Read article – Features an interview with Mariétou Ouayogodé, post-doctoral fellow at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, who discusses how the increased emphasis that the Affordable Care Act and Medicare accountable care organizations (ACOs) placed on prevention is important in reducing the high cost of older patients, especially as the baby boomer generation reached retirement age.

Read article – An opinion piece by Kendall Hoyt, assistant professor of medicine and lecturer at the Thayer School of Engineering, where she discusses how biosecurity and cybersecurity have similar dangers—and similar potential benefits. “In the wrong hands, both types of knowledge can be used to develop a weapon instead of a vaccine or a patch,” says Hoyt. “The genetic tools and exploit software that enable these activities are becoming easier to use and to acquire, prompting security experts to ask one question with growing urgency: How can we protect against misuse without limiting discovery and innovation?”

Read article – Quotes Elliott Fisher, director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and professor of medicine and of community and family medicine, in an article that examines why the federal government should train more doctors. Fisher, who helped develop the accountable care organization model, said residency training “responds to the market.” Hospitals may be incentivized to fund training programs that perform profitable procedures, such as orthopedic surgery, whose doctors are not in short supply, Fisher said. There’s less financial incentive to invest in specialties like primary care, which are experiencing a shortage.

Read article – Quotes H. Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and professor of economics, about cancer survival rates as screening has improved. “Ironically, the more overdiagnosis that a screening test does, the more popular it becomes, because there’s more people who feel they are ‘survivors’ because of screening,” says Welch. “Although it happens to be a cancer that was never going to bother them. They’ll never know that.”

Read article – Lisa Marsch, professor of psychiatry and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, is quoted about a new study that found just a small fraction of adolescents with opioid addiction will receive medications that can help them quit. The difference in medication-assisted treatment rates between adolescents and adults is “really striking and very concerning,” stated Marsch, who was not involved in the study.

Read article – Patricia (Pat) Deegan, adjunct professor of community and family medicine, recently delivered the keynote speech at a seminar hosted by Mental Health Services of Renfrew County, a program administered by the Pembroke Regional Hospital in Ontario, Canada. Deegan’s speech touched upon her own personal experiences recovering from mental illness. “So for me recovery means finding each of our own extraordinary reasons for getting up in the morning. What gets you out of bed every morning? What puts a smile on your face?” said Deegan.

Read article – Geisel students and faculty are quoted in this obituary for Dr. Norman Snow, who passed away on Feb. 9. Snow was a cardiothoracic surgeon born in Burlington, Vermont, whose career spanned over 40 years. After retirement, he joined the faculty at Geisel where he taught anatomy and served on the Admissions Committee.

Read article – Quotes Kathrin Lawlor, community engagement coordinator with the Dartmouth Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program, about how state agencies and researchers from Dartmouth are working to understand and tackle the difficult public health problem of improving drinking water supplies in New Hampshire.

Read article – Quotes Jay Buckey, professor of medicine and adjunct professor of engineering, in an article that examines the everyday health problems that might occur on a trip to Mars, which could span years. NASA has highlighted 23 particular health risks of long-duration space travel that require further work to mitigate before a crewed spacecraft takes off for Mars in the 2030s.

Read article – Continued coverage of comments by H. Gilbert Welch, professor ofmedicine, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about how what looks like additional cancers in people under 50 may simply be cases that are being diagnosed earlier than they would have been. Welch also notes that maybe the apparent rise in colon cancer among young people is real, but it won’t affect them as they age. “The biology of the disease may be different between the young and the old,” says Welch.