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UMMC Pediatrician Hannah Gay named to Time Magazine’s Time 100

April 29, 2013 Monica Land 1

TIME named HIV specialist Dr. Hannah Gay, UMMC associate professor of pediatrics, to the 2013 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. 

In caring for a newborn infected with HIV in 2010, Gay followed an atypical treatment regimen and functionally cured the baby. She and her colleagues, Dr. Deborah Persaud, Johns Hopkins Children’s Center virologist, and University of Massachusetts Medical School immunologist Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, who were also named to the TIME 100 list, presented the child’s case report in March at a scientific meeting in Atlanta. The report is the world’s first to describe an HIV functional cure in an infant.

Gay said she is honored and wants the recognition to highlight the efforts of physicians and scientists worldwide working in HIV prevention, care and research. […]

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UMMC hosts annual meeting of Society of Black Academic Surgeons

April 25, 2013 Monica Land 0

More than 100 people are registered to attend the annual meeting of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons (SBAS), hosted this week, and for the first time, by the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson.

The three-day event, set for Thursday through Saturday, will feature panel discussions and 30 original scientific presentations in classroom R-354 (upper amphitheatre) under the program heading “Advocacy, Access and Comparative Outcomes: Surgical Disparities in Health Care”.

Among the topics on tap are access to surgical care within the minority community, reducing health disparities and trends in obesity and diabetes. […]

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New study suggests link between obesity and kidney disease in black men

April 23, 2013 Monica Land 0

A study in Jackson-area African-Americans found a correlation between weight and chronic kidney disease in obese men but not in the same category of women.

“I kind of had a hunch about that,” said Dr. Marino Bruce, assistant professor of medicine and the study’s principal investigator. “So we designed a study that would pick up those differences if they existed.

“In a nutshell, the findings say we need to pay more attention to weight status in African-American men.” […]

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Hinds Co. workers get relief on insurance cost

October 30, 2012 Monica Land Comments Off on Hinds Co. workers get relief on insurance cost

Hinds County supervisors have voted 3-2 to keep the contract approved earlier this month with United Healthcare and its local representative, Bottrell Insurance.

The new contract lowers employees’ health insurance deductible from a staggering $5,000 to a low of $500 but more than doubles their monthly premiums, from $73 for a single employee to $173. […]

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US: Pharmacy's other drugs may be causing illness

October 29, 2012 Monica Land Comments Off on US: Pharmacy's other drugs may be causing illness

Two more drugs from a specialty pharmacy linked to a meningitis outbreak are now being investigated, U.S. health officials said, as they urged doctors to contact patients who got any kind of injection from the company.

The New England Compounding Center of Framingham, Massachusetts, has been under scrutiny since last month, when a rare fungal form of meningitis was linked to its steroid shots used mostly for back pain. […]

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Dirty shoes? How did US steroids get contaminated?

October 25, 2012 Monica Land 0

Was it some moldy ceiling tiles? The dusty shoes of a careless employee? Or did the contamination ride in on one of the ingredients?

There are lots of ways fungus could have gotten inside the Massachusetts compounding pharmacy whose steroid medication has been linked to a lethal outbreak of a rare fungal form of meningitis. […]

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Miss. says no thanks to Medicaid expansion dollars

October 18, 2012 Monica Land 0

Mississippi has long been one of the sickest and poorest states in America, with some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease and more than 1 in 7 residents without insurance. And so you might think Mississippi would jump at the prospect of billions of federal dollars to expand Medicaid.

You’d be wrong. […]