Staff | 
September 13, 2019
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.
Every 40 hours, a Colorado woman dies from ovarian cancer. It accounts for more than 22,000 deaths worldwide each year. Now, new research done at University of Colorado School of Medicine finds women who use intrauterine devices (IUDs) for birth control may be lowering their risk of ovarian cancer.
Dr. Clifton Carey with the University of Colorado School of Dental Medicine doesn’t think there’s a reason to be alarmed yet. “If fluoride is interrupted or reduced for whatever reason, for only a short amount of time, you can kind of make it back up,” Carey said.
A woman who says physical therapy changed her life is raising money to help others receive the best care. Colleen Rapp was injured on the job four years ago when she slipped and hurt her back. Rapp said her physical therapist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus worked relentlessly to help her recover. Rapp said she was so motivated by her experience that she now raises money for student scholarships in the CU Physical Therapy Program.
Colorado doctors have been prescribing fewer pain pills, and rules regarding such prescriptions have evolved rapidly over the past 5 years, including requirements that doctors check a database that lists all of a patient’s prescriptions, said Robert Valuck, executive director of the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and a doctor at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus. “It’s like turning a giant ocean liner around very quickly,” Valuck said. “It doesn’t turn on a dime.”
