pain management problems around the world

Freedom from Pain, a documentary produced by students and instructors at the University of British Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, addresses the problem of inadequate pain management for cancer patients.  Although morphine is inexpensive, the War on Drugs has lead to overly restrictive laws in some nations against prescribing narcotics or disincentives for their production and distribution.  The documentary centers on several patients in India and Ukraine who are attempting to cope without sufficient palliative treatment.  Similarly, Fifty Milligrams is Not Enough, further explores the Ukrainian problem through a case study of a cancer patient (see accompanying blog article).  This documentary and other videos relative to medical injustice are available at the Open Society Foundations' Stop Torture in Health Care site.

the "great secret" of cancer research

This comic strip panel by Jorge Cham features a young PhD who gives a speech to MD Anderson faculty, and while there, later meets up with graduate students who clue him in to the way things actually operate in the world of cancer research.

on colon cancer: Sal Khan interviews Andy Connolly

Andy Connolly of Stanford Medical School walks the viewer through the process of colon cancer development with the assistance of Sal Khan, creator of the Khan Academy.  Video 1 overviews normal colon tissue, video 2 relates to dysplasia, video 3 focuses on hyperplasia, and video 4, shown above, addresses cancerous colon tissue.  Along the way, Khan's questions to Connolly serve to clarify terminology and muddy points for students and the lay public.

DNA animations

In this TED Talks segment, Drew Berry shows his fantastic animation of DNA replication (see full clip here). Berry works at Australia's Walter & Ezra Hall Institute, and some of his other animations, including breast cancer origins and colony stimulating factor, can be seen at http://www.wehi.edu.au/education/wehitv. (Also go to Harvard's BioVisions site to view Inner Life of Cell series.)

X-Plain interactive tutorials

The National Library of Medicine has created a large body of interactive tutorials to help educate patients about disease and health issues.  Their inventory includes tutorials on leukemia and colon, brain, breast, liver, ovarian, non-melanoma skin, and prostate cancers.  The tutorials provide clear information about the disease and the course of treatment, allow users to advance at their own pace, and give feedback about information retention through self-tests.

cancer statistics via Gapminder

Hans Rosling looks at colon cancer statistics in this video through his Gapminder data visualization application.  Hans shows that rates increase with growing affluence over historical time, and speculates that the culprit is western-style diets.  Nonetheless, his data also indicate that rich societies are better able to treat the disease once discovered as deaths due to colon cancer are lower there than in less affluent nations.  A free API that can be either used in the cloud or downloaded, Gapminder comes with a number of data sets that permit analyses of many health-related variables, including various cancers.

an effective colon cancer campaign in Utah

Utah Cancer Control has created a series of innovative public service announcements that have played a significant role in improving colon cancer screening rates across the state. Utah residents 50 years and older who reported having had a sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy increased from 48 percent in 2003 to 67 percent by 2010. As shown in the above example, the brief videos broadcast on Utah television deliver a powerful emotional message that is virtually impossible to ignore. The campaign has also generated national recognition, including that from the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, which will honor it with the 2012 Program Delivery Award.