UAB Magazine Online Features
Messages with an Edge
Public Health Contest Seeks Powerful PSAs
By Caperton Gillett
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Erin Wright's winning poster "Acid Rain" from KoronisFest 2010. Click on the image to see a larger version. |
According to myth, Koronis was a Greek princess, consort to the god Apollo and mother of Asclepius, god of medicine, who begat Hygeia, goddess of hygiene. “It occurred to me—she is the grandmother of public health,” says UAB neurologist Steve Rudd, M.D., M.P.H. Rudd chose Koronis as the namesake for his own brainchild: a community competition focused on spreading the word about public health.
The inaugural KoronisFest, held in April 2010, offered awards for the best public service announcements (PSA) in three categories: live action, animation, and posters. The competition attracted submissions from UAB students and faculty, as well as filmmakers and artists in the larger Birmingham community. Entries covered topics from pollution to organ donation, with presentation ranging from the compelling to the entertaining to the bizarre. But they shared one common thread, says School of Public Health dean Max Michael, M.D.: “They’re funky.”
Inspiration for the competition came largely from a course called Narrative Public Health, team-taught by Rudd and Michael, which explores techniques to communicate public health messages to different audiences. The duo brought in Michele Forman, M.A., documentary filmmaker and ethnographic filmmaking instructor at UAB, to teach a session on the rudiments of film production for PSAs. Students responded enthusiastically, and many of their projects became entries in KoronisFest.
Keeping the Beat
UAB Cardiologists Seek and Destroy Arrhythmias
By Tara Hulen
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UAB specialists are focused on correcting heart arrhythmias as well as on preventing the most dangerous heart rhythm issues. |
When the heart skips a beat, it may not be love. A little too much coffee, a just-missed fender bender, or a strange sound in the middle of the night can all cause a heart to flutter, race, and pound. But when those sensations are frequent, last more than a few seconds, or cause dizziness, fatigue, or fainting, it’s time to see an expert to find out why.
Cardiac arrhythmias—the term for abnormal heart rhythms—affect more than 14 million Americans, says Tom McElderry, M.D., a cardiologist in the electrophysiology program at the UAB Heart and Vascular Center.
Arrhythmias, in simple terms, are caused by faulty wiring. They occur when the electrical pathways that make each part of the heart beat in sequence develop short circuits or other irregularities, which can make the heart inefficient and reduce the amount of blood it pumps through the rest of the body.
The consequences are often relatively benign. “For most people who have not had heart attacks in the past and don’t have cardiomyopathy or a weak heart, palpitations are typically only a nuisance,” McElderry says. People with mild or infrequent symptoms might simply need to avoid caffeine, certain cold medicines, and similar triggers. Or they may benefit from starting medications such as beta blockers or calcium channel blockers.
But some heart rhythms—including atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia—can signal a greatly increased risk of stroke, heart failure, and death, McElderry says. At the Heart and Vascular Center, electrophysiologists specialize in finding and fixing the source of the trouble. Meanwhile, in UAB’s Cardiac Rhythm Management Laboratory (CRML), researchers are searching for better ways to treat and prevent the most dangerous heart rhythm issues—and to increase our understanding of what causes the problems in the first place.
See how UAB electrophysiologists repaired one patient's heart in this video. Story continues below video
Immortal Balance
Weighing Rights and Responsibilities in Medical Research
By Charles Buchanan
Henrietta Lacks was not a doctor. She was a poor African-American tobacco farmer and housewife from Virginia. But she has helped heal untold numbers of people around the world. And she is playing a crucial role in the development of new treatments for everything from cancer and AIDS to genetic diseases.
Before Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, scientists at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University took some of her tumor cells and cultured them; to their surprise, those cells kept growing and dividing, becoming the world’s first immortal cell line, known as “HeLa.” They’re still growing today in laboratories around the world—including UAB—and nearly every biomedical scientist has worked with them. Researchers have swapped HeLa genes, pelted them with radiation and viruses, and launched them into space—studies that have led to the development of common medicines and major breakthroughs including the polio vaccine, in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping.
Lacks’s cells are one of the most important tools in biomedical science, but she never knew they were taken from her. The cells were removed without her consent, and her family wasn’t told about them for two decades. In the meantime, HeLa became part of a multimillion-dollar industry, yet none of her descendants received any profits; many still can’t afford health insurance. Lacks’s name and medical records also were released without permission, adding to the family’s confusion and mistrust.
American Ambassadors
Translating U.S. Culture for International Students
By Susannah Felts
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UAB's International Mentoring Program pairs international students such as Hwasoon Kim and Michael Gottwald (left) with student mentors such as Chinazor Iwuaba and Nathan Hadley (right). |
Every August, more than 200 international students arrive on UAB’s campus from all corners of the globe. Numerous challenges and adventures await them, from mastering Birmingham’s bus system to the first bites of Southern-style barbecue. But each of these students can tap into an experienced local guide as he or she becomes acclimated to a new culture: a volunteer from UAB’s International Mentoring Program.
Founded in 1997 and run as a joint initiative of Student Life and International Scholar and Student Services, the program accepts 14 students to be trained as mentors each fall. It was designed in response to a clear need, explains director Lura Foreman: An international student who was unhappy at UAB decided to leave the university, and in doing so wrote a letter suggesting that a mentoring program might help future students have a better experience.
