In a week when national health care legislation is being substantially revised comes a report on health disparities between rural and urban Americans. While all-cause mortality has been declining, rural communities are seeing slower rates of improvement than urban communities, resulting in a substantial difference in mortality rates. The report focuses on 5 leading causes of death–heart disease, cancer, unintentional injury, chronic lower respiratory disease, and stroke–and discusses risk factors that differ between the two populations and how to mitigate those risks in rural settings. For example, the rate of tobacco smoking is higher in rural populations which is one reason why chronic lower respiratory disease is more prevalent. Reducing smoking through prevention and cessation should therefore help reduce the disparity in mortality rate, although achieving goals of reduced smoking is not trivial.
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Science Corner: Dr. Internet, MD
It’s 3am. You wake up hot and clammy. A cactus withered and died in your mouth. Joints you never knew you had scream for WD-40. Breathing hurts. Blinking hurts. You can feel your fingernails growing, and that hurts. Did you get the flu? Zika? Are you patient zero for the latest emerging plague? You could go see a doctor, but you’re a graduate student with rudimentary health insurance whose coverage documentation you barely skimmed because c’mon, you’re young and healthy and you don’t plan on getting sick–no, you don’t plan on having time to get sick. Would a trip to the ED be covered? Does it have to be a certain ED? “Reply hazy; try again” is the best your fevered mind can muster. Can the Internet be your physician? “It is decidedly so.”
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Inhabiting Transitional Time Well
Image by Kateri Collins
Here at ESN, we love to share accounts of how emerging scholars discover new things about their vocation at every step of their careers. Kateri Collins participated in ESN events at Urbana 15 while in her graduate school application process, and shared about that application process here. Here, she shares some of the things she found most helpful while in transition between undergraduate and graduate studies. [Read more…] about Inhabiting Transitional Time Well
Discerning My Vocation: A Surprise in the Graduate School Search
Image: Painting by author Kateri Collins
Here at ESN, we love to share accounts of how emerging scholars discover new things about their vocation at every step of their careers. Kateri Collins participated in ESN events at Urbana 15 while in her graduate school application process. Here, she shares the story of discerning which graduate program she was called to, including how her carefully planned graduate school search process yielded a surprising—and satisfying—result. [Read more…] about Discerning My Vocation: A Surprise in the Graduate School Search
Browning’s “Karshish the Arab Physicianâ€
Mark Hansard shares another exploration of faith in Victorian literature. See previous posts exploring Browning and faith and Gerard Manley Hopkins and how aesthetic experience can point to God. [Read more…] about Browning’s “Karshish the Arab Physicianâ€