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Hearing loss may lack the dread of a deadly infectious disease like dengue or HIV, but it is a large and growing global health disability, affecting about 7 percent of the world’s population. A 2017 report estimated the global cost of untreated hearing loss at more than $750 Billion (in 2015 international dollars). To address this health issue systematically and globally, a newly-formed international commission on hearing loss and health care will convene its first session at Duke University on Oct. 22 and 23.

From the day she took office as dean of Duke University School of Medicine in 2017, Mary E. Klotman, BS’76, MD’80, HS’80-’85, has advanced the idea of One Duke: the premise that the key to achieving great things lies in collaborations across Duke, regardless of title, unit, discipline, or any of the other labels that traditionally have compartmentalized the operations of a major academic medical institution.

Duke University’s L. Ebony Boulware, MD, MPH, and Peter Ubel, MD, have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine (NAM). Election to the NAM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.

“I would like to explain the importance of mentoring by using a metaphor of something that all of you in this room know about: a strain of DNA”, said Dr. Johnna Frierson, Assistant Dean for Graduate and Postdoctoral Diversity and Inclusion at the School of Medicine, who moderated the Research Town Hall “Why Mentors Matter. How to Build Responsible Mentoring at Duke”.

The day her eyelashes froze together turned out to be a pivotal day for Heather Whitson, MD, HS’01-’04, ‘06. She was a medical school student at Cornell University at the time, spending the winter in Boston doing research with a Harvard geriatrician. She was enjoying the research so much she was hoping to do her residency at Harvard so she could continue it. But when her eyelashes froze, she started dreaming of warmer climes.

Living with a rare disease is a challenging journey for patients and their families. These diseases are frequently hard to diagnose, can be life threatening, and often have no cure. And rare diseases are more common than you might think. The National Institutes of Health estimates that there are 7,000 rare diseases that affect from 25 to 30 million people in the United States today.

A longtime advocate for the marriage of technology and data to advance health care, Amy Abernethy, MD’94, HS’94-’01, PhD, envisions a future in which the two are as ubiquitous and easy to use in the medical field as tongue depressors. As the newly appointed principal deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—the highest position at the FDA that is not a political appointment—Abernethy has a national platform in which to help advance personalized medicine.

More than 10 million people worldwide—about 1 percent of people over age 60—live with Parkinson’s disease. There are treatments that can help control symptoms, but there is no cure.

Imagine a doctor saying you need surgery to replace a heart valve, and if you don’t get it you will die from heart failure within two years.

In this month's Professional Development Blog, Duke Alumnus Louis D'Amico shares his experience transitioning from lab work to a role as Senior Science Advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency.  Learn about his journey here: https://gradschool.duke.edu/professional-development/blog/alumni-profiles-series-louis-d-amico