On Friday, UVA Health finalized an agreement to acquire a stand-alone outpatient surgery center. UVA Health is taking over the Monticello Community Surgery Center, which is located next to the UVA Primary Care Riverside along Route 29.
(Commentary) Recidivism – the chance a criminal is going to reoffend – is reduced by 43% in the year after an individual submits their DNA, according to UVA professor Jennifer Doleac’s 2017 study, “The effects of DNA databases on the deterrence and detention of offenders.” The OCDA DNA program protects the public, prevents additional victimization, and provides individuals with a path out of the criminal justice system.
(Commentary) New UVA research suggests that people often overlook the option of getting rid of elements in favor of adding new ones, even when the simpler solution is superior. Behavioral scientists are making the case that a “subtractive” approach could be useful in tackling global problems like the climate crisis.
According to UVA’s COVID-19 model, three health districts – Mount Rogers in Southwest Virginia, Rappahannock Rapidan in the northwestern part of the state, and Alexandria – are currently seeing a surge in COVID cases, defined as “sustained rapid growth and exceeds recent inflection points.” Districts experiencing slow growth include: Eastern Shore, Henrico County, Lenowisco, Loudoun County, Lord Fairfax, Norfolk, Prince William County, Rappahannock, Richmond and Western Tidewater.
The Brazil variant joins others originating in the United Kingdom, California and South Africa already confirmed in Virginia. Researchers at the University of Virginia believe the U.K. variant, the one that’s been most-studied, has become dominant in the commonwealth, meaning a majority of new infections happening are because of it. “Viruses change all the time, and VDH expects to see new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as disease spreads,” officials wrote in Friday’s release.
A Friday update from UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute, which tracks COVID-19 trends, projected a summer peak by the Fourth of July weekend if precautions such as social distancing and wearing masks aren’t taken.
In a new Yale-led study, researchers find that autism may develop in different regions of the brain in girls than boys and that girls with autism have a larger number of genetic mutations than boys, suggesting that they require a larger “genetic hit” to develop the disorder. Other members of the research team included Dr. Kevin Pelphrey, from UVA’s Brain Institute.
Research by UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service shows the extent of the digital disconnect in Virginia. Plotted on a locality-by-locality map of Virginia, those with the most abundant access to high-speed Internet connections including fiber optic lines, cable or DSL show up in ever-darkening shades from the least (tan) to the most (burnt umber). Those where fewer than half of the households have such access show up as beige. This interactive image shows enormous pale-shaded digital deserts in rural areas, especially the Southside and Southwest Virginia regions.
Medicare and private insurers must quickly transition to a value-based-care payment model to meet the needs of an aging population, the head of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Virginia said. Dr. Justin Mutter said the fee-for-service model must be scrapped because it doesn’t align with the needs of older, sicker patients.
There has been a recent jump in health care workers providing home services for Medicare patients, but researchers at UVA Health say it is nowhere close to meeting the surging demand. Dr. Aaron Yao and Dr. Justin Mutter say with our country’s aging population, a significant number of people need to receive medical care at home now. Unfortunately, many of these patients go unseen because there aren’t enough staff or resources to meet the demand.
The Falls Church City Council has set in stone its commitment to public art in the Little City. City council members voted unanimously April 12 to amend Falls Church’s comprehensive plan by adding a section supporting public art and establishing a public arts district. Now, staff will turn their attention to hammering out the details needed to carry out this committment. The vote culminates about a year of work that involved various city groups that reviewed the policy and consultants from the University of Virginia who helped craft it, city planner Emily Bazemore said.
1. Digital Transformation (Coursera): UVA’s Darden School of Business offers this beginner-level class in conjunction with the Boston Consulting Group. At an estimated 14 hours to complete, it features instructors including Darden senior associate dean and chief strategy officer Michael Lenox, BCG managing director Amane Dannouni, and others. This 101-level course outlines the imperative to change digitally, the context of digital transformation, and what such changes demand of an organization. It also trains students in the BCG framework for identifying key DT opportunities. If you want to co...
The Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail is launching a program that will let jail residents find purpose, earn college credit and position themselves for success upon their release and re-entry into our community. For the past two years, the Charlottesville Commonwealth Attorney’s Office has spearheaded bringing the UVA academic course, Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Leadership, to the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. After many months of hard work and dedicated commitment, this pilot project is set to launch this fall.
UVA has not said whether it will mandate the shot, but other universities have. Attorney David Thomas of MichieHamlett says he believes it can be allowed.
(Transcript) Hundreds of Confederate statues, memorials and names have been removed from the public square in the last decade as communities rethink just what history should be venerated. But thousands of symbols remain. Now the University of Virginia is launching a new initiative around the politics of memory and how history is presented in public spaces. It’s called the Memory Project and is directed by UVA religious studies professor and Black Lives Matter activist Jalane Schmidt.
The UVA School of Engineering has welcomed a new friend. It walks on four legs and is named “Spot.” Spot can detect staircases and adapt to any outdoor environment. Engineering professor Nicola Bezzo says they’ll use Spot in UVA’s laboratories and classrooms, but Spot will mainly be used to go where humans can’t.
They’ve taken it into juvenile detention centers, onto film and over television, but this fall, UVA students and their professor will take Russian literature into the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. The program – Books Behind Bars: Life, Literature, and Leadership – will bring UVA students into the jail each week to meet with inmates and explore life’s meaning, its value and concepts of social justice through the prose of Russian writers.
Virginia swimming and diving head coach Todd DeSorbo, fresh off having guided the UVA women’s team to its first national title, has signed a five-year contract extension through the 2026-27 season.
Black Maternal Health Week runs from April 11 to 17. It aims to heighten awareness of maternal mortality in the Black community. “Our maternal mortality rate is specifically much higher than other countries and specifically for Black women, it’s even higher, so they are three to four more times more likely to have complications related to pregnancy,” said Rochanda Mitchell, a Maternal Fetal Medicine Fellow at the University of Virginia.
Federal and Virginia health officials said it is important to note only six cases of severe reaction to the J&J shot have been identified out of nearly 7 million doses administered in the U.S. “This is literally a less than a one-in-a-million chance of getting this complication,” Dr. Patrick Jackson, assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UVA Health, said.