Prenatal care will be made available to every pregnant woman in Detroit, regardless of insurance coverage or financial status, under a plan to reduce the city's high preterm birth rate that will be announced Thursday, The Detroit News has learned. Details of the initiative, called Make Your Date, will be announced by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, Wayne State University and Detroit's three largest health care systems: the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Health System, and St. John Providence Health System. The goal of the program is to ensure that all babies born in the city have a chance at a healthy start. According to two sources familiar with the mayor's plan, the program will ensure that all Detroit mothers-to-be receive a full range of prenatal services and other support, at no additional cost, to prevent preterm delivery, which occurs at a higher rate in the city than anywhere in America.

Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson has said he wanted to make the school's technology transfer office more active in spinning off for-profit companies. Today, the school announced that two veterans of technology commercialization have joined the office to do just that. John Shallman is senior director of licensing, and Kenneth Massey is senior director of venture development. Shallman has more than 24 years of experience in technology commercialization, the last six as director of commercialization at Royal Oak-based Beaumont Health System, and before that as development manager of the life sciences sector at the Michigan Economic Development Corp. Massey has 28 years combined of biomedical research and business experience in academic, pharmaceutical and biotech areas. He will help identify startup opportunities that can grow out of university research. "We are excited to have John and Ken join our technology commercialization team," said Hilary Ratner, vice president for research at WSU, in a news release. "Together, they bring new synergy and skills to our technology commercialization team that will speed and expand our ability to translate important university scientific and technological expertise into the marketplace and contribute even more to the regional economic ecosystem."

The president of the American Medical Association met with Wayne State University School of Medicine medical students May 7 as part of her visit to Detroit organized by the Wayne County Medical Society. Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, was the guest at the School of Medicine's AMA Leadership Forum hosted in Scott Hall by AMA-Medical Student Section members. Hoven spoke to more than two dozen students interested in the future of medical education, health care policy and political advocacy. Hoven gave an update on the AMA and its involvement in the changing health care landscape, including possible changes and innovations at academic medical centers for better efficiency in undergraduate medical education, more residency positions, less student debt and a stronger emphasis on primary care as a valuable specialty option. Vice Dean of Medical Education Maryjean Schenk, MD '83, MPH, MS also participated in the discussion.

A presidential task force is exploring the possibilities of turning Wayne State University into a fully smoke-free campus. The 11-member group, made up of students, faculty and staff, started doing research in March, talking with students, observing behavior patterns and reviewing best practices from other smoke-free universities. Wayne State's current smoking policy prohibits smoking in any university building and within 25 feet of any entrance or exit. However, concerns have been raised that the current policy is not being followed. Julie Miller, secretary to the Board of Governors and chair of the task force, said several students have complained about having to walk through smoke when entering and exiting campus buildings. The task force plans to wrap up their investigation and make a recommendation to the university's president by June 15.

The inability of adults to recall experiences from early childhood may be linked to the creation of new neurons in the brain. Throughout a person's life, neurons are constantly made in the hippocampus, a region of the brain associated with memory. To see whether this process, known as neurogenesis, could drive the loss of childhood memories, researchers ran tests with animals trained to fear a particular environment through electric shock. "When new neurons are born and mature and integrate into these pre-existing neural circuits, they're going to change the connections that existed before," said Katherine Akers, now at Wayne State University and lead author of the study. "Changing these connections might degrade the integrity of the pre-existing memories." The findings, published in the journal Science, could help lead to treatments for adults with memory or cognition problems, she said.

If Wayne State University can raise the $40-million-plus it needs, the school's Hilberry Theatre will gain a significant new performance arts space on Cass Avenue in Detroit. Plans for the Hilberry Gateway project include a new 450-seat theater with a modern "thrust" stage, a stage that extends out so that the audience sits on three sides instead of just in front. Meanwhile, the existing Hilberry, originally a church building dating to 1916, would be converted to a multipurpose "black box" theater, said Matthew Seeger, professor and dean of the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts. As part of the project, the historic David Mackenzie House at 4735 Cass Ave., a Queen Anne-style mansion dating to 1895 and built by the scholar who started the Detroit Junior College in 1917, part of the nucleus of what is now WSU, will be relocated elsewhere on campus and preserved, Seeger said. A lot depends on the fund-raising, but the Gateway project is expected to be part of WSU's broader capital campaign launching in the fall. Details of that campaign are yet to be announced, but is expected to be targeted toward raising funds for a variety of WSU projects by the university's 150th anniversary celebration in 2018.

After two decades of arduous research, a National Institutes of Health funded investigator at the Children's Hospital of Michigan at the Detroit Medical Center and the Wayne State University School of Medicine has published a new study showing that many children with an often fatal type of heart disease can recover "normal size and function" of damaged sections of their hearts. The finding by Wayne State University Chair of Pediatrics Steven E. Lipshultz, M.D., F.A.A.P., F.A.H.A., clearly demonstrates that nearly one-fourth of children treated for idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) can be expected to fully recover normal size and function of left-ventricular heart muscle fibers within about two years of diagnosis. "Until now, investigators have known relatively little about specific outcomes among children who are diagnosed early with DCM," said Lipshultz. "But this new study is going to help change that, because it provides some revealing metrics showing that more than 22 percent of DCM-diagnosed children can be expected to regain normal heart size and function, with appropriate medical treatment and management of their condition."

Wayne State University has posted drawings of a $48.6 million project that will transform the corner of Cass and W. Forest in Midtown and breathe new life into the school's venerable Hilberry Theatre program for students and playgoers. The information sits on the website of WSU's College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts. Known as the Hilberry Gateway Project, the complex will include: State-of-the-art costume and scenic studios; flexible performance space for theater and dance in what is now the Hilberry Theatre; a new, and 500-seat main theater. The new theater project will sit just two blocks north of another major WSU development, announced in November: a nine-story mixed-use building that will include 248 market-rate apartments, 19,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, a hotel with up to 120 rooms and a conference center with capacity for up to 300 people.

Scott Woosley, executive director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, and State Historic Preservation Officer Brian Conway presented 12 recipients with 2014 Governor's Awards for Historic Preservation today in the state capitol. In Michigan between 2003 and 2013, historic rehabilitations using the federal historic preservation tax credits resulted in more than $1.7 billion in investment. In 2013, completed historic rehabilitation projects in Michigan alone totaled $146 million in investment. Among the 2014 recipients is the restoration project of Wayne State University's McGregor Pond & Sculpture Garden.

A delegation from the Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program, based out of Wayne State University, will be in Portland Tuesday for a five-day trip to build relationships and discuss both similarities and differences between the two U.S. cities. Nineteen fellows participating in the two-year program will spend time getting to know Portland while also participating in conversations highlighting both similarities and differences between the two cities. The mission, at its heart to answer the question: What can the two cities learn from each other? Graig Donnelly, the fellowship director, said the trip is also intended to help break down stereotypes that both cities may have of the other.

A major new pediatric research study led by a Wayne State University researcher has "major implications" for the treatment of urinary tract infections(UTIs) in millions of American children. The largest study of its kind in the world, it provides convincing evidence that children with a common urinary-tract abnormality known as "vesicoureteral reflux" (or "VUR") experience a significantly reduced risk of developing frequent UTIs when treated with long-term low-dose antibiotics. "This newly published study has major implications for the management of UTIs in children," said Tej Mattoo, professor of pediatrics at Wayne State University's School of Medicine and chief of Pediatric Nephrology and Hypertension at the Children's Hospital of Michigan at the DMC. "Our clinical trial analyzed pediatric research data collected during 6 years at 19 different sites in the United States, and what we found was that children with VUR who received antibiotics long-term were 50 percent less likely to develop recurrent UTIs."

A major new pediatric clinical trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health and published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, has "major implications" for the treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs) in millions of American children, according to a Children's Hospital of Michigan pediatrician-researcher who played a key role in the study, which was initiated nine years ago. The largest clinical trial of its kind ever to be conducted in the world, the study provides convincing evidence that children with a common urinary-tract abnormality known as "vesicoureteral reflux" (or "VUR") experience a significantly reduced risk of developing frequent UTIs when treated with long-term low-dose antibiotics. "This newly published study has major implications for the management of UTIs in children," said Dr. Tej Mattoo, Detroit Medical Center chief of pediatric nephrology and Wayne State University School of Medicine pediatrics professor. "According to the study, we now have a much clearer understanding of the relationship between UTI and VUR, and that has clinical implications that are very positive, indeed," Mattoo said.

Wayne State vocal major, Grant Anderson, was lifted up by family and by music after a near fatal car accident. He survived a craniotomy and a six-week coma, spent five months in the hospital and conducted seven years of rehabilitation. Music helped get his brain back on track. "Someone put a keyboard in front of me and then things started waking up," he said. These days Anderson spreads his message of perseverance all over, including elementary schools, where he tells kids "Whatever you're doing in life, if you get down or get knocked over, someone will be there to get you up. Just look for help and take it."

Detroit's financial problems have gotten a lot of attention in the past few years, but there is another economic story unfolding in Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder said. The state has become the high-tech hotbed of the Midwest, and has climbed from being 41st in the nation in terms of entrepreneurial activity and investing to the sixth-place spot in under a decade, the governor said. "Michigan is very strong in life-sciences and IT [startups]," Gov. Snyder said, adding that universities like Wayne State, Michigan State and University of Michigan are producing promising new technologies, and that an investment ecosystem has sprung up around these schools and other areas rich in research and development. The Michigan Venture Capital Association, in a recent survey of the state, said that the number of venture funds has grown 44 percent since 2009, with 33 venture funds, two corporate funds and two funds-of-funds active today. Gov. Snyder said that, over that same period, the number of full-time investment professionals in the state has jumped by more than 80 percent.

Alina Klin and Julie Koehler, Wayne State University professors, were guests on The Craig Fahle Show to discuss the Ethnic Layers of Detroit: Experiencing Place through Digital Storytelling project, a student-centered initiative that documents the overlapping layers of ethnic and cultural histories in downtown neighborhoods through the integration of research, digital media and mobile technologies. It will be a collection of digital community stories publicly available via a free mobile and multimedia web portal. Klin and Koehler are part of a six-member interdisciplinary WSU research group with expertise in language, literature, anthropology and instructional technology, which recently received a $60,000 National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start-up Grant.

Civic leaders in Detroit's Midtown district last week were celebrating the latest additions to the neighborhood's stock of residential and retail space. Last week, a funders recognition ceremony was held to mark the opening of the Woodward Garden Apartments project at 3909 Woodward. The $12.6-million project has created 61 mixed-income residential apartments, an outside garden space and 11,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. That block is now also home to a 300-space parking garage and about 82,000 square feet of office and commercial space housing Great Lakes Coffee, Midtown Detroit, the Kresge Foundation, Wayne State University, the Garden Theater and the Grille Midtown restaurant. Taken together, these projects and other recent additions appear to mean that Midtown, and perhaps the entire Greater Downtown, has passed a tipping point in terms of its redevelopment. New projects are in the works up and down the Woodward corridor, and the coming addition of the M-1 Rail streetcar line on Woodward, set to begin construction this summer, is expected to generate yet more interest in the district.

An unprecedented method for measuring functional connections in the human fetal brain developed at Wayne State University's School of Medicine could open a window into how the brain becomes "wired-up" at the beginning of life. Application of this method may help scientists discover the origins of neural injury or disease before a child is born. Scientists can now detect abnormal signaling between two or more brain regions, a once impossible achievement. Many early childhood diseases, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, prematurity, schizophrenia and dyslexia, involve abnormal connectivity with no structural irregularity. "As a result, how the human brain is connected into functional systems, or 'wired-up,' has become a question of global interest," said study principal investigator Moriah Thomason, Ph.D., assistant professor in the WSU School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics and the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development, and director of the Unit on Perinatal Neural Connectivity at the Perinatology Research Branch.

Tuition will increase 2 percent for medical students at Wayne State University but the new rate will be locked in while they pursue their medical degrees, under a pilot program approved Friday by the Board of Governors. The tuition increase is aimed at addressing a debt load for WSU medical school graduates that is above the national average for public medical schools, mitigating costs and helping families plan budgets, officials said. The new rate means that in-state medical school students will pay $32,425 in 2014-15, non-resident medical school students will pay $65,346 annually. But for students in their first year of medical school, there will be no additional tuition rate increase for years 2-4; those in their second year will not have a rate increase in years 3-4 and third-year medical students will see no tuition increase in their fourth year. "(The pilot program) is a way to mitigate the amount of student debt that is incurred and it's also useful for students and their families for financial planning," WSU spokesman Matt Lockwood said. "They know how much it's going to be so there are no surprises."

The House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill authored by state Rep. Matt Lori to expand the number of medical schools in Michigan that may receive cadavers that have been donated to science. Currently only Michigan State University, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan can legally receive bodies donated for scientific purposes. Under House Bill 4341, Oakland University, Western Michigan University and Central Michigan University - which have medical schools under way - would be added to the list of eligible schools. The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.

As someone who recently joined this community from Washington, D.C., I feel an obligation to let the rest of the country know that Detroit's success isn't part of a bygone era. We are still in the early stages of rebirth, but many parts of Detroit are alive and well. While still making great cars and music, our economy is rapidly diversifying and our heartbeat is palpably stronger. For example, in downtown and midtown, dozens of new businesses have opened in the past year, residential occupancy rates are at capacity and crime is down significantly. All this was made possible by investment, not by deeper cuts.