Health, Fitness & Medical
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Seventh graders to learn Hands Only CPR
Nov 13th
American Heart Association in partnership with Exempla Healthcare
to train more than 100 7th Graders at
Peak to Peak Charter School in Hands Only CPR.
to train more than 100 7th Graders at
Peak to Peak Charter School in Hands Only CPR.
WHAT: Hands Only CPR Training hosted by Peak to Peak Charter School. The training will be presented by the American Heart Association and is sponsored by Exempla Healthcare. The students will listen to Debra Steveson a nurse at Good Samaritan Medical Center who will discuss heart health, and will hear from a young woman who survived sudden cardiac arrest at 17 years old.
The students will be trained in Hands Only CPR using the American Heart Association’s innovative CPR Anytime curriculum. It’s a flexible, convenient, and self-paced program for learning CPR. The kit provides everything you need to learn CPR at home including an inflatable CPR manikin, a 22-minute DVD, and includes information about infant CPR and choking protocols.
The CPR Anytime 22 minute course is designed to share with friends and family, so each student will be tasked with going home and training others in Hands Only CPR using their CPR Anytime Kit. Peak to Peak as a school, has set an aggressive goal to have 700 people trained in CPR through this program
WHEN: November, 15, 2012 / 11:15am to 1:15pm
WHERE Peak to Peak Charter School, 800 Merlin Drive, Lafayette, CO 80026
WHY: Less than 8% of sudden cardiac arrest victim survive because most people who witness the arrest do not know how to perform CPR. It could be your mother, your son, your co-worker, your best friend, or your neighbor.
Five minutes is the difference between life and death. If no CPR is provided or no defibrillation occurs within 3 to 5 minutes, the chances of survival drop.
About 5,800 children 18 years old and under suffer out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year from all causes – including trauma, cardiovascular causes and sudden infant death syndrome.
AGENDA: 11:20am – Nurse Debra Steveson, Good Samaritan Medical Center
11:40am – Q& A & Student Activity on Heart Health
12:00pm – Lunch break
12:30pm – Cardiac Arrest Survivor Speakers
12:45pm – Hands Only CPR Training using CPR Anytime curriculum
1:15pm – Q&A Session
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Boulder County quickly utilizing housing assistance vouchers for veterans
Nov 9th
Housing assistance staff hopeful success will lead to additional voucher awards
Boulder County, Colo. – After only four months, Boulder County has utilized nearly 70 percent of the federal vouchers it received earlier this year to provide rental assistance to homeless military veterans.
Earlier this year the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced an award of $229,620 to help coordinate housing and other crucial supports for chronically homeless veterans in Boulder County. The assistance is in the form of 25 Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH) vouchers which since July have been administered by the Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services (BCDHHS) in partnership with the VA. As of Veterans Day 2012, 17 of the vouchers have been issued to homeless veterans. Of these, 11 veterans have been fully housed.
“Knowing how many homeless veterans we have here in Boulder County, I’m not surprised by how quickly these vouchers are being utilized,” said Willa Williford, director of BCDHHS’ Housing Division. “But it’s a great feeling to know we’re opening doors for people who really need help.” As of January, the homeless population count was nearly 1,800 individuals in Boulder County. About 10 percent of the county’s homeless are veterans.
Housing Assistance Program Manager Amanda Guthrie noted that the Department of Veterans Affairs has indicated Boulder County’s work with the VASH vouchers thus far has been excellent. “According to their feedback, we’re quite successful in part because we’re philosophically well-aligned to serve this population, making us strong candidates for additional funding in the future,” she said.
BCDHHS is able to link clients to a wide range of services, including food and financial assistance, health coverage, and housing counseling, among others. In addition to rental assistance, the agency has been working closely with the VA to help stabilize the formerly-homeless veterans and support them on a path to self-sufficiency.
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CU Boulder researchers uncover new target for cancer research
Oct 25th
In a new paper released today in Nature, BioFrontiers Institute scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, Tom Cech and Leslie Leinwand, detailed a new target for anti-cancer drug development that is sitting at the ends of our DNA.
Researchers in the two scientists’ laboratories collaborated to find a patch of amino acids that, if blocked by a drug docked onto the chromosome end at this location, may prevent cancerous cells from reproducing. The amino acids at this site are called the “TEL patch” and once modified, the end of the chromosome is unable to recruit the telomerase enzyme, which is necessary for growth of many cancerous cells.
“This is an exciting scientific discovery that gives us a new way of looking at the problem of cancer,” Cech said. “What is amazing is that changing a single amino acid in the TEL patch stops the growth of telomeres. We are a long way from a drug solution for cancer, but this discovery gives us a different, and hopefully more effective, target.”
Nobel Prize winner Tom Cech
Cech is the director of the BioFrontiers Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Co-authors on the study include postdoctoral fellows Jayakrishnan Nandakumar and Ina Weidenfeld; University of Colorado undergraduate student Caitlin Bell; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Senior Scientist Arthur Zaug.
Telomeres have been studied since the 1970s for their role in cancer. They are constructed of repetitive nucleotide sequences that sit at the ends of our chromosomes like the ribbon tails on a bow. This extra material protects the ends of the chromosomes from deteriorating, or fusing with neighboring chromosome ends. Telomeres are consumed during cell division and, over time, will become shorter and provide less cover for the chromosomes they are protecting. An enzyme called telomerase replenishes telomeres throughout their lifecycles.
Telomerase is the enzyme that keeps cells young. From stem cells to germ cells, telomerase helps cells continue to live and multiply. Too little telomerase produces diseases of bone marrow, lungs and skin. Too much telomerase results in cells that over proliferate and may become “immortal.” As these immortal cells continue to divide and replenish, they build cancerous tumors. Scientists estimate that telomerase activation is a contributor in up to 90 percent of human cancers.
To date, development of cancer therapies has focused on limiting the enzymatic action of telomerase to slow the growth of cancerous cells. With their latest discovery, Cech and Leinwand envision a cancer drug that would lock into the TEL patch at chromosome ends to keep telomerase from binding there. This approach of inhibiting the docking of telomerase may be the elegant solution to the complex problem of cancerous cells. Cech, a biochemist, and Leinwand, a biologist, joined forces to work on their latest solution.
“This work was really made possible by the fact that our labs are so close,” Leinwand said. “My lab was able to provide the cell biology and understanding of genetics, and Tom’s lab allowed us to explore the biochemistry. We have a unique situation at BioFrontiers where labs and people comingle to make discoveries just like this.”
Leinwand is the chief scientific officer of the BioFrontiers Institute and a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.
Researchers at the University of Colorado have a significant history in developing marketable biotechnologies. Cech founded Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc. Leinwand co-founded Myogen with CU professor Michael Bristow, Hiberna and recently launched MyoKardia (http://www.myokardia.com/about.php).
The BioFrontiers Institute is an interdisciplinary institute housed at the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building at CU-Boulder. The institute is dedicated to training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists through its IQ Biology Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Ph.D. program. For more information about BioFrontiers visithttp://biofrontiers.colorado.edu
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