The University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group has supported a newly released plan for state agencies to address the regional impacts of climate change. The plan, led by the Department of Ecology, includes 10 state agencies’ strategies to address climate impacts.
UW researchers found that people who live within 2 miles of an Amazon last-mile delivery station are exposed to more delivery-related air pollution despite ordering fewer packages.
The New York Climate Exchange, a first-of-its-kind organization working to implement innovative climate solutions in New York City and across the globe, on Nov. 9 announced Stephen Hammer as its founding chief executive officer. The University of Washington is a core member of the exchange.
The University of Washington is a lead partner on a new multi-institution earthquake research center that will study the Cascadia subduction zone and bolster earthquake preparedness in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
Two years after the Pacific Northwest heat dome — the deadliest weather-related disaster in state history — a collaborative effort has drawn up recommendations for how people and groups across the state could prevent future heat-related illness and save lives. The effort involves a report led by the UW Climate Impacts Group and an interactive risk-mapping tool led by the UW Center for Health and the Global Environment,
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has created an app called FeverPhone, which transforms smartphones into thermometers without adding new hardware.
UW will be a core member of a consortium led by Stony Brook University that will build and operate The New York Climate Exchange – a carbon-neutral international hub focused on climate action and adaptation
The UW Climate Impacts Group created an interactive tool that lets state agencies and local governments see what climate scientists project for their county and what they might want to consider when developing their districts’ comprehensive plans through 2100.
The Hans Rosling Center for Population Health at the University of Washington has achieved LEED Platinum Certification, the highest possible rating, reflecting the university’s commitment to sustainable building practices.
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington has created a new hearing screening system that uses a smartphone and earbuds.
A team led by researchers at the University of Washington compared three potential strategies for reducing fine particulate matter pollution disparities across the contiguous U.S.
University of Washington Professor Joan Sanders and her team are creating a new type of prosthetic leg: one that automatically adjusts its fit throughout the day. Their latest prototype detects in real time how well the prosthesis socket and amputation site are fitting and responds by automatically changing the size of the socket, without the need for adjustments to padding or user action.
Researchers dropped technology developed at the University of Washington off the coast of Florida this week to measure ocean waves in the path of Hurricane Ian. The test is one part of a broad effort to improve forecasts for these fast-moving and deadly systems.
Heat-related deaths occur across Washington state, even in regions with typically milder climates. This is the most extensive study yet of heat-related mortality in Washington state, and the first to look beyond the major population to and include rural areas. Researchers used statistical methods to uncover “hidden” deaths that may have listed something else, like illness or a chronic disease, as the primary cause.
As King County seeks to reach its goal of “zero youth detention” — ultimately eliminating the practice of juvenile detention in the county —University of Washington researchers are working to help address major systemic challenges in how young people engage with health care. With a strategic plan to close the juvenile detention center by 2025, King County needs an increasingly robust system to ensure youth are getting consistent and accessible services, including health care. This is especially true upon…
When schools closed during the first year of the pandemic, an immediate and potentially devastating problem surfaced: How would millions of children in struggling families get the school meals many of them depended on? The U.S. Congress responded by authorizing the Department of Agriculture to roll out two major programs. It launched the “grab and go school meals,” which helped schools provide prepared meals for off-site consumption and distributed funding for the state-operated Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program, which gave…
A new study projects the number of days with “dangerous” and “extremely dangerous” mixtures of heat and humidity by the end of this century. Even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, results show that deadly heat waves will become much more common in the mid-latitudes, and many tropical regions will experience “dangerous” heat for about half the year.
New research by scientists at the University of Washington, the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization and the University of Cologne indicates that carefully designed cocktails of broadly neutralizing antibodies could help treat HIV while minimizing the risk of the virus evolving to “escape” treatment.
Opioid use disorder is an addiction crisis in the United States that has become increasingly lethal during the COVID-19 pandemic. To preserve access to life-saving treatment during the pandemic, federal drug agencies loosened requirements on physicians for treating these patients, including moving patient evaluations away from in-person exams to telemedicine. This federal policy change focused primarily on buprenorphine, a highly effective treatment for opioid use disorder and one that is much less onerous and stigmatizing than methadone, the other most…
A team of researchers at the UW and UC Berkeley has found that housing discrimination practices dating from the 1930s still drive air pollution disparities in hundreds of American cities today.
Farmers struggling to adapt to rising temperatures in tropical regions can unleash the benefits of natural cooling, alongside a host of other wins, simply by dotting more trees across their pasturelands. For the first time, a study led by the University of Washington puts tangible numbers to the cooling effects of this practice.
New research from an interdisciplinary team at the University of Washington, Duke University and The Nature Conservancy shows how local temperature increases in the tropics – compounded by accelerating deforestation – may already be jeopardizing the well-being and productivity of outdoor workers.
UW researchers investigated disparities in exposure to six major air pollutants in 1990, 2000 and 2010 by comparing models of air pollution levels to census data. While overall pollutant concentrations have decreased since 1990, people of color are still more likely to be exposed to all six pollutants than white people, regardless of income level, across the continental United States.
A team led by the UW developed a chatbot that could ask emergency department visitors about social needs, including housing, food, access to medical care and physical safety.
To better identify and prevent future pandemics, the University of Washington has become a partner in a five-year global, collaborative agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The newly launched Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens – Viral Zoonoses, or DEEP VZN project, has approximately $125 million in anticipated funding and will be led by Washington State University. The effort will build scientific capacity in partner countries to safely detect and characterize viruses which have the potential to spill…
New research by the University of Washington shows that states eased pandemic restrictions, such as gathering limits and business closures, based on politics as much as COVID-19 death rates or case counts.
For researchers around the world working to understand and treat Alzheimer’s and eventually find a cure, data from clinical exams of patients suffering from this complex neurodegenerative disease needs to be standardized and accessible. Since 1999, that’s what the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC), housed in the UW School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology, has been doing. With funding from the NIH’s National Institute on Aging, the UW center began collecting data from another set of centers housed in…
University of Washington Associate Professor Wendy Barrington will be the featured speaker at the university’s 38th annual New Student Convocation. Barrington has joint appointments in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing in the School of Nursing and the departments of Epidemiology and of Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health.
The new Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub, led by Oregon State University and the University of Washington, will study coastal hazards and community resilience. The National Science Foundation awarded $18.9 million for the hub over five years.
In a new series on increasingly common extreme heat waves and their impact on human health published Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet, a University of Washington climate change and health expert joined more than a dozen international experts to warn that we better prepare. “The preventable heat stress and deaths during this summer’s heat waves highlight the importance of developing a regional heat action plan. A heat wave early warning and response plan that includes all relevant services,…
Public health researchers have learned a lot about how the pandemic affected workers and exacerbated existing health disparities that exist in many communities. However, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the experience of workers deemed essential in the food industry and who were at higher risk of contracting COVID-19, such those working in grocery stores, restaurants, delivery and factories. To find out how food workers were or were not protected and how they can be better protected going…
A specific police action, an arrest or a shooting, has an immediate and direct effect on the individuals involved, but how far and wide do the reverberations of that action spread through the community? What are the health consequences for a specific, though not necessarily geographically defined, population? The authors of a new UW-led study looking into these questions write that because law enforcement directly interacts with a large number of people, “policing may be a conspicuous yet not-well understood…
This summer a UW mobile health outreach van will hit the road, bringing some basic health care services to people without housing who might have a hard time getting to a doctor’s office.
UW School of Nursing Dean Azita Emami’s commitment to fighting for those underserved by the health care system has deep roots in her identity. Born in Iran, she has been shaped by the experience of being an “insider–outsider.”
An analysis of Washington state Department of Health data — published after peer review March 24 — has found that people under 40 years old have continued to become infected by the coronavirus at increasing rates even as the incidence of infection among older populations declines. The publication was available previously in preprint form on medRxiv. The study led by Judith Malmgren, affiliated epidemiologist in the UW School of Public Health, postulates that the increased spread of the virus among…
A year ago, seemingly overnight, streets emptied, shops boarded up, grocery shelves were cleared, schools closed and the University of Washington led universities nationwide in moving all instruction online. Nearly all of us disappeared inside, stunned and staring out at a world suddenly paralyzed by something we’d only seen in movies or read about in books: a global pandemic. Then came the questions: How long will the virus keep us inside and shut down? What will happen to the people who…
Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine that they “do not believe that ignoring race will reduce health disparities” but rather that “such an approach is a form of naive ‘color blindness’ that is more likely to perpetuate and potentially exacerbate disparities,” five Black geneticists set out to explain the pitfalls of leaving race out of medicine. Importantly, the geneticists explain, while it is imperative to be considered now in many settings, race is an imperfect stepping stone toward…
Systemic racism has for generations undermined the health of individuals and communities across America, a public health crisis that has made the pandemic even more deadly and destructive for people of color. Recognizing that nurses play a central role in and hold major responsibility for the health of individuals and communities hit hard by historic racial inequity, the University of Washington School of Nursing is launching the Center for Antiracism in Nursing. “There is much work to do to become…
Current advice from the American Dental Association tells you that if your gums bleed, make sure you are brushing and flossing twice a day because it could be a sign of gingivitis, an early stage of periodontal disease. And that might be true. So if you are concerned, see your dentist. However, a new University of Washington study suggests you should also check your intake of vitamin C. “When you see your gums bleed, the first thing you should think…
At nearly 7 feet tall, “The Seated IV” first graced the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s facade in September 2019 as part of a commission titled The NewOnes, will free Us. Four “Seated” sculptures by Wangechi Mutu were the first works to take up the positions on The Met’s facade since it was completed in 1902. On Monday, Jan. 25, one of the four storied bronze sculptures was installed at the north side of the new Hans Rosling Center for Population Health…