Teena Chopra, professor of medicine and co-director of Wayne State University’s Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases, is piloting a program that will educate Detroit’s youth on the significance and history of vaccines. The two-year program will be funded by a Detroit Medical Center grant of $60,000. The program will be targeted toward educating high school students during the summer to become ambassadors who return to the school to promote vaccines and educate their peers about the history and benefits of vaccines, and how vaccinations are effective in protecting communities. “This is an incredible opportunity for Detroit youth who will be empowered to serve as Vaccine Ambassadors for the city. They will gain insight into the history of vaccines and will be trained on their communication skills,” said Chopra.  

By Jeanna D. Smiley  Long COVID can cause persistent COVID-19 symptoms including loss of smell, fatigue, mood changes, and brain fog in addition to disorders of the heart, kidneys, and lungs. These symptoms emerge or continue at least one month after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. It is estimated that 7.7 to 23 million Americans may have developed long COVID, a condition also called post-acute COVID or chronic COVID. While researchers have observed that vaccines have been effective in fending off some of the worst long COVID symptoms, they also found that mild breakthrough COVID-19 infections can trigger lingering, severe symptoms of long COVID even in vaccinated people. Dr. Joseph A. Roche, an associate professor in health sciences at Wayne State University agreed that vaccines do not replace other risk reduction methods for COVID-19. He pointed to a paper he authored, which urges “continued nonpharmacological risk-reduction measures…to complement vaccination efforts.” In his research, Dr. Roche cited mathematical models which predicted that such measures should stay in place for a year, even after the population reaches ideal vaccination levels.  

More than half of all Michiganians live in counties where they should mask up indoors following a spike in COVID-19 cases, according to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across the state, 16 counties – including Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb and many others near heavily-populated Metro Detroit – are now in “high” community levels, a CDC classification to show where COVID cases and hospitalizations have risen to the point that people are recommended to wear masks indoors. The city of Detroit is also at a high risk level. Dr. Matthew Sims, director of infectious disease research for Beaumont Health and a faculty member in the Wayne State University School of Medicine, said that upticks tend to follow a particular pattern. First, community levels rise, followed by a rise in hospitalizations, and then, a few weeks later, a rise in deaths. “We’re certainly not at a crisis point,” said Sims, acknowledging the number of COVID patients he has seen in recent days has risen. “But we could be there in a few weeks if things don’t go well. We’re going to keep watching this and doing everything we can.”  

n the third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan's public higher education institutions have found themselves in a landscape rife with challenges, some long-anticipated, others entirely now. Enrollment in Michigan's public institutions overall took a downward turn during the pandemic, dropping 6.24% between fall 2019, when 280,490 students enrolled, and fall 2021 when 262,985 students enrolled. The landscape of higher education has changed, including class modality. Despite a push for in-person classes, assistant dean Kiantee Rupert-Jones said remote and hybrid classes will remain at the university's Mike Ilitch School of Business due to student demand. "Our students are usually working full time or have family obligations. So they're looking for flexibility and online and hybrid classes," she said. "And so at the graduate level, that's what we're offering, because we'll see an even greater decline in our enrollment if we don't offer that type of flexibility." Wayne State University bumped tuition for first-year undergraduates by 3.83%  for the 2021-22 school year after freezing tuition for 2020-21. Annual tuition for lower-division resident undergraduates at WSU for 2021-22 was $14,043. "It was a priority for us to keep any increase to the lowest level possible while not jeopardizing academic and student resources and investment," said Mark Kornbluh, Wayne State's provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. "Also, there was a significant increase in financial aid over this period." Between 2020 through 2022, WSU increased its commitment to financial aid by $16.6 million dollars, an increase of 21%. 

Wayne State University and Wayne Health, its affiliated physician practice group, have received a $900,000 grant from Bank of America to strengthen the Wayne Health Mobile Unit (WHMU) program. The innovative fleet of health delivery vehicles was established in partnership with Ford X in April 2020 to deliver COVID-19 testing, education, and vaccinations to underserved populations in Detroit. The support from Bank of America will provide two fully outfitted electric vehicles from Ford Motor Company that will bring preventative health care to Detroit workers in an environmentally sustainable way. The new electric Ford Transit vehicles will make regular site visits to an estimated 16-20 small- and medium-sized businesses in Detroit through partnerships between Wayne Health, the businesses, and their health insurance providers – offering comprehensive or preventative health care services to thousands of workers. Each mobile unit will function as a mobile clinical setting with an examination and consultation area and a telehealth component. The funding from Bank of America will support the purchase of the vehicles, along with three years of personnel, medical supplies and vehicle maintenance. “We are helping businesses help their workers and with these new electric vehicles, we are doing so with a small environmental impact,” said Phillip Levy, M.D., M.P.H., project lead for the WHMU program as well as Wayne Health’s chief innovation officer. “Healthier workers mean healthier business, which translates to greater economic health for the Detroit region. We are grateful to Bank of America for helping us move from crisis response to destination care, and for giving these businesses the capacity to offer high-quality, affordable health care for their workers.”  

Thirty-five years after the federal government created a public health campaign to raise awareness of a growing epidemic of alcoholism in the U.S., the problem became more pronounced, especially among young women, during the pandemic. Figures from Nielsen report national alcohol sales surged 54% in March 2020. April is National Alcohol Awareness Month, an opportunity to reexamine your relationship with alcohol, said Erika Bocknek, an associate professor of counseling psychology at Wayne State University. “It’s a moment to step back and reflect before your drinking gets out of hand,” she said. The first step to evaluating your drinking is to ask yourself why you’re having a drink, Bocknek said. “Alcohol plays a pervasive role in our culture, so it’s easy to make drinking issues seem less problematic. It’s important to remember that the problem can be invisible…The reason alcohol works as a coping strategy is because it dulls your senses and forces you to relax,” Bocknek said.  

The team at Wayne Health knows to break the cycle of health disparities in Black and brown communities, they must take their tools on the road. For more than a year, the Wayne Health mobile unit has broken down the barriers to healthcare access in Detroit's Black neighborhoods, providing COVID vaccines, heart health awareness, and other services. Dr. Philip Levy, a professor of emergency medicine and assistant vice president for translational science and clinical research innovation at Wayne State and chief innovation officer for Wayne State University Physician Group, said that his team has noticed that nearly 7 out of of every 10 visitors has elevated blood pressure. "Most of the folks have pretty profound hypertension, and a lot of them fall into the category of stage 2 hypertension, which is advanced hypertension that we need to do something about as soon as possible," said Dr. Levy. This summer, Wayne Health will officially being its Achieve Greater initiative, which will provide Detroiters with the resources to manage their health. After one visit with the mobile health unit, all other follow ups are done remotely. Wayne Health is partnering with a number of church groups, recreation centers, and other community groups to connect with more residents. Dr. Levy said the life expectancy of a Detroiter is up to 15 years less than Michigan's average life expectancy of 77.7 years, and that deaths linked to heart disease jumped 25-30% during the pandemic. Wayne Health wants to help future generations of Black families live longer. "Ultimately, we want everyone in the state, and especially in the City of Detroit and the Black community, to live as many years as everyone else," Dr. Levy said. 

By Lily Bohlke  An analysis of mobile health clinics launched in the Detroit metro area during the pandemic finds it’s a model that can deliver health screenings and health care and could be replicated in other communities. The Wayne Health Mobile Units are specially equipped vans with medical equipment and professionals. They began as testing sites for front-line workers in the early days of COVID-19, out of a partnership between Wayne State University and Ford Motor Co. Over time, they transitioned to what Dr. Phillip Levy, a professor of emergency medicine and assistant vice president for translational science and clinical research innovation at Wayne State and chief innovation officer for Wayne State University Physician Group, called a “vision of patient-centric, portable population health.” “If they have comorbidities and need doctors’ appointments or health care,” said Levy, who runs the program, “can we provide linkages around that? If they have food insecurity, can we help them get food access so that we can really be delivering on the holistic approaches that are needed in order to keep this person healthy and avoid complications?” Appointments are not necessary, and they don’t require insurance or identification – which can be barriers to care. Levy added that bringing care into communities also reduces the barriers of transportation time and cost. Beyond testing and treatment for COVID, Levy said the Mobile Health Units do blood screenings for high cholesterol, diabetes, and kidney disease, and provide prevention infrastructure – as well as blood pressure screenings for hypertension. Levy said they are also building out HIV screening and treatment, and have started working with the state’s needle-exchange program.  

By Kiara Hay  A nationwide infant formula shortage has families in metro Detroit struggling to feed their babies. Empty shelves and signs rationing out supplies is a sight many have not seen since the early days of the pandemic. But moms across metro Detroit say it’s a constant crisis. Moms are struggling to find sensitive-stomach and lactose-free formulas, and some are relying on limited doctors’ samples or cans brought from relatives out-of-state. “We had a bad situation with access to baby formula before, and the recall by Abbott only made it worse,” said Kevin Ketels, an associate professor at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University. Ketels says a massive federal recall earlier in the year is one of the causes for the empty shelves, with 31% of formula products being out of stock across the country. According to Ketels, Abbott has begun airlifting formula products to the states to fill the gap, and other companies are looking at ways to stretch the supply. But he said the solution could take weeks, not months. “Hopefully, the company can ramp up production quickly and we can avoid the severe shortages that we have right now, but we ill not be able to escape the general shortages just because of the pandemic.” 

By Arash Javanbakht  In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 brought rising levels of stress, anxiety and depression. But stay-at-home orders and a national emergency prompted many psychiatric and psychotherapy offices to shut down and cancel in-person appointments. The country needed a robust – and fast – transition to mental health telemedicine. And the pandemic turned out to be just the thing to make it happen. I was skeptical of telemedicine in 2015 when I began working at Wayne State University as a psychiatrist and researcher in the medical school. At that time, the department of psychiatry and its affiliated clinics were using telemedicine in primary and emergency care and for substance use recovery. But the idea of seeing patients via video had been around since long before then. In 1973, a team of behavioral scientists studied the two-way interactive television system Massachusetts General Hospital started using in 1969. The hospital provided mental health evaluations at an off-site medical station at Logan International Airport in Boston and a Veterans Affairs hospital outside the city. “The system has proven to be feasible and acceptable to individuals and institutions in the community, providing psychiatric skills on a much wider scale, in a more accessible way, and faster than any other system,” researchers wrote in their analysis. 

By Keenan Smith  COVID-19 cases are well off their omicron surge, but in the last week, cases have plateaued. Some communities are seeing an uptick in cases and hospitalizations. Health leaders across the country are watching the omicron BA.2 variant, which is more transmissible than the original omicron strain. COVID-19 wastewater surveillance, which includes the collection and sampling of wastewater to watch for outbreaks, can play a key role in public health and predicting future surges. Researchers Jeffrey Ram, a professor of physiology at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine, and William Shuster, professor and chair of civil and environmental engineering at Wayne State University’s College of Engineering, have been testing specimens from a sewer line 20 feet below the street in Midtown. “The signal in wastewater gives a couple of days, maybe even up to two weeks advance warning,” said Ram. Shuster added, “That gives us some time to get out to our public health authorities.”  

By Herbert Smitherman, Jr. Dr. Herbert Smitherman, Jr., professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine and president and CEO of Health Centers Detroit Foundation, wrote an opinion piece celebrating the science that allowed us to fight back against a pandemic. “…we are the only generation in human history that has been able to fight back against a pandemic with science through the development of a vaccine, to end that same pandemic in real time. Please do not underestimate what we have accomplished as a human society and the impact of the 2020 COVID vaccine or the science behind it. The literal enormity of isolating the genetic code of COVID-19, developing a vaccine based on historic science, mass producing that vaccine, the logistics of distributing that vaccine across the globe, establishing sites and staff to administer the vaccine, agreeing to public policies and educating the public regarding COVID and the vaccine, getting shots in arms, developing a mechanism to test for the virus and the development of IV and oral treatments for COVID, has been a feat like no other in human history.”

As COVID-19 cases are falling quickly after a fourth surge earlier this year, the hope is that we are moving beyond the pandemic. But, as metro Detroiters get back to normal life, there are group of people at risk of being left behind: Those who are suffering the long-term effects of the virus. Dr. Teena Chopra, an infectious disease specialist at Wayne State University, said that long COVID remains one of the biggest mysteries of the pandemic. It’s believed to be related to the inflammation of the immune system. Dr. Chopra said that more than 80% of hospitalized COVID patients suffer from long COVID symptoms. Women are twice as likely as men to have long COVID, and those with obesity, asthma, COPD and over the age of 65 are also at greater risk. Those with long COVID tend to have symptoms that fall into three categories: fatigue, cardio-respiratory, and neuropsychiatric symptoms. “There is a ton of research going on at Wayne State University. Our researchers are working night and day, and they are learning more and more…It is going to be a long process, and it is going to require a lot of patience, both on the part of the patient and on the provider.”   

This week, the Biden administration is launching a test to treat COVID program. High-risk patients with COVID symptoms will be able to walk into hundreds of pharmacies for a free COVID test and walk out with a free course of pills. The program, according to some experts, is limited in scope. COVID pills are new, and they come with prescribing challenges. Pfizer’s Paxlovid can interfere with many commonly prescribed drugs and cause health problems. Merck’s molnupiravir comes with precautions due to reproductive risks. Independent pharmacies say they can help. “Pharmacists are medication experts. We have been managing drug interactions and dose adjustments routinely for decades. We could handle this,” said Susan Davis, a pharmacy professor at Wayne State University’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.  

Hannah L. Schacter, assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State University, authored an article about the reduction in bullying that occurred when schooling was online. She says that online school during the pandemic was hard on many teens, but new research has found that students were bullied less during online instruction than while attending classes in person. Bullied teens reported heightened anxiety when they were attending in-person school, but not when they were attending online school. The higher proportion of the year a teen spent in online school, the less likely they were to report being bullied.  

As Michigan continues to recover from the latest COVID-19 surge, state health departments are beginning to ease mask recommendations for indoor public settings. The new guidance now allows individual businesses and schools to decide whether or not their establishment requires masks. According to the state, no immediate resurgence of the virus is predicted so they’re calling this phase of the pandemic “recovery.” Dr. Teena Chopra, professor of infectious diseases at Wayne State University, says these relaxed rules mean individuals need to be flexible and more aware of their own risks. “People who are at higher risk…if they’re going to be in a setting where it’s going to be crowded, they should continue masking,” she said.  

For the first time in nearly a week, border officials reported “no delay” Monday as trucks and cars cruised 1.4 miles across the Ambassador Bridge into Canada. Reopening the bridge after a seven-day Canadian trucker protest in Windsor was “a win” for Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said. But economic experts warn the weeklong trade disruption could reverberate in the short- and long-term. Auto industry losses neared $300 million from Monday, Feb. 7 through Tuesday, Feb. 15, the Anderson Economic Group estimates, including $144.9 million in lost wages and $155 million in losses to automakers. This was mostly felt in the Detroit-Windsor region but stretched as far as Huntsville, Alabama. Beyond the immediate blow, the lingering effects of the trade disruption could erode confidence in cross-border trade, said John Taylor, professor of global supply chain management at Wayne State University. For years, Taylor says it could impact long-term decisions on where companies build plants and who to pick as suppliers. “Anything that reduces the confidence in that system and makes us want to use local suppliers, that has a negative impact on the quality of goods, the variety of goods, the price of goods, and so on,” Taylor said.  

COVID-19 vaccines have been instrumental in the fight against the pandemic. Life hasn’t returned to normal yet, but vaccines have been highly effective against severe disease and death, saving countless lives and helping our already strained hospital systems from being overwhelmed. Researchers are already working on the next generation of vaccines in hopes of fighting new strains of the virus and making it easier to deliver vaccines at home and around the world. Nearly 5.9 million Michiganders are fully vaccinated, but as we have seen, variants can present major setbacks. The next generation of vaccines could change how we deliver the shot. Nasal sprays and pills would make distribution easier, but those versions may not be available this year. “We are already hearing about technologically advanced vaccines that can help us with challenges and barriers and storage,” said Dr. Teena Chopra, a professor of infectious disease at Wayne State University. She says easier storage will be key to reaching rural areas and less developed nations, a vital step in stopping viral variants. Dr. Chopra says for now, we need to focus on making current COVID-19 treatments more available, and, in addition to technological advancement, social innovation. “…the U.S. has one of the lowest vaccine uptakes, and I think largely it is due to the lack of trust that our population has. So, I think we need to work on that trust component.,” she said.  

By Kim Russell  As attorneys argued for an injunction that would give police the ability to arrest protesters who block the Ambassador Bridge, they told a Canadian judge the blockade was proving to have a “catastrophic impact” economically already. They spoke about an impact on all consumers and the auto industry. Economists say it is costing automakers hundreds of millions of dollars. “Once it gets beyond a few days it becomes a very serious problem,” said John Taylor, associate professor of supply chain management at Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business. Taylor says right now it could be written off as a short, one-time event by the auto industry, but if the government does not end it, it could change the auto industry in a way that weakens U.S. automakers globally. “It costs a lot of money to sit on inventory, storage, obsolescence when the model year ends financing the inventory. It can easily have a cost of 15% of the value of the inventory in operating expense…” said Taylor. “…Anything that impedes the flow across the border is basically a tax on the price of goods.” 

Albert Zhu, an economics professor at the Wayne State University Mike Ilitch School of Business, talks about the most recent consumer price index report, and what the rapid acceleration of inflation means for our purchasing power in metro Detroit. “So, the reports came out this morning and it very quickly made news headlines. And the number 7.5% for headline inflation and 6% for core inflation, those two are both 40-year highs. And back 40 years ago, that was the period we call The Great Inflation,” Zhu said.