When the doctor is the patient
A kidney transplant and a cancer diagnosis helped shape the career of infection-control expert Steve Pergam March 23, 2015 • By Mary Engel / Fred Hutch News Service As director of infection control at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and an infectious disease researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Dr. Steve Pergam works to protect a subset of people who are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases: cancer patients. Here he is shown with graduate research assistant Arianna Miles-Jay. Photo by Bo Jungmayer / Fred Hutch News Service
As a first-year medical student at University of Nebraska Medical Center, Dr. Steve Pergam volunteered for a vaccine campaign in Nicaragua, bringing basic childhood immunizations to squatters living in cardboard shacks. When he returned to Nicaragua the following spring to deliver a second round of immunizations, he found that local health care
There’s no crystal ball for modeling the pandemic
Mathematical modelers explain challenges, limitations of their work to predict COVID-19 outcomes February 22, 2021 • By Sabrina Richards / Fred Hutch News Service While models can point to key variables that could slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, modelers caution against expecting them to predict the exact numbers of cases of COVID-19. Getty Images Illustration
Dr. Laura Matrajt didn’t expect to make much noise on Twitter. She just wanted to clarify a term she’d seen sowing confusion on social media.
It was mid-March 2020, and the term was “flattening the curve.”
“I was seeing people in my social media discussing, ‘Is it useful? Is it not useful?’” she said. “Some were saying, ‘People are exaggerating, [SARS-CoV-2] is just like the flu.’”
New bacterium named in honor of Fred Hutch
First organism named after research center linked to bacterial vaginosis, higher HIV risk February 24, 2021 • By Susan Keown / Fred Hutch News Service An electron microscope image of Megasphaera hutchinsoni, recently given its official name by researchers at Fred Hutch and their colleagues in Pittsburgh and Boston. The bacterium is associated with bacterial vaginosis, and women who have it are at greater risk of acquiring HIV. The scientists named it after Fred Hutch, where it was isolated, and in honor of the center’s HIV research. Image created by the Fredricks Lab s Susan Strenk and Tina Fiedler in the Fred Hutch Cellular Imaging shared resource with the assistance of electron microscopy specialists Steve MacFarlane and Bobbie Schneider.
Community engagement in HIV trials guides equity for COVID-19 vaccine studies
New study highlights longstanding barriers to diversity in prior decade of vaccine trials, despite federal guidelines February 19, 2021 • By Sabin Russell / Fred Hutch News Service The Tampa, Florida-based Bible-Based Fellowship Church encouraged members of the African American community to receive COVID-19 vaccines, organizing clinics in partnership with the county health department. Photo by Octavio Jones / Getty Images
Editor s update: On March 31, the New England Journal of Medicine published an editorial co-authored by Andrasik about addressing vaccine hesitancy in communities of color and the efforts of the COVID-19 Prevention Network.
For more than a decade, psychologist Dr. Michele Andrasik has been working in Seattle on ways to increase opportunities for underrepresented minorities at risk for HIV to participate in clinical trials
New study highlights lack of diversity and inclusion in vaccine clinical trials
Analysis shows certain racial/ethnic groups and older people aren’t being adequately represented and trial reporting guidelines aren’t being followed Anthony Jackson, security coordinator for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, receives a dose of the new Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine on Jan. 19, 2021, at a new vaccine clinic set up on the Fred Hutch campus. Robert Hood
SEATTLE February 19, 2021 A team of scientific experts from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico are advocating for increased diversity in vaccine trials after publishing a new report that highlights a decade’s worth of disparities. The new study, published in JAMA Network Open, found that among U.S.-based vaccine clinical trials, people who are Black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic/Latino and age 65 and older were the most underrepresented groups. Conversely, adult women