Read article – Cites comments by Elizabeth Talbot, associate professor of medicine, who participated in a roundtable discussion on Friday with some of the state’s top health experts to discuss the Zika virus and assess the level of risk to New Hampshire residents. Talbot traveled to West Africa in late 2014 to help protect humanitarian workers battling the Ebola epidemic, and said like Ebola, fears of the Zika virus affect the overall sense of safety even in areas where the disease is not present.

Read article – Lisa Schwartz, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, is quoted about her work with Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs on investigating the benefits and harms of sleeping pills. “But those benefits aren’t as great as many people assume, and the drugs have important harms,” says Schwartz.

Read article – An opinion piece by Norman Paradis, professor of medicine, about the unraveling of the life sciences company Theranos, and how the widely acclaimed biomedical innovator has fallen so far, so fast. (Also picked up by Scientific American.)

Read article – Ellen Meara, professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, is quoted about a report recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, that found that white women are dying at a slightly younger age than they used to, and that the average life expectancy for non-Hispanic black men increased by about a half year. “There are people for whom life expectancy is falling—and that’s happening at a time where everywhere else and for every other group we’re seeing all these amazing gains in survival,” Meara says.

Read more – Quotes Timothy Gardner, associate professor of medicine, about how developing exocrine pancreatic insufficiency isn’t a given after surgery, and the real key is how much of your pancreas has been removed. “It’s a volume issue,” says Gardner. “The less pancreas you have, the less ability you have to make enzymes.”

Read article – Quotes Sandra Wong, chair and professor of surgery and professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, who is the lead author of a recent study that found that the degree of usage of PET scans for follow-up care for U.S. patients with lung and esophageal cancer appears to have no impact on survival.

Read article – Quotes Steve Woloshin, professor of medicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and co-author of a recent study which found that when the FDA designates a drug as a “breakthrough” therapy, 77 percent of physicians think it means there is “high-quality evidence” that the drug is more effective than current treatments.

Listen to story – As a guest on NHPR’s “The Exchange,” Gilbert Fanciullo, professor of anesthesiology, discusses how state lawmakers, doctors, and others in the medical profession have been hammering out new guidelines for prescribing opioids to tackle the issue of over-use and alleviate the addiction crisis.

Read article – Patricia Deegan, adjunct professor of community and family medicine, recently developed the CommonGround software program that West Central, a mental health clinic in Lebanon, began using earlier this year to give a voice to patients in determining their treatment during short, routine appointments. Deegan said that she became interested in Dartmouth because of the institution’s important role in the promotion of “shared decision making” between the doctor and the patient. Deegan is working with Greg McHugo, professor of psychiatry, and others on a new study that will compare how CommonGround and another, more top-down approach affect medication visits and improve patient involvement in decision-making.