“This winter might mark a different turning point,” said Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist and adjunct professor at the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Instead of the end of the pandemic and the start of an endemic, this winter might introduce us to a different, and unsettling, stage. One where we are no longer in lockdown but learning to treat a deadly virus as a normal part of our lives.

Over a dozen College of Medicine – Phoenix students are going to be taking a very close two-year look at community needs in Tonto Basin. Judith Hunt, MD, site director for the College of Medicine – Phoenix program in Rim Country, has been practicing medicine and training medical students and residents in the rural community of Payson, Arizona, for nearly 22 years. Her classroom is 100 miles north of the downtown Phoenix. “The best part of rural medicine is the care of the community. There is nothing that I would trade for being able to see a baby that I helped care for throughout the years, now married with their own children. It’s just amazing to be a part of that young person’s life all the way through.”

Health professionals say our indoor-dominant lives are costing us, and are prescribing time in contact with natural elements to offset this deficit. “The power of nature is being used widely in the integrative medicine community both through activity, diet, surroundings as well as herbal medicine,” said Ann Marie Chiasson, MD, MPH, CCFP, associate professor of clinical medicine at the College of Medicine – Tucson and fellowship director with the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.

The third annual Drug Discovery and Development Summit aims to foster private-public collaboration and commercialization of new discoveries against diseases most burdensome to Arizonans.

Rachna Shroff, MD, chief of the section of GI medical oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, joins a roundtable of healthcare providers to discuss the current unmet clinical needs in cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), a rare and aggressive bile duct cancer.

University Arizona Distinguished Professor of Public Health Dr. Richard Carmona, the 17th Surgeon General of the United States, is interviewed about his role as Gov. Doug Ducey's senior advisor on public health emergency preparedness.

Experts weigh in on THC vs. CBD

The addition of pembrolizumab to chemotherapy, with or without bevacizumab, significantly improved PFS and OS among women with persistent, recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, results of the randomized phase 3 KEYNOTE-826 study showed. Bradley J. Monk, MD, FACS, FACOG, a professor at the College of Medicine – Phoenix and director of gynecologic oncology research at US Oncology Network, said KEYNOTE-826 will rapidly launch pembrolizumab as the global standard of care in first-line metastatic cervical cancer.

A clinical study at the University of Arizona is underway, working to understand COVID-19 infection and the transmission of the virus among vaccinated people. Elizabeth Connick, MD, chief of infectious diseases and professor of medicine and immunobiology at the College of Medicine – Tucson, said their goal is to answer the question of whether or not vaccinated people who are exposed to COVID-19 still shed the virus from their nose and mouth and infect others.

More than 10,000 Americans have reported tinnitus as a possible side effect of the COVID-19 vaccine, and some are now questioning why the FDA and CDC are not taking a deeper look into their claims about hearing problems. "Tinnitus is a serious thing," said Elizabeth Connick, MD, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at College of Medicine – Tucson. They're not making it up, and it's very important not to have them feel marginalized."