When an academic medical campus attracts the best minds in science and unleashes them on the biggest challenges in health care, barriers simply don’t stand a chance.
In many ways, the current chapter of David Bruton, Jr.’s, life runs counter to his first career as a strong safety and Super Bowl 50 winner in the National Football League.
Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease that affects 15,000 Coloradans. From feeling fatigued, depressed and anxious, to experiencing uncontrollable muscle spasms and tremors, symptoms can interrupt every aspect of daily life. Maureen Leehey, MD, has worked with Parkinson’s patients for over 30 years and is looking to the booming world of cannabis for a potential treatment.
Chris Casey | 
October 18, 2019
Bonnie Doran spent several years researching and writing “Dark Biology,” a science-fiction thriller that blends medicine, astronautics, family dysfunction and faith.
Aurora’s giant employers: Aurora’s aspirations are not lost on Don Elliman, chancellor of CU’s Anschutz Medical Campus. The veteran magazine publisher and former state official said he recognizes that Aurora for years “bristled at being Denver’s poor neighbor." "And it’s still got plenty of issues,” he said. “We happen to be situated smack in the middle of three of the poorest zip codes in the state of Colorado, and we’re very mindful of that fact. We don’t want to be a house on the hill.” Elliman said CU Anschutz has a $2.4 billion annual budget and 2.1 million outpatient visits on campus each year, and it’s still growing on its 578-acre campus. It also has programs that hire people from surrounding neighborhoods and a community clinic provides free care.
There is still no clear cause for a mysterious paralytic condition that has been striking U.S. children over the past five years, government health officials report. The CDC researchers found more microbes when they looked at mucus and stool samples, but there was no clear single cause. "I think it's fair to say it's still the leading suspect in the biennial surges we're seeing," said Dr. Samuel Dominguez of Children's Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Aurora. Dominguez wrote an editorial published with the study.
Due to an ongoing, nationwide shortage of Shingrix, a shingles vaccine, long waits for the vaccine are possible at Colorado pharmacies. “There could be long waiting lists. When I checked with a particular pharmacy they said they had a wait list of about 200 people, and then they decided to just disband the wait list, and just do first come first served,” said Sunny Linnebur with the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy. Linnebur recommends calling around to different pharmacies to check availability. The UCHealth pharmacy at University of Colorado Hospital, for instance, did have Shingrix in stock.
Producing doctors for the vast swaths of rural America needs to be more of a priority at every step in the education pipeline, experts said. Many academic centers sell students on the party line that they’ll be overworked, underappreciated and underpaid, according to Dr. Mark Deutchman, director of the University of Colorado School of Medicine's rural program. “They take people who are interested in primary care or rural and beat it out of them throughout their training,” he said.
