Car buyers will need some patience this summer as new and used vehicles are still slow to get on the lot. The car buying experience will feel more like a layaway purchase than a quick exchange negotiation as most cars that land on the lot have been claimed in advance. Pre-ordering has become the norm. Deliveries to the dealership have been slow to recover, although they have tripled since the beginning of the year. The backlog is starting at the auto plants. The summer of 2022 does look better than last summer in terms of lost production, said John Taylor, chair of Wayne State University’s department of marketing and supply chain management. Alternate suppliers, flexible design and reduced functionality have boosted production this year. “Time cures a lot of problems,” Taylor said. “Eventually, we’re going to get out of this. It’s still not going to be great for 2022 and 2023, but there’s some improvement.”  

Recovery following the trauma of a school shooting is not uniform – it varies by community, from school to school, across student subgroups and even among individuals. It is also impacted by factors like the availability of school counselors, barriers to accessing mental health support and pre-existing traumas. Family structure, how different communities grieve, and past experiences with gun violence and law enforcement can all inform this process as well. Because of these differences, measures commonly adopted by schools nationwide in response to school shootings — like doubling down on school police or bringing in grief counselors — should be tweaked or reconsidered to fit the needs of Black, Hispanic and immigrant communities, according to school trauma, crisis and security experts. As part of that crisis response, many lawmakers and school leaders have discussed increasing law enforcement and security in schools. However, this option may not be suitable for all students. Black and Hispanic students are already more likely to be in schools with police presence – which is associated with increased school arrests – than their white counterparts. “Schools cause trauma. And not just through school shootings, but in a myriad of ways, especially for historically marginalized and systematically oppressed groups,” said Addison Duane, a former elementary school teacher with a Ph.D. in educational psychology and now a professor at Wayne State University. “And I think that, in the wake of something as horrific and preventable as a school shooting, the trauma compounds.”   

The most effective intervention to preterm birth is the administration of a natural hormone, progesterone, in patients at risk for premature delivery. Two categories of patients have been eligible for this treatment: those with a short cervix and those with a previous preterm birth. But research published this week by researchers of the Perinatology Research Branch at the Wayne State University School of Medicine indicates that progesterone is not effective in reducing the rate of preterm birth in women with a history of such birth. “We have advocated that vaginal progesterone reduces the rate of preterm birth in women with a short cervix. This evidence is solid and derived from multiple studies including randomized clinical trials, meta-analyses and implementation research,” said Roberto Romero, M.D., DMedSci, chief of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Perinatology Research Branch and professor of molecular obstetrics and genetics at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. “Some people believe that vaginal progesterone is effective not only in women with a short cervix but also in patients with a prior history of preterm birth. We have completed a systematic review and meta-analysis that shows that this is not the case.” 

Detroit’s maternal death rate is triple the national average. Nurses and advocates in the city say Black women in particular will face dire consequences if the U.S. Supreme Court criminalizes abortion. A leaked draft opinion suggests the high court this month is poised to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision nearly 50 years after it enshrined a Constitutional right to abortion without excessive government restriction. The ruling would trigger a 1931 state law banning most abortions, effectively outlawing the practice in Michigan and requiring more women to take on birth-related health risks. Researchers who track maternal mortality expect to see a corresponding increase in pregnancy-related deaths if abortion is outlawed, particularly among women of color. Black women in Michigan are three times as likely to die from pregnancy than white women. Gwendolyn Norman, a lifelong Detroiter, nurse, faculty member at Wayne State University and coordinator at the Alliance for Innovation in Maternal Health, said a large body of research has shown implicit biases and racial discrimination in the healthcare system affect Black women’s health. “The higher up on the socioeconomic level, the greater the disparity you see in birth outcomes for African American women,” Norman said. “They’re exposed to factor that are outside of their own personal control.” Norman said she’s interviewed Black women who have been ignored by healthcare providers when they bring up pain, irregular bleeding or other signs of troubles with their pregnancies. Black mothers are also less likely than white mothers to receive prenatal care, which makes them five times more likely to have a pregnancy-related death. “African Americans in general do not get the same treatment and care when walk into a healthcare institution,” Norman said. “They are regarded differently and treated differently. In critical situations where life and death decisions are being made, that disproportionately impacts people of color.”  

Over the past decade, poison control has been getting more and more reports of kids accidentally ingesting melatonin supplements. In fact, reports of melatonin ingestions among children jumped by 530% from January 1, 2012 to December 21, 2021, according to a new study published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. For the study, a team from the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, the Wayne State University School of Medicine (Varun Vohra, PharmD) and Boston Children’s Hospital analyzed data on children from the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System.

A new study identified a link between persistent racial residential segregation and worse diabetes health in Black adolescents with type 1 diabetes. These findings highlight the impact of residential location for young people with diabetes, Deborah A. Ellis, professor of family medicine and public health sciences at Wayne State University, said at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions. Ellis and colleagues evaluated the association between racial residential segregation and diabetes management and glycemic control among Black adolescents with type 1 diabetes. “In the world of adult diabetes, there has been a lot of focus on social determinants of health, but in pediatrics, there has been less,” said Ellis. The main outcomes measured were HbA1c and diabetes management. The results suggested that racial residential segregation was predictive of the diabetes health of Black youths with type 1 diabetes, even after controlling for effects of household income and neighborhood adversity. “It is interesting that racial residential segregation was even more explanatory than the adversity characteristics of the neighborhood,” said Ellis.

Elderly populations are some of the country’s most vulnerable – hampered by physical and health limitations, many survive on fixed incomes with no buffer in case of an emergency. Yet when their homes flood, seniors face thousands of dollars in repairs or face living in a toxic environment if they can’t afford them. Flooding has been an issue for close to half of Detroit households. Data collected through a survey and overseen by Wayne State University and the University of Michigan determined 43% of all Detroit households experienced flooding from 2012-2020.

Wayne State University plans to hold a memorial service this weekend for U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan’s longest-serving U.S. senator who died last year. Sunday’s service was announced by Levin’s namesake, the school’s Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University Law School. The Detroit Democrat’s family, friends and colleagues plan to honor his life and legacy at the invitation-only memorial at 1 p.m. Sunday at the university’s Student Center Ballroom.   

For decades, psychologists and pain researchers have recognized the role of thoughts and emotions in pain. Pain begins with a signal that nerves send to the brain. But what we actually experience is the brain’s interpretation of that signal – and the brain can sometimes be an unreliable narrator. For those experiencing chronic pain, pain often persists. Some experiencing chronic pain seek online communities, which are not always supportive environments. While conducting research on online groups for people with chronic pain, Hallie Tankha, a doctoral student researching pain psychology at Wayne State University, remembers one incident in particular: One member of a chronic pain Facebook group had left his bed for the first time in days and gone out to volunteer. When he shared how the experience had relieved some of his pain, other members of the group interpreted his anecdote as unsolicited advice and an indictment of their own inability to recover.  

A Starbucks store in Grand Rapids last month became the first in the state to unionize amid a broader organizing effort at the country’s largest coffee chain. Now, workers at nearly a dozen other Starbucks stores in the state are poised to determine whether they’ll join a union that has racked up dozens of wins across the country in the past six months. Voting in union elections administered by the National Labor Relations Board is scheduled for Tuesday at five stores in Ann Arbor and Thursday at five others in Clinton Township, Flint, Grand Blanc, Lansing and East Lansing. A store in Ypsilanti will vote on June 17. “This is a significant movement for the labor movement as a whole and the retail industry in particular. It reflects a potential change in the climate that is more favorable toward unions, particularly among younger workers,” said Marick Masters, a professor of management at Wayne State University who is working on a book about organizing efforts at Starbucks and Amazon. “The unions have had a great deal of success so far in winning certification of elections at various sites in which they petitioned to organize.”

By Kim Kozlowski   Wayne State University was getting national attention for having one of the worst graduation rates, especially among African American students, in 2013 when President M. Roy Wilson arrived. In the years before his tenure, WSU’s six-year graduation rate hovered in the 30% range and sunk as low as 26% in 2011. Graduation rates for Black students were markedly worse. Graduation rates were slowly improving when Wilson arrived. The year before, in 2012-13, the six-year graduation rate for all students overall was 27.6%, more than three times the 9.2% of African American students who were graduating in six years. Wayne State has since increased its overall six-year and African American graduation rate to 55.8% and 34.6%, respectively, in 2021. The APLU bestowed the 2018 Degree Completion Award on Wayne State for using innovative ways to help students complete degrees and having the most improved college graduation in the nation. The disparity among African American students leaving WSU without a degree was especially concerning, Wilson says, because beyond the impact on the student it also “has intergeneration effects if you can’t break the cycle.” “If you don’t have a diverse workforce and have one segment of society that is making it and getting the good jobs…you not only widen the income gap between minorities and non-minorities, you also widen other gaps,” Wilson said, pointing to quality of life, life expectancy and health. “It’s not just an issue of lifetime income, it’s an issue of what kind of life you are going to lead.” Before he arrived, WSU committed to investing $10 million over five years to retain students. Wilson said the university also had to change its culture. Wilson says the next step is to close the graduation gap between white students and students of color. “You bring in kids, schools are obligated to graduate them,” he said. “They incur debt and then they don’t graduate. You are doing a disservice to the students, and a disservice to society. It’s an issue of justice.”   

By Jennifer Selin Jennifer Selin, co-director, Washington Office, of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University, wrote an article for The Conversation in which she analyzes previous congressional investigations in the context of the House Jan. 6 committee hearings which are attempting to answer the question of whether former President Donald Trump and his political allies broke the law in seeking to overturn the 2020 election results. The Jan. 6 hearings are part of a long history of congressional investigation, Selin writes. She notes that first congressional inquiry occurred in the House in 1792 and the Senate’s first investigation was conducted in 1818. “While the upcoming hearings of the House Jan. 6 investigative committee will be dealing with unprecedented events in American history, the very investigation of these events has strong precedent. Congress has long exercised its power to investigate some of the greatest problems facing the nation. In that way, the upcoming hearings fit squarely into the mainstream of American government oversight,” Selin writes.

By Naaz Modan In the week following the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, multiple school shooting threats have surfaced across the nation, prompting schools to increase security or shut down buildings entirely. Following the COVID-19 pandemic school building reopenings, administrators and staff braced for an increase in student misbehaviors, including aggression and gun violence. While school shootings dropped during building closures, they have returned to pre-pandemic levels and may have even increased, according to Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit organization started by the Sand Hook Elementary School parents. Following school shootings, it is common for schools to increase security, including tapping into law enforcement for help. There is also concern, though, that some security measures may actually make students feel unsafe. “There is research to support that the presence of police and school resource officers (SROs) and metal detectors and random locker checks and clear backpacks are directly linked to the psychological trauma response,” said Addison Duane, a former elementary school teacher with a Ph.D. in educational psychology who is now a professor at Wayne State University.

By Ben Orner Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood gained a new Secretary of State office on Thursday. Located at 580 E. Warren Avenue, Detroiters will have access to typical offerings like license and registration services, as well as a self-service station that can print tabs, registrations and temporary licenses and IDS 24/7. The new office is located near hospitals and Wayne State University, and will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays except Wednesdays, when the hours will be 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

By Jabari Young Dave Roberts, one of the most powerful executives at ESPN, is pushing for more diversity at the network. Roberts is the network’s head of studio programming who oversees NBA programming, including the NBA Finals. Roberts grew up in Detroit, and graduated from Wayne State University with a degree in mass communications before starting his career at a local Detroit TV station in 1978.

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.  

The United Auto Workers on Tuesday increased its weekly strike allowance for members to $400 per week from $275, a signal of strength ahead of the union next year approaching the bargaining table with the Detroit Three automakers, according to experts. The Detroit-based union has the funds for it, they say. In March, its strike balance sat at nearly $826 million, according to the union. For context, in 2019, the UAW paid nearly $81 million in benefits to striking members, which included stipends to the 46,000 General Motors Co. employees during a 40-day national strike, the longest again GM in nearly 50 years. "It could have a difficult round of negotiations, and the UAW wants to be as well-positioned as possible," said Marick Masters, a professor at Wayne State University's Mike Ilitch School of Business. "I don’t think they’re signaling they're more likely to go out on strike than they would otherwise, but they're reflecting their prudence as an organization and have prepared themselves as a membership for any eventuality that may come to pass."

By Alyssa Hui  In the U.S., more than 200 mass shootings – events during which at least four people are shot and injured or killed – have taken place so far in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The most recent incidents in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed during a school day; and Buffalo, New York, where 10 people were killed in a grocery store, have left not only the affected communities but the U.S. as a whole reeling, still trying to process the tragedies. Some people may resort to anger or frustration; others may feel fearful and helpless; while still others may experience feelings of sadness, sorrow, and worry, Arash Javanbakht, a psychiatrist and director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University said. Dr. Javanbakht also encouraged limiting media exposure. “If you [turn on] the TV, any of the cable news channels for hours and hours are talking about this – the pain and the number of people who got killed,” said Javanbakht. “Some even show pictures and videos of the chaos, and if you get hours of exposure to this, you will feel much worse.”  

The United Auto Workers said it’s moving forward with attempts to unionize a joint-venture battery cell plant after pushback from Ultium Cells LLC, a company General Motors Co. and partner LG Energy Solution own. UAW-GM leadership attempted to establish a card-check agreement with Ultium Cells that would give the union access to the facility to collect cards as a way to organize the plant, UAW Vice President Terry Dittes told local leaders in a letter. Ultium Cells employees are not covered by the national GM/UAW contract. Rejecting the union’s ability to collect cards from employees to confirm union representation complicates the effort to unionize the plant. Another path would be a vote by employees to decide if they want union representation. The vote would be monitored by the National Labor Relations Board. “The bottom line is that if you go with the secret ballot election route, it’s more difficult for the union to win recognition,” said Marick Masters, a professor at Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business.

According to a recent study conducted by scientists at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, a novel technique for measuring the age of male sperm has the potential to predict pregnancy success and time. The research, which was published on May 13th, 2022 in the journal Human Reproduction, discovered that sperm epigenetic aging clocks may operate as a potential biomarker to estimate couples’ time to conception. The results also highlight the importance of the male partner in successful reproduction. “Chronological age is a significant determinant of reproductive capacity and success among couples attempting pregnancy, but chronological age does not encapsulate the cumulative genetic and external – environmental conditions – factors, and thus it serves as a proxy measure of the ‘true’ biological age of cells,” said J. Richard Pilsner, Ph.D., lead author of the study. Dr. Pilsner is the Robert J. Sokol, M.D., Endowed Chair of Molecular Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Director of Molecular Genetics and Infertility at WSU’s C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development.