Health Research

Exercising in the heat isn’t just miserable. It can even be deadly. Samantha Scarneo-Miller—a researcher with the WVU School of Medicine—and her colleagues at the University of Connecticut investigated the policies that high schools across the country use to protect their student-athletes from the most common safety threats, including heat stroke. The team also traveled from state to state to meet with policymakers and promote life-saving policies. The National Football League and the National Athletic Trainers Association provided $1.4 million for their effort.

As West Virginia University kicks off a new academic year amid a recent spike in COVID-19 cases across the country, public health researchers at both WVU and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now have a better understanding of university students’ knowledge and perceptions of mask-wearing.

As universities reopen this fall, research conducted at West Virginia University suggests campus recreation usage by students can lead to greater retention and overall academic achievement.

Ajay Aluri, founding director of the Hospitality Innovation and Technology Lab at WVU, has developed a copper-infused mask to help protect employees on the frontlines of customer service.

With a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Samantha Minc, M.D., vascular surgeon and researcher at the WVU Heart and Vascular Institute, is launching a pilot program to prevent amputations in West Virginia. Given that West Virginians face a disproportionate number of risk factors for amputations, the program could save many lives.

Employees who experience depression are tasked with the decision to disclose their mental health to others at work.

Not all West Virginians have the luxury of popping into a health clinic on a whim to get tested for COVID-19.

As the complexity of radiation therapy has grown, so too has the amount of data that goes into treatment machines. With more data comes more opportunity for errors in data transfer. Ramon Alfredo Siochi—WVU’s director of medical physics—is working to make those errors less likely. He led a task group to develop guidelines for checking the data’s accuracy before patients receive treatment.

Even for those of us who dodged the virus itself, the COVID-19 pandemic hit us in more ways than one.

Sunday church service in Amish country is more than just belting out hymns, reading Bible passages and returning home an hour later to catch a football game or nap.