Kevin Ketels, assistant professor of teaching global supply chain management at Wayne State University, joins in a conversation about Twin Metals’ lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s cancelation of two key federal mine leases and the government seems to be pushing toward electric vehicles and wind and solar power. The suit is the latest step in a longstanding back and forth over controversial proposed mines that’s now spanned three presidential administrations. “There is definitely going to be some tension in the upcoming years as we try to navigate electric vehicles and producing the batteries and materials for them. There’s no easy way to do this. Opening up these mines in some of these areas – there will be questions about the impact on local communities and the environment. We definitely feel that tension…" 

By Keenan Smith  For college students, the fall semester is just days away, and for another school year, there will be concerns about large groups of people in close proximity. It’s not only COVID-19 this year, but also the growing number of cases of monkeypox. No cases have been identified on campuses in Michigan, but they have been reported on a number of other college campuses. Monkeypox is a new challenge for colleges, but lessons learned from COVID-19 could provide a path forward. Wayne State, like other Michigan universities, is launching an information campaign this week for the return to campus for the school’s 25,000 students. “Our efforts are sort of multi-pronged. But the first is always education,” Laurie Lauzon Clabo, the university’s chief health and wellness officer said. She said Wayne State will use lessons learned from COVID-19 to raise awareness about monkeypox, like how it’s spread and symptoms to watch for. “We developed a coronavirus web page for the university’s website. We will do the same for monkeypox,” she said. Regular updates are beginning this week and officials are tapping into campus experts in epidemiology and infectious disease. The university is also working to fight the stigma of monkeypox. “Monkeypox is not a gay disease. It is not a disease of men who have sex with men. It is a disease that is spread by close contact,” Clabo said.  

By Dave Kinchen and David Komer  We know from recent events more and more first responders are feeling burned out – due to stress, long hours, and graphic things they see that they can’t speak to others about. But now there’s help. “We are talking about police, firefighters, dispatchers, corrections officers and EMS. It’s a different population,” said Dr. Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist who directs the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University. “They have their own different experiences.” Wayne State’s Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Sciences Department has developed the Frontline Stronger Together Program to give first responders mental and emotional support. “The trauma and stress in this population is different than most other people in the way that, if I have a horrible car accident or I may be assaulted, then I come back to my usual, safe, normal life and I can recover,” said Javanbakht. “For these people – it’s every single day…We have different ways of helping. Part is therapy or psychotherapy, or what we call talking cure. There are different ways of it. Talking about the trauma. Talking about the meanings and perceptions a person has created after trauma…” Treatments also include augmented reality devices to help first responders approach social situations in a healthy way while being treated for job-related PTSD.   

By Jake Bekemeyer Following a competitive national search, Wayne State University has appointed Mike Poterala as its new vice president and general counsel, effective November 2022. An accomplished lawyer and leader in higher education, Poterala will provide legal counsel and representation to the university, ensure compliance, and minimize legal risk while also fostering sound decision-making in operation, instruction, research and administration. "I take great pride in supporting the success of students, faculty and staff, and in providing rewarding professional experiences and development opportunities for attorneys and staff," said Poterala. "I'm a proud Detroiter, and I'm thrilled to return home and help further Wayne State's critical mission." 

Choreographer Biba Bell, assistant professor of dance at Wayne State University, and composer-director Joo Won Park, associate professor of music technology at WSU, premiered A DREAM IS A HOUSE for remembering the future, which was created specifically for the McGregor Memorial Conference Center in Detroit. The hourlong performance included 21 dancers, nine musicians and inside of architect Minoru Yamasaki’s prismatic jewel box of marble and glass, built in 1958. Taking advantage of the faceted atrium’s unusual acoustics, Park’s original score for electric guitar, percussion and eight laptop computers emanated from small amplifiers distributed throughout the skylit room. At one point, the entire ensemble of dancers rushed from one end of the space to the other. Every dance is site-specific in some sense, but, in a warming world changed by war, political upheaval and a pandemic, some choreographers forgo traditional venues entirely.  

By Kristin Jordan Shamus  Thousands of Michigan students will get a crash course about monkeypox when they return to campuses across the state in the days and weeks ahead. Health leaders are trying to limit the spread of monkeypox among a population that could be vulnerable amid a quickly growing outbreak that has swelled to more than 14,000 U.S. cases, including 126 in Michigan as of Aug. 19. College students – who may pack into crowded bars and share drinks at parties or engage in casual hookups – are at risk for contracting the virus, which is known to spread through skin-to-skin contact, exchange of bodily fluids, respiratory droplets and by touching contaminated objects. About 99% of U.S. cases are among men – the vast majority of whom are gay or bisexual and have sex with men – though health leaders say anyone can catch the virus and spread it. Laurie Lauzon Clabo, dean of Wayne State University’s College of Nursing and WSU’s chief health and wellness officer, said leaders learned early in the COVID-19 pandemic that “the more methods of communication we use, the more we reach a broad audience.” For that reason, in addition to posters and flyers around campus, “we’ll be sending out a start-of-the-semester message…in the coming days that will address our COVID policies for fall, and here’s some information about monkeypox and here’s where to find out more about monkeypox,” she said. “We are developing education materials…that are really targeted for a university campus audience: What are the things that put me at risk? What can I do? And so really basic lay-level education is one. The other is ensuring that anyone who wants a test can get a test. That’s really important to us.” A lot of work at universities across the state right now, Clabo said, centers on education and ensuring students understand the risks while not being too alarmist. “We have to be very careful that we don’t speak so loudly that people tune out,” she said. “We want…to dispel some of the myths that we see already surrounding monkeypox, things like the belief that this is a gay disease, that it is only spread through sexual contact. This is a disease of close personal contact, skin-to-skin contact, sharing drinks, utensils, touching contaminated surfaces…A student who is not gay is not immune. The outbreaks we’ve seen in the United States are more likely as a result of a social network that has close personal contact, and those outbreaks could have just as easily occurred in a public gym or other kinds of congregate settings.”  

Michigan has over 11,000 bridges, but less than 4,000 are considered to be in ‘good’ condition and over 1,100 are in ‘poor’ condition. Michigan is behind on bridge maintenance and playing catch up is a challenge. Bill Shuster, the chair of the Wayne State University department of civil and environmental engineering, discusses how Michigan’s bridges have come to reach this state of disrepair. “We have multiple types of infrastructure that are degraded just as fast as each other and competing for funds. The state of perpetual catch-up, in terms of assessment, evaluation…this is where project management comes into play. How do we take a situation where we have a dearth of material and interrupted supply chain and then take that and assessment data to determine how close to disaster are we…there’s so much going on in the civic infrastructure space, we’re divided as to how much we can put toward bridges…”  

By Grace Tucker  Detroit school district officials are planning more aggressive steps to reverse a rise in chronic absenteeism, a huge obstacle to their efforts to help students recover academically from the impact of the pandemic. In the latest school year, 77% of Detroit Public Schools Community District student were chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10% of school days. Researchers say the figures are further evidence that the district needs to do more to address the broad range of causes for Detroit’s long struggles with absenteeism, including socioeconomic and transportation factors. “I think there’s this impression that Detroit parents don’t care about school, and that could not be further from the truth,” said Sarah Lenhoff, an associate professor at Wayne State University’s College of Education. “Families want their kids to be in school.” Lenhoff co-authored a study analyzing the rise in absenteeism rates during the 2020-21 school year, and said technology was a main contributor, noting that 40% of parents reported that computer problems, like Wi-Fi issues and poor-quality laptops hindered student access to online classrooms. When Detroit’s kids don’t make it to school, Lenhoff said. “it really speaks to the need for the city to invest more in employment, invest in stabilized housing, and make sure that families have the food and health care that they need, so that they can give their children what they want to give them…get them into school.”  

By Dorothy Hernandez  Marick Masters, a management professor at Wayne State University and labor expert, joins Detroit Today to discuss unions in America. He said corporations and labor both played a role in the decline of union membership, but the trade policies driving the U.S. economy are the primary culprit. While union membership has continued to decline in recent years, last month saw an increase in momentum for labor movements in Michigan. Both state congressional staffers and nursing home workers continued formal efforts toward unionization, continuing a spike in union worker petition filings nationally this year. “I would say the principal blame lies in the structure of the U.S. economy, which is dominated by the wealthy and those who have supported free trade policies, which has led to the exodus and off-shoring of jobs,” said Masters. “Treaties like NAFTA and our trade relations with China have cost lots of manufacturing jobs, which have resulted in the decline of unionized workers.” “I’d say that if we’re looking to place blame on the unions, it wouldn’t be so much that they did a poor job representing members. In fact, the opposite is probably the case,” he said. “They probably did too good a job in trying to raise wages and raise benefits to where the companies could not remain competitive with the onslaught of international competition with unfair trade rules.” 

By Phoebe Taylor-Vuolo  An addiction recovery center in Otsego County has introduced the first naloxone vending machine in New York. Naloxone, also known as the brand name drug Narcan, can reverse opioid overdoses. Experts hope these vending machines will improve access to the lifesaving drug. The machine was inspired by a program out of the Wayne State University Center for Behavioral Health and Justice. Matt Costello, WSU’s program manager, works with county jails and community centers to bring in naloxone vending machines. The machines are placed in visiting rooms, or in release areas, so people can access them on their way out of jail. Costello said the vending machines offer anonymity, helping to reduce the barriers that people who use drugs often face accessing naloxone. “Again, this is a population that is already dealing with a lot of challenges…many of them stigma-based, shame-based,” Costello said. He said that reducing stigma and providing anonymity are key, and that vending machines should also be placed in areas that are accessible 24 hours a day. “[It would be] nice if crises only happened from nine to five on Monday through Friday,right? We know in the real world, that just doesn’t happen. So if you have a strategically placed machine, it offers the opportunity for ease of access,” Costello said. The program in Michigan has placed 50 machines and distributed 19,000 kits of naloxone.  

Two Michigan universities and a California-based marijuana research group are using about $40 million in Michigan marijuana tax revenue to research the therapeutic effects of cannabis on veterans suffering from suicidality and post-traumatic stress disorder. Wayne Stathe University, the University of Michigan and a marijuana research organization called MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) will spend the next three to five years studying hundreds of veterans using cannabis. They will examine variances in the effectiveness of pot use based on factors such as CBD and THC ratios, use prolonged exposure therapy and the inhalation of cannabis flower. The research, a requirement of the 2018 ballot initiative that legalized recreational marijuana in Michigan is rare nationally because cannabis remains illegal at the federal level and is considered a schedule 1 drug on par with heroin, ecstasy and peyote. The same federal laws that make such funding a rarity also make the research funded by state money all the more challenging as the groups struggle to comply with federal research standards involving a controlled substance. “I could go to a dispensary tomorrow two blocks from my office to buy whatever I need, but I’m prohibited by the FDA to give that to anyone in my laboratory,” said Leslie Lundahl, the lead principal investigator for Wayne State University’s research project. “We’ve identified a supplier who can give us exactly what we need and they’ve begun the process of getting approval,” she said. “But it could take a while.” Wayne State University received the most funding of any one group, raking in nearly $19.6 million between the two grant funding periods in 2021 and 2022. WSU researchers are working on a series of three areas to study marijuana’s effect on combatting veteran suicidality and PTSD. The study will work to determine the lowest dose of THC that still retains effectiveness in order to find ways for veterans to maintain concentration, memory or function while using cannabis. A second trial will examine whether cannabis use improves outcomes of prolonged exposure therapy, a common treatment for PTSD that includes discussions of trauma, triggers and reminders to decrease its debilitating effect. 

By Bryce Huffman With monkeypox cases on the rise in Michigan, some queer advocates in Detroit worry the heightened risk to gay men could create a stigma for a virus that can harmful to everyone. As of Friday, there were 17 confirmed cases of the virus in Detroit and 72 total across the state. Monkeypox is a viral infection closely related to smallpox and causes the same symptoms – flu-like fevers, headaches, backaches, muscle aches and chills. The virus is transmitted by close, personal contact, including skin-to-skin touches, kissing or other sexually intimate contact, or by touching fabrics or objects touched by someone infected. According to the CDC, over 7,510 cases have been recorded nationwide and most cases involve men who have sex with men or patients that are identifying as LGBTQ. Chris Sutton, broadcast coordinator for LGBT Detroit, worries that messaging around who is most at risk to contract monkeypox is triggering and will increase anti-gay stigma. Patricia Wren, chair of the department at Wayne State University, said the messaging around monkeypox makes people assume it is only sexually transmitted, but it’s mostly spread through long periods of close contact, not necessarily sex. “Right now, there may be more cases in men who have sex with men. These men may also be better informed about sexually transmitted diseases and, thus, more likely to see their physician if worrying symptoms appear,” Wren said. “But if the HIV/AIDS pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that viruses – including monkeypox – are transmitted by specific behaviors and not by sexual orientations or identities.” 

An investigation by the Senate Committee on Finance into problems with the U.S. organ transplant network held a hearing Thursday after benefitting from the work of two Wayne Law School students, Yesenia Jimenez and Thea Barrak, who interned with the committee under a summer program administered by the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School “The Levin Center has been sending summer law interns to Capitol Hill for seven years now to work for committees conducting bipartisan investigations,” said Jim Townsend, director of the Levin Center. “It’s been a delight to see Wayne law students not only gain investigative legal experience, but also earn praise from committee staff for their high-quality work. Yesenia and Thea have made Wayne Law proud while raising the law school’s visibility in Washington.”