In The News
SF BUILD PI Meghan Morris shows direct engagement with community can help cure HCV
In 2020, when many medical facilities had stopped testing for non-COVID health concerns, Meghan Morris, PhD, and her colleagues rented a storefront in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood to engage directly with its community members to treat patients with hepatitis C infections. Morris serves as a principal investigator for San Francisco State University’s BUILD program.
The hepatitis C virus causes potentially deadly infections that are treatable with strong drugs once diagnosed. However, access to diagnosis and drugs is low for marginalized populations like those in the South of Market neighborhood. By directly engaging with them in their neighborhood, this barrier was overcome during the 15 months of the study. Nearly 500 people were tested for hepatitis C, and 89 were diagnosed. Ninety-eight percent of those diagnosed began taking the new drugs, and 79% of them completed the 12-week course of medication.
“Let’s stop trying to get them engaged in the health care system and instead bridge the health care system to them,” Morris said.
Read the full story on the SF Chronicle’s website.
PSU BUILD EXITO scholar discovers unexpected diversity in river microorganisms
Once a week for the past year, Kylee Brevick could be found at two particular spots on the Willamette and Columbia rivers, taking samples of water for testing. The undergraduate biochemistry major (and environmental science minor) was undertaking an independent research project with support from Portland State University's BUILD EXITO program, which helps students gain biomedical research experience and skills.
In the course of her project, Kylee discovered several different populations of an aquatic microorganism known as picophytoplankton. These have been well documented in lakes and oceans but not, until now, in rivers. The organisms, which perform photosynthesis and carbon fixation, are crucial in supporting aquatic life.
"We know a lot about these cells in lake systems and in the ocean. But we don't really know about their dynamics in river systems as much. And definitely not in the local river systems here," said Anne Thompson, Principal Investigator of PSU's Microbial Ecology Lab, where Kylee has a position as a BUILD EXITO Scholar.
Read the full article on PSU’s News page.
The Diversity Program Consortium Coordination and Evaluation Center at UCLA is supported by Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health / National Institutes of General Medical Sciences under award number U54GM119024.
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