors Can't Fix

https://www.thetrace.org/2017/05/gun-violence-trauma-treatment-voca-hospitals

Elizabeth Van Brocklin

The Trace

1 May 2017

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Gunshot victims are often treated at hospitals only to be sent back into the community, where 1/3 will end up back in the hospital again. With a new emphasis on prevention and addressing the underlying issues, Ohio is now using federal assistance to create a Trauma Recovery Network that helps with crisis intervention, counseling, and even providing safe emergency housing for gunshot victims.

This All-Amputee Softball Team is Changing the Way We Think About Treating Trauma

http://narrative.ly/this-all-amputee-softball-team-is-changing-the-way-we-think-about-treating-trauma

Mark Oprea

Narratively

31 August 2017

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As the number of veterans with both physical and psychological injuries balloons, this softball team of 11 wounded warriors wards helps one another deal with war trauma and combat isolation by playing a little ball.

Engineering solutions for the future of modern medicine

https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2017/nov/28/engineering-solutions-for-the-future-of-modern-medicine

Lucy Jolin

The Guardian

28 November 2017

Text / Under 800 Words

The healthcare world is highly innovative right now as it tries to make medicine more personalized and harnesses engineering. Hitachi is trying to aggregate data in order to prevent disease and help the healthcare system function better.

As emerging diseases spread from wildlife to humans, can we predict the next big pandemic?

https://ensia.com/features/pandemic

Karl Gruber

Ensia

7 December 2017

Text / 1500-3000 Words

Zoonotic outbreaks are increasingly a threat to human populations and other species as they spatially converge in the same environments. In preparation, the project PREDICT has discovered over 1000 distinct diseases and helped guide the development of infrastructure to help protect against outbreaks, while the Global Virome Project is identifying and sequencing the DNA of viruses.

Women are being failed by medical research—here's how policy can help

https://apolitical.co/solution_article/women-failed-medical-research-heres-policy-can-help

Odette Chalaby

Apolitical

20 November 2017

Text / 800-1500 Words

Medical research studies have failed to address the impact of gender, and some studies even exclude females in “later stage clinical trials.” This discrepancy results from women being underrepresented in the medical science. The Office of Research on Women’s Health has piloted a Policy on Sex as a Biological variable to fund research that is addresses gender differences; the National Institute of Health has initiated a Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers.

Welcome to the world of rhino conservation

http://ensia.com/features/welcome-to-the-wild-world-of-rhino-conservation

Adam Welz

Ensia

18 March 2015

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There are only five northern white rhinos left in existence - all in captivity and unable to breed. Researchers work to identify the most valuable solution to rhino poaching in order to prevent the animal from going extinct.