It turns out that being active can actually be fun. With the right approach, it can feel less like work, and more like play. “There's an opportunity to make something playful because play isn't its own thing that exists,” said Dr. Elizabeth Lyons, of the University of Texas Medical Branch. “Play is basically an attitude towards everything or anything that happens.”

“If you visit our clinics or hospitals, you will likely encounter a resident or fellow,” wrote Dr. Thomas A. Blackwell, associate dean for Graduate Medical Education and a professor of General Internal Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch. “Please remember their hard work and dedication to helping you have the best health outcome possible.”

“At the end of the day, it’s important to have people who look like you, who have a similar experience to you kind of advocating for you,” said Chinedu Onwudebee, Student National Medical Association, UTMB Galveston.

“It’s no surprise that politicians sort of blame mental illness,” said Dr. Jeff Temple, director of the Center for Violence Prevention at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “It’s a safe way to address the gun problem without talking about the real culprit.”

There are several reasons why we haven’t yet come up with an approved vaccine for Marburg, said Dr. Robert Cross, a virologist at Galveston National Laboratory. One of the most salient is that “there really have not been that many outbreaks,” Cross said. “However, as we all know, when these outbreaks occur, they come with extremely dire outcomes, often with many dead.” It’s a blessing and a curse for public health researchers that Marburg outbreaks have historically been few and far in between, as a vaccine can’t be tested if people are never infected.

“The bottom line of the studies is that tranexamic acid does not decrease the risk or the necessity to receive blood products,” said Dr. Luis Pacheco of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “So as of now, our conclusion is that there is not enough data to recommend the use of tranexamic acid to prevent obstetrical hemorrhage, because it does not translate into clinically significant improvements.”

Dr. Ana Rodriguez, an obstetrician, became interested in raising rates of vaccination against HPV after watching too many women battle a preventable cancer. She worked for several years in the Rio Grande Valley along the U.S. border with Mexico, an impoverished rural area with poor access to healthcare and high rates of HPV infection. “I would treat women very young — not even 30 years of age — already fighting advanced precancerous lesions secondary to HPV,” said Rodriguez, an associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

A common objection to expanding naloxone access is that it acts as a safety net for people with addiction to continue their drug habits with few repercussions. But Dr. Kathryn Cunningham, director of the Center of Addiction Research at the University of Texas Medical Branch, said research has shown no evidence that naloxone leads to more drug use. Naloxone may actually convince people to find professional help because it gives them more opportunities to seek treatment and rehabilitation later in life. “You can’t seek medical services if you’re dead,” Cunningham said.

Your chances of surviving a heart attack and of receiving life-saving treatment are better if you’re from a wealthy neighborhood, according to a new study in JAMA that shows mortality rates are 10 to 20 percent higher among patients in low-income areas than those with a high-income postal code. “In virtually all high-income countries, patients who reside in poor neighborhoods are less likely to receive recommended … heart attack treatments and are more likely to die than their compatriots or peers who live in wealthier neighborhoods in the same country,” said senior author Peter Cram, an adjunct scientist at ICES (formerly the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) and professor of medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. The Toronto Star also covered this story.

The most important thing is to listen to and believe in yourself, says Dr. Jeff Temple, a licensed psychologist and the founding director of the Center for Violence Prevention at University of Texas Medical Branch. “If you feel drained or self-doubting or just plain gross after most interactions with your mentor, then that’s a pretty good sign that you’re in a toxic relationship,” he says. “Mentors should acknowledge the accomplishments of, and encourage, their mentees to do good work. If instead, your mentor is taking credit for, or denigrating, your work, then it may be time to question the relationship.”