CU Anschutz In The News

One in five Colorado high school students believe they could easily get a handgun, according to a University of Colorado study published in March. The study, from the Anschutz Medical Campus and the Colorado School of Public Health, examined data from more than 46,000 students. “There is not a lot of data out there to compare this to, but just from a gut-check standpoint, it seems like a lot of teens at least perceive they have access to a handgun,” said lead author Ashley Brooks-Russell, an assistant professor in the Colorado School of Public Health.

Search and rescue team members can be the overlooked patients in a traumatic mission, said Laura McGladrey.  She’s with CU Anschutz Medical School’s Stress Trauma Adversity Research and Treatment Center, working with cops, emergency service providers, search-and-rescue teams as well as guide services and ski patrols. Stress accumulation from exposure to traumatic missions can build up like a snowpack, McGladrey said. It starts gradually and following a big event, people can break in an avalanche of anguish.

Elizabeth Carlton, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, agreed that the high rate of testing could be part of the reason why Pitkin County is posting higher infection rates than its neighbors. “In that region, Pitkin is doing far more testing than anyone else,” she said. “That’s good news, to be absolutely clear. The more you look for the virus, the more likely you are to find it. If you can find the virus, you’re much better equipped to try and contain it.”

“I think it’s one ingredient to be used in combination with other strategies,” said Dr. Glen Mays, chairman of the Department of Health Systems, Management and Policy in the Colorado School of Public Health. “It certainly could be helpful in helping to keep rates of transmission low overall.”

“We created this monster to some extent,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is firmly in the public health camp. But he said some of the ethical discussions surrounding vaccine allocation priorities focused on reciprocity.

Elizabeth Carlton, an infectious disease researcher at the Colorado School of Public Health who works with Bayham as part of the modeling team helping the state project the pandemic’s course, said COVID fatigue likely plays a big role. People just want to go back to their normal lives, which leads them to let down their precautions in what they consider “safe” environments, like their own home in the company of friends.

I am a proud member of the research community here in Colorado, having been a professor of immunology at the University of Colorado for the last 16 years.  During these difficult times, we at the CU-Anschutz Medical Campus have done much to alter our normal research programs to address the pandemic and its impact on Coloradans. 

“You can’t even plan for all these things in advance because your allocation protocol might change based on all the circumstances,” said Dr. Matthew Wynia, a bioethicist who leads the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.