Health and Medicine

The federal agency responsible for setting medical reimbursement policy for Medicaid and Medicare programs has designated an assessment survey developed at the University at Buffalo as the national standard for determining payment for inpatient medical rehabilitation.

The School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo this fall is offering a new master's degree program in public health (MPH), as well as a law and public health program in conjunction with the UB Law School.

OxyContin, one of the newest drugs prescribed for pain, has become a destructive drug of abuse among recreational drug users obtaining it illegally. In addition, warns a pain specialist at the University at Buffalo, the potential for abuse is high also among patients receiving the drug legitimately if they are not monitored closely by their physicians.

Mexican Americans in the U.S. who speak primarily Spanish and are less "Americanized" are significantly less active during leisure time than Mexican Americans whose main language is English, a study headed by researchers from the University at Buffalo has found.

Researchers at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) have shown that families exhibit improvements in overall functioning, and in some cases reduced adolescent substance use, when parents receive help and support in coping with their child's substance-abuse problem.

In search of evidence that could help explain how certain species were created and how their genome has changed with evolution, a University at Buffalo evolutionary biologist and nine of his students enrolled in a new course on arctic molecular ecology are participating in a two-week research expedition to the arctic climes of Alaska.

Extremely hardy bacteria that contaminate computer-chip fabrication facilities and mean nothing but trouble for chip manufacturers have been reproduced under controlled conditions by University at Buffalo researchers, who believe they could be the basis for potentially powerful biophotonic materials.

Richard Krause, residency program director for the Department of Emergency Medicine in the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, has been named managing editor for the emergency medicine section of eMedicine, an online medical journal that provides textbook-quality articles on topics ranging from dermatology to sports medicine with one distinct advantage over the print variety: the information is truly current.

Researchers who have studied the issue of the impact of class size on the performance of children now have incontrovertible evidence that even a few early years of study in a small class of 13-17 peers will enhance a student's academic achievement all the way through high school.

While there has been considerable research documenting the problems of children born to depressed and alcohol-abusing mothers, research scientists at the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) have demonstrated that alcohol abuse, depression and other problems in the father also are related to children's development.