Last week, we held the 8th Annual VCBH Conference virtually due to COVID19. This year’s theme, Rural Addiction and Health, “could not be timelier with the emergence of COVID-19 and the ripple effects we have seen, from health disparities to increased opioid overdoses and the use of telemedicine,“ noted VCBH Director Stephen T. Higgins in his welcome letter to attendees.

New research, published in Clinical and Translational Immunology by UVM Associate Professor Sean Diehl, Ph.D., and colleagues provides a clearer picture of the protective antibodies induced by the SARS-C0V-2 virus and their role in serious illness and what’s needed for full protection.

(OCTOBER 15, 2020) A MedPageToday article on the impact of pipette shortages on COVID-19 testing quotes Christina Wojewoda, M.D., associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine.

“Ensuring children are empowered and raised to become healthy, happy, productive members of our communities is one of the most important things we can do,” says assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine James Metz, M.D. “Child abuse needs to be brought out from the underbelly of society. It’s easy for people to say ‘the problem is too big; it’s too difficult; it’s too sad.’ But that’s when you need to step into a problem, not away from it.”

New research, published by scientists at the University of Vermont and Caltech in the journal Cell, has pinpointed three specific mechanisms that allow SARS-CoV-2 to incapacitate human cells by disabling the cell’s alarm system to call for help or warn nearby cells of infection.