CU Anschutz In The News

Op ed by Cathy J. Bradley, Ph.D., dean of the Colorado School of Public Health and the deputy director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center. “As dean of the region’s only school of public health, I have questioned the lack of transformational investments in public health. With COVID-19 commanding less attention, are we investing in the people who saw us through the pandemic? Are we thinking about the next emergency and the role of public health?”

Elizabeth Carlton, an epidemiologist at the Colorado School of Public Health, agreed that the risk to the general public right now is low. Systems designed to detect upticks in flu infections through hospital data and wastewater testing have not sounded any alarms. Pasteurized milk — what is sold in grocery stores — is safe to drink, though raw milk may not be. “Where we need to ramp up the level of concern in the population is when we see those dairy farm workers get infected and spread it to their families,” she said.

Casey Greene, the interim director of the Center for Personalized Medicine, said the center’s work, in addition to benefiting researchers and patients, has the potential to reduce health care spending by reducing hospitalizations and other medical care related to bad drug-gene interactions.

“Fascinating and beguiling,” is how Elizabeth Carlton, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, described the phenomenon. “I think, by now, there probably is something happening driving this pattern,” she said — instead of the trend being a statistical fluke.

Beth Carlton, a professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health, said a digital approach to contract-tracing had the potential to be especially helpful for COVID because the virus has two tricks that often stymie more traditional public health efforts. First, it can be spread by people before they have symptoms or by people who never showed symptoms at all, making it difficult for those who are infected to avoid exposing others in public places. And, second, it can spread so rapidly that it can overwhelm manual contact-tracing efforts.

The Colorado Cancer Screening Program, within the University of Colorado Cancer Center, learned years ago that patient navigators could make a huge impact in getting medically underserved people to screening appointments. The no-show rate at one safety net clinic dropped to 10% from 75% in one year after navigators began working with patients in their native languages, and offering to pay for transportation to screenings, prescriptions or child care. Prior to the extra help, Medicaid patients were not showing up for appointments or showing up without following the instructions, including fasting or taking the bowel-preparation medicine before a colonoscopy. Andi Dwyer, director of patient navigation at the screening program, called this year’s legislation a “game-changer.” “If this was a pill or device, we would have probably seen payment for this 10 years ago,” she said.

“At the end of the day, if we save one life with an overdose prevention center, I think it’s worth it,” Dr. Joshua Barocas, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, testified Thursday before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

The increase in syphilis cases shows the importance of public health, said Dr. Daniel Pastula, an associate professor of neurology, infectious disease and epidemiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Colorado School of Public Health