Health & Science
Karly Raber expected to spend her final months of medical school finishing up her last rotations, but her plans were upended by the pandemic. So Raber got involved in COVID-19 monitoring efforts, calling people across the Chicago area who had tested positive for the virus to track how they were feeling, monitor their symptoms and refer them to more intensive care as needed.
Emergency medicine physician and former Wildcats offensive lineman Ryan Padgett ’97 was one of the first healthcare workers in Washington state to test positive for COVID-19. His harrowing story has become both a symbol of hope and a cautionary tale about the dangers of the global pandemic.
We were only 15 minutes into our lab meeting when my single tear became what Oprah calls “the ugly cry.” My graduate students are therapists in training at the Family Institute at Northwestern, so they met my wave of emotion with empathy. I felt embarrassed, nonetheless.
After many years in government, Tista Ghosh '99 is bringing her public health training to the private sector, leading a team that advises Fortune 500 companies across a range of industries on how to keep their operations running as safely as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ryan Lee ’03 runs a dental oncology practice with four offices in the Northeast. But for the past month he’s been leading 18 Massachusetts Army National Guard strike teams, coordinating COVID-19 testing for some of the state’s most at-risk residents.
Last August, Northwestern audiology graduate students made the trek to Nuevo Progreso in western Guatemala to provide comprehensive care for the local residents. Over the course of four more-than-12-hour days, eight students worked alongside four professional audiologists to perform diagnostic testing and hearing-aid fittings.
When molecular diagnostics expert Karen Kaul ’84 MD, PhD, ’88 GME ordered reagents and other supplies for her lab at NorthShore University HealthSystem’s Evanston Hospital in early February, she and her team had been following the coronavirus outbreak overseas for weeks. They figured they’d better be prepared, just in case.
Desmond Wang reached out to alumni affiliated with the NU Club of Beijing to launch a fundraiser. In less than two weeks, Wang led an international effort that resulted in the donation of more than 5,500 N95 masks and two iPads to Northwestern Memorial Hospital — and a contribution of nearly $14,000 to Northwestern Medicine’s COVID-19 Relief Fund to give the hospital flexibility as its needs evolve.
Amy Rosenzweig picks up a Rubik’s Cube–like paperweight with a colorful, spiral structure printed on one side. “This side commemorates that I determined the complicated structure of a protein in graduate school, which ended up launching my career in chemistry,” says Rosenzweig, who holds joint appointments in chemistry and molecular biosciences in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
When hospital leaders across Chicago wanted to know if providing housing to the city’s homeless individuals reduced their use of the emergency room and increased their use of primary care services, they turned to a collaboration brought together by the Feinberg School of Medicine’s Center for Health Information Partnerships (CHIP). “We knew from prior work that homeless patients are the most likely to seek care across multiple institutions,” says CHIP director Abel Kho, “and this fragmented care and lack of social support leads to poor health outcomes.” By linking data on Chicago’s homeless individuals with clinical data across multiple hospital and health care centers citywide, the collaborative team was able to determine the immense impact of housing on health.
