Three of four UK's research professorships fund work in health

Three of the four University of Kentucky research professorships awarded for the 2012-13 school year will fund health-related work. Each award is worth $40,000.

Mark Filmore, right, who teaches in UK's Department of Psychology, will research the role that cognitive processes have in promoting risk-taking behavior. It will have an emphasis on recreational drug use, including alcohol abuse and dependence.

Douglas Andres, left, professor and vice chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry,  "had begun to define the molecular pathways that control adult neurogenesis, and have shown that Rit, a Ras family G-protein, plays a critical role in the survival of newborn adult neurons following traumatic brain injury," a press release reads. If that is the case, strategies that target Rit activation may be effective in helping recover or repair the injury.

In the Department of Internal Medicine, Mark Dignan, right, leads a program that focuses on cancer prevention and control in community settings using community-based participatory methods. Using the funds of his professorship, he plans to expand his training, "allowing him to conduct translational research with teams that include basic and clinical scientists as they continue their work to reduce cancer health disparities," the press release reads.

Christopher Pool, professor in the Department of Anthropology, is the fourth professorship recipient. (Read more)

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Caregivers of wounded soldiers find their lives are also changed; getting compensation

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan disproportionately affect rural areas, which provide more than the average number of recruits. The soldiers who make it home alive come back changed, with traumatic brain damage, post-traumatic stress syndrome or other injuries that require full-time care. Mostly wives and older parents are left bearing the burden.

Catrin Einhorn of The New York Times reports that many caregivers have to quit their jobs and are forced to spend their savings and retirement funds to pay for treatment. A growing number of caregivers suffer from anxiety, depression and exhaustion as a result of their new routines. Rosie Babin, 51-year-old mother of a severely wounded 22-year-old son, was managing an accounting office before her son's injury. Though she's happy to have her son home alive, she now has to take blood-pressure medicine and sleeping pills. "I felt like I went from this high-energy, force-to-be-reckoned-with businesswoman to a casualty of war," Babin told Einhorn. "And I was working furiously at not feeling like a victim of war."

According to research by Joan Griffin, a research investigator with the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, most of the injured are in their 20s and 30s, making this the first time since Vietnam the V.A. has seen such an influx of youth, which extending the length of care to years and sometimes decades. On average, Griffin found that family members spend more than 40 hours a week providing care, making it nearly impossible for them to keep a job.

Organizations like the Wounded Warrior Project have tried to ease the financial burden on these families by lobbying Congress to provide direct compensation and other benefits to caregivers and their families. In 2010, the veteran's agency approved 1,222 applications and awarded monthly stipends of $1,600 to $1,800 to caregivers. Along with the money, they can receive health insurance and counseling, Einhorn reports. This law only applies to caregivers of service members injured after Sept. 11, 2001, and it's uncertain who will qualify and how compensation will be determined.
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