USU News Highlights

Current Highlights:

USU in the News

Trial by (Simulated) Fire.....

...read article
USU 2008 Commencement

DoD Military Health System... read article

USU Graduates to "Care for Those in Harm's Way"

Wilford Hall Surgical Services commander wins award in Journal Writers’ Contest... read article

USU and "Mirror Therapy" in the News

For amputees, an unlikely painkiller: Mirrors
Phantom Pain, a Reflection on the Wounds of War
Mirror Therapy Shows Promise in Amputee Treatment

USU and "Fighting for Life" in the News

'Fighting': Reality Over Rhetoric Washington Post
Friday, March 14, 2008; Page WE35

"Fighting for Life" is an Iraq war documentary that takes viewers on a riveting, often painfully graphic journey through the extraordinary efforts of military physicians, nurses and medical aides who receive their training at the elite Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Unlike such critical films as "Taxi to the Dark Side" and "No End in Sight," Terry Sanders's film isn't interested in polemics. As one woman observes in the film, issues of life and death on the battlefield transcend politics. But that doesn't mean that "Fighting for Life" doesn't have an agenda: It was co-produced by a nonprofit group set up to advocate for the university, which over its 35-year history has occasionally been threatened with elimination from the Pentagon budget.

Still, if "Fighting for Life" is propaganda, it's the best kind, largely avoiding editorialization and instead focusing on simple human drama. Sanders follows his characters with a mixture of clinical frankness and deep sensitivity, finally creating an unsettling yet unforgettable portrait of sacrifice and courage -- from a badly burned Iraqi toddler to a courageous Army specialist who loses her leg in Iraq and begins to reclaim her life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "Fighting for Life" is essential viewing at a time when, five years on, the war's human cost is still too often mired in partisan rhetoric and administration spin. -- Ann Hornaday

Iraq taxi to bright side
'Fighting for Life' Shows Real Blood, And Real Guts
A Savior for Those who Save Lives in War
USU Faculty Members Publish TBI/PTSD Study in New England Journal of Medicine

The Jan. 31, 2008, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) includes a study, "Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in U.S. Soldiers Returning from Iraq," authored by Charles W. Hoge, M.D., USU assistant professor of Psychiatry, and Charles C. Engel, M.D., M.P.H., USU associate professor of Psychiatry, and colleagues from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

This is the first thorough study of concussion (mTBI) among soldiers deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It examines the physical and mental health symptoms - when they return home - of soldiers who suffered a concussion while deployed. The study findings indicate more symptoms of PTSD and depression among soldiers who have suffered a concussion and address the importance of diagnosing these symptoms as being associated with the concussion or as a mental or behavioral health diagnosis.

Roberts DDT Op-Ed Published in New York Times

Donald Roberts, Ph..D., emeritus professor of tropical medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), published a piece on DDT in the August 20 edition of the New York Times. Dr. Roberts is one of the world's leading authorities on the use of DDT against insect-borne diseases like malaria.

According to Roberts' article, his research has shown that DDT has proven to be the most effective pesticide for combating malaria mosquitoes and is being used as an indoor repellent in malaria-plagued regions of Africa where mosquitoes have developed resistance to other chemicals.

The full op-ed piece may be accessed at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/opinion/20roberts.html?_r=2&oref;=slogin&oref;=slogin

USU Bushmaster Exercises Featured on ABC News: http://dynamic.wjla.com/watchvideo.hrb?s=wjla&id;=3106

A recent study headed by Michael J. Daly, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Pathology, titled “Protein Oxidation Implicated as the Primary Determinant of Bacterial Radioresistance,” was published in the March 20, 2007 edition of PLoS Biology and has continued to receive nationwide media attention. The following links highlight some of the publications.

http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2007/115-8/forum.html#what
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/320/2
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/000103/archive_034031.htm
http://cfyn.ifas.ufl.edu/radiation.pdf
http://www.usuhs.mil/pat/deinococcus/index_20.htm
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi;=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050108

Fighting for Life: "Friends of USU" hosts special screening of Fighting for Life.
USU Profiles
Fighting for Life
Friends of USU

Serving Military Medicine: USU Featured in June, 2007 edition of U.S. News & World Report... Read article

AAMC Reporter: July 2007 "The Present and Future of Military Health Education"
S. Ward Casscells, M.D., Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, U.S. Department of Defense... Read article

AAMC Reporter: June 2007 "Greater Knowledge Born from Battlefield Tragedies"
Articles features Col. Geoffrey Ling, M.D., Ph.D, assistant professor of Neurology... Read article

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