Health

It is that time, West Virginia. Time to shine your light to illuminate the path for others. What path? The path to health. The path to protecting ourselves and our loved ones from 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.

Transitioning home after a stay in a nursing home or long-term care facility can be a difficult experience, oftentimes leading to hospitalization or reinstitution. But preliminary results from a new West Virginia University Office of Health Affairs pilot program shows that telehealth can help these individuals remain healthy and happy in their own communities.

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.

A one-of-a-kind mentoring program at West Virginia University that supports high school students who face social and financial challenges and connects them to STEM-based undergraduate and graduate degree programs will be replicated at The University of Alabama’s Capstone College of Nursing over the next five years.

Every day, our bodies face a bombardment of UV rays, ozone, cigarette smoke, industrial chemicals and other hazards. This exposure can lead to free-radical production in our bodies, which damages our DNA and tissues. A new study from Eric Kelley—a researcher with the WVU School of Medicine—suggests that unrepaired DNA damage can increase the speed of aging. His results appear in the journal Nature.

With recent decreases in COVID-19 cases across the country and the knowledge that COVID-19 vaccines are extremely safe and effective, West Virginia University now plans to fully reopen its campuses this fall.

West Virginia University has released its Spring 2021 Deans’ and President’s lists, as well as the list of graduates for the Spring semester.

The West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute today (June 14) announced the first procedure in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, and among the first in the U.S., to use new deep brain stimulation technology that has the potential to improve the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, tremor, dystonia, and other movement disorders.