Dr. Greg Davis on Medicine

What’s it like to navigate Lexington without a car? How do you get to work, do your shopping, get the kids to soccer practice? The Week Without Driving campaign September 30 – October 6, 2024 aims to encourage those who drive regularly to consider the barriers and challenges that non-drivers (up to a third of each community!) face on a daily basis and encourage people to try different modes of transportation during the week. Dr. Greg talks with local bike and pedestrian advocates Alice Hilton and Linda Froehlich about the campaign and how you can sign up to participate.

September is Prostate Health Awareness month and Dr. Greg talks with local urologist Patrick Hensley about for some, is an uncomfortable subject. He says it's time to have a candid and frank conversation in an effort to save more lives from prostate cancer.

Healthy brain aging is a concern for all of us. It’s normal to struggle with small things such as recalling names — and we all experience some slowing of the thought processes with advanced age — but everyone hopes to avoid serious cognitive impairment. Dr. Greg Jicha with the Sanders - Brown Center on Aging shares tips with Dr. Greg on how to maintain good brain health.

This week Dr. Greg talks with Theresa Brown, RN; the New York Times best-selling author of Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient and The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives. She recently penned an article for Cancer Nursing Today asking the question – Who Broke American Health Care?

As an undergraduate student and English major at UK during the 1990s, Roger Brown spent his summer breaks working as a counselor at the Life Adventure Camp. The center was founded by a small group of UK graduate students, two of whom are Brown’s parents. It provided five-day wilderness living experiences to low-income and special needs youth at a forested property in Estill County. Fast forward to today where the now UK alum and current faculty member uses his close ties to LAC to help foster resilience in individuals affected by trauma. He talks about it in this week’s Dr. Greg Davis on Medicine.

Dr. Greg talks with Emily L. Weis, MD, MS, with the University of Rochester, who recently was featured in an article in Healio about how physicians are dealing with a rise in difficult patient encounters and what may be behind the uptick.

This week, as a new school year gets under way, Dr. Greg talks with Griffin Nemeth, a student at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy and coordinator for the #iCANendthetrend Youth Advisory Board; a group of 10 high school advocates from across Kentucky, fostering a generation of changemakers dedicated to educating peers, community members and policymakers about the negative health outcomes of vaping and tobacco use. A key element of Nemeth's work is the comprehensive yearlong training program he helps coordinate for younger Kentuckians. Every summer, new members of the Youth Advisory Board gather at UK for an in-person training session, followed by bimonthly virtual meetings throughout the year. This training includes online modules, skill-building opportunities and sessions led by near peers who are part of #iCANendthetrend.

"Low vision" is a term that commonly means partial sight, or sight that isn't fully correctable with glasses, contact lenses, surgery or medications. Low vision can affect people of all ages, but the risk increases as you get older. This week Dr. Greg talks with Christian Meyer, O.D., ophthalmology and visual sciences on low vision and how to prevent it.

This week on Dr. Greg Davis on Medicine we talk to a researcher who tirelessly works to understand the human sleep cycle. Lauren Whitehurst, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the UK College of Arts and Sciences and assistant director of the UNITE Research Priority Area, studies how sleep is affected by our genetics and living environments. Whitehurst’s current research is looking at precipitating factors that could be creating a sleep disparity in Black Americans. She is also the principal investigator on a five-year $2.4 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) exploring how sex and sex hormones influence the effects of alcohol on sleep quality.

Dr. Greg Davis brings us another cancer-journey update from friend and WUKY colleague Karyn Czar who received a bone marrow transplant as part of her treatment for multiple myeloma eight months ago. In this particular conversation, Karyn details some of the ongoing mental and emotional challenges of her recovery.