(Commentary) Seanna Leath, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, shared with Golden the results of a study that showed how some Black female students were wearing the stoic mask in preparation for working “in the White world.” “Fearful of being labeled Angry Black Women, the young women often chose not to respond to racist comments or what they felt were misinterpretations of Black culture and life in their classes,” Golden writes. She quotes one student as saying, “I’d be dismissed if I got angry.”
In Leah Calote’s classes, she wants students to feel safe just being themselves. To encourage that, Calote tries to model it. She participates in warm-up games, shares parts of her life from beyond school, and, perhaps most importantly, she’s honest about her emotions, both the highs and the lows. “You have to have boundaries,” Calote says, but she advocates “being generous with the things that you can so that (students) can feel safe being generous and compassionate with each other.” That kind of openness is not the norm, according to Patricia Jennings, a University of Virginia researcher who...
The AMA STEPS Forward toolkit “Stress First Aid for Health Care Professionals,” provides tips that can help your health care organization support long-term recovery. The toolkit’s co-creator, Richard Westphal, co-director of the Wisdom and Wellbeing Program at UVA Health, added that “part of the advantage of this model is that it also allows us to ask what is going on in our environment that makes it really difficult to work here. Was the person who had the stress injury the canary in the mineshaft? Did they give the early warning signal? Is there a larger systems issue? If so, what needs to c...
When Lawrence Wright started to research his latest book, “The Plague Year,” he knew there were stories to tell beyond the media headlines and the failures of government agencies that didn’t do enough to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 virus. What surprised him was how many people, just by doing their jobs, impacted their communities. Dr. Ebony Hilton, an anesthesiologist at the University of Virginia, volunteered to go to communities of color near Charlottesville to provide testing.
A young veteran who was discharged following injuries she suffered while deployed has found a new mission and a new purpose. U.S. Army Specialist Jenna Schmaltz went from fighting on the front lines of the battlefield to fighting on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schmaltz is now a pediatric nurse at UVA Children’s, where she took on a whole new mission when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Infectious-disease specialist Taison Bell at the University of Virginia questions how the authors define severe COVID-19, which factors into the assessment of fluvoxamine’s efficacy. The team examined whether people needed more than six hours of treatment in an emergency setting, rather than using the more common metric of hospitalization. Reiersen says the six-hour metric reflects Brazil’s approach to managing COVID-19, in which care is delivered not in hospitals, but in COVID-19-specific emergency treatment centres that provide both inpatient and outpatient services.
Douglas Laycock, a nationally recognized religious liberty expert who has argued in six religious liberty cases at the Supreme Court, said he’s against religious exemptions amid vaccine mandates. The UVA law professor even filed a supporting brief for the Colorado baker who denied a wedding cake to a gay couple. “The right to religious exemptions is fundamental. I support it. But it’s never been absolute,” Laycock said.
Dr. Patrick Jackson with the University of Virginia has advice for people looking to get vaccinated. Jackson says COVID-19 vaccines have a very low myocarditis or heart inflammation risk, however the risk is highest in young men. He says says the Johnson & Johnson vaccine does not have any association with this side effect and could be the best choice for some.
A key difference is the new plan is signed by several countries that were missing last time, including those with the worst levels of deforestation. Brazil, where deforestation rates have rocketed under President Jair Bolsonaro, is chief among those. “Having all the main players on it is significant, that is a big step,” says Stephanie Roe at the University of Virginia.
Bertrall Ross, a UVA law professor with expertise in voting rights, says the increase in voting access could have bipartisan effects, despite being implemented under a Democratic majority. “The conventional wisdom is that increased voting access will help Democrats in elections because Democrats traditionally draw from lower-income classes where the cost barriers to voting are particularly felt,” he said. “But what this conventional wisdom overlooks is the changing demographics of the Republican Party over the past decade.”
In both Colorado and Virginia, Democrats may lose congressional seats despite their growing political strength, said J. Miles Coleman, a political cartographer at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “In Virginia, a state [President Joe] Biden won by 10 points, you have a situation where you could have a majority GOP delegation [in Congress]. That will be very frustrating to Democrats,” Coleman said. “Democrats’ frustration with independent commissions is a theme I see emerging.”
(By Julia F. Taylor and Sara Groff Stephens, assistant professors of pediatrics) Eating disorders began to spike among young people shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts believe the increase occurred due to disruptions in daily living, emotional distress and more time spent on social media – which research has shown can lead to lower self-esteem and negative body image.
Several studies have documented health care laundry facilities as sources of nosocomial outbreaks of fungal and bacterial infections, but new research published in the July 2021 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases creates a roadmap for identifying and remediating these outbreaks. According to researchers with the University of Pittsburgh, University of Minnesota Department of Environmental Health and Safety, and the UVA Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, collaboration between hospital infection prevention experts and laundry facility leadership is key in creating a tar...
A lot of conversations around diversity focus on identity-based factors such as race and gender, but there is a growing appreciation for the importance of thought diversity to a team. A study from 鶹ƽ Darden School of Business took this a step further and explored the impact of class diversity on the success of a team. The study focused particular attention on what the authors refer to as ‘social class transitioners,’ who are people that have managed to progress between socioeconomic classes during their life, and it emerged that those who were able to do that brought particular value to the...
For nearly two years, researchers tracked air quality disparities between low-income neighborhoods of color and high-income white neighborhoods in Jacksonville and more than 50 other U.S. cities. The recently published study, co-authored by University of Virginia atmospheric chemist Sally Pusede, focused on levels of NO2, or nitrogen dioxide — an air pollutant released from fossil fuels that can cause and exacerbate chronic health problems like asthma.
Michael Lenox is the Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He is the coauthor of “Can Business Save the Earth? Innovating Our Way to Sustainability” and “The Strategist’s Toolkit.” Rebecca Duff is Senior Research Associate with the Batten Institute at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. She also serves as the managing director for Darden’s Business Innovation and Climate Change Initiative. They are co-authors of the new book “The Decarbonization Imperative: Transforming the Global Economy by 2050,” wher...
(Podcast) Alexandra Feldberg and Tami Kim, assistant professors at Harvard Business School and the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, respectively, say companies are overlooking an important place to root out bias: on the front lines with customers. While many firms are promoting a more equitable workforce through their HR functions, too few firms even realize how costly bias can be in everyday interactions between workers and customers. The researchers explain how organizations can identify and address this overlooked problem.
New K-12 instructors often learn teaching methods by trial and error, receiving little or no formal coaching before their careers begin. In a new working paper published by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, researchers at the University of Virginia explore the positive impact of providing robust, individualized coaching supports to prospective educators enrolled in teacher-education programs or undergraduate courses.
Models with 鶹ƽ Biocomplexity institute indicate several possible paths forward. Some show cases will continue to drop in the coming weeks, yet others hint at another climb mainly due to the upcoming holiday season.
The Virginia Catalyst, also known as the Virginia Biosciences Health Research Corp., has awarded $1.9 million in grants to three life and bioscience projects, including two with ties to UVA.