When Going Under the Knife Does Not Mean Surgery

KU Med students prepare ingredients in a culinary medicine class where they learn about nutrition and food as medicine as well as how to cook a selection of dishes. They critique the meals as well as talk about how it can benefit their patients. (Chase Castor | Flatland)

Chef Educator Rachel Ciordas deftly sliced collard greens into a ribbon-like chiffonade as students from the University of Kansas School of Medicine watched with a degree of awe typically reserved for an episode of the Food Network’s “Chopped.” After Ciordas demonstrated how to peel, chop, or grate the raw ingredients, the future physicians donned aprons…

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Caregiving Squeezes Households Between Young and Old 

(L-R) Christina Hill and her grandmother, Lucy Wilkerson, pose for a photo with Christina’s kids, Hunter Hill Harris and Summer Hill Harris, at Lucy’s assisted living home in Grain Valley, Missouri. (Chase Castor | Flatland)

Melissa Johnson knows her life is hardly unique. The Oak Grove, Missouri, woman cares for her infirm 72-year-old mother, who lives in her own home nearby.  She calls her mother daily. She brings dinner to her several times a week.  Johnson, who coordinates care with her aunt, a team of therapists, and a nurse, is…

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Feeding Tubes and Defibrillators

Rev. Tarris Rosell and sister Rosemary Flanigan

Let’s begin with two stories about the growing and important field of bioethics. The first is from Ryan Pferdehirt, the newly named Flanigan Chair in Bioethics at the Kansas City-based Center for Practical Bioethics. A hospital once asked him to consult on a bioethics case in which a son thought his desperately ill, hospitalized mother…

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After Tuberculosis Outbreak, Wyandotte County Parts Ways with Health Director

People walk outside the Wyandotte County Public Health Department in Kansas City, Kansas. (Zane Irwin | Kansas News Service

The director of the Wyandotte County Public Health Department is no longer with the agency, a spokesperson confirmed Tuesday. It comes after turmoil during the handling of the major tuberculosis outbreak, shown by emails obtained by the Kansas News Service. Elisha Caldwell had been head of the local health department while an outbreak of TB grew…

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