Netflix's "13 Reasons Why" has received significant attention, not all of it positive, for the graphic way it portrays suicide, sexual assault, and bullying. For Steve Berkowitz, MD, director of the Penn Center for Youth and Family Trauma Response and Recovery, the show fails to adequately handle the subject of teenage suicide in a number of ways — some all too common.

Some of Penn Medicine's smaller – but no less important – global outreach endeavors target populations that have little or no access to basic health care. Such was the volunteer effort that six HUP staff undertook earlier this year, working 12- to 14-hour days to help members of Guatemala’s indigenous populations get the health care they need.

We hear about disparities and discrimination nationally both in healthcare and in many aspects of society at large so frequently improvements can feel slow and cumbersome. At Penn Medicine, words of inclusivity and diversity have been followed up with progressive actions, and the benefits are experienced throughout the institution.

The crinkly pages filled with elegant script, a dispatch from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Dispensary in the late 19th century, are a window into medical history. Geoffrey Aguirre, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Neurology, recently received the notebooks after they were discovered by a colleague. Now, they’re getting fresh life as an official Penn historical artifact.

In April of 2007, OncoLink—the first cancer information website (and still one of the largest)—launched the OncoLife™ Survivorship Care Plan, a user-generated service that creates care plans for patients who have survived cancer. As that plan marks 10 years, OncoLink’s Managing Editor, Carolyn Vachani, looks back on the program’s origins.

Many people might not have heard of the Aedes aegypti mosquito until this past year, when the mosquito, and the disease it can carry – Zika – began to make headlines. But more than 220 years ago, this same breed of mosquito was spreading a different and deadly epidemic right here in Philadelphia and just like Zika, this epidemic is seeing a modern resurgence, with Brazil at its epicenter.

Experts in the Penn Ovarian Cancer Research Center and the Basser Center for BRCA are developing new detection and prevention strategies for high-risk patients—and, at the same time, offering a one-two punch birth control and cancer risk-reduction method for average-risk women who do not have, do not want, or are done having children.

The 2017 edition of Penn Medicine's Facts & Figures is now available. Facts & Figures is a pocket-sized publication that keeps faculty, students, staff, the media, government officials, and others, informed about the latest expansion projects, rankings, at-a-glance statistics, and much more.

Smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol can wreak havoc on the organs, but what do these two vices do to the senses? Considering what's known, overdoing it presumably damages a person's sense of smell and taste—however, the work of Richard Doty, PhD, the director of the Penn Smell and Taste Center, along with colleagues at Harvard University, suggests it may be more nuanced.

One single person can potentially save the lives of more than eight others, if they are an organ donor. And if someone is also a tissue donor, they can save or change the lives of nearly 75 people. But, according to Donate Life America, while 95 percent of U.S. adults support organ donation, only 54 percent are actual registered donors.