The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) took place in Seattle in mid-February, a forum for researchers and advocates to discuss the basic science and clinical discoveries of human retroviruses and associated diseases.

Sharon Greene, MPH student in Epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health, presented findings during CROI on a 3-year study comparing the effectiveness of cryotherapy and loop electrosurgical excision procedure (LEEP) to eliminate risk of cervical pre-cancer for women living with HIV. 

By LiLi Tan

University of Washington students are developing a test that could improve the lives of people around the world. It’s a credit card-sized HIV test called the OLA Simple.

“Very much looking like a pregnancy test. So there will be lines and you can know the result right away,” Nuttada Panpradist said. The Global WACh Certificate and fourth year bioengineering PhD student recently won a $50,000 APF Student Technology Prize for Primary Healthcare from Massachusetts General Hospital.

By Catherine Cheney

“West Africa is sitting on a ticking time bomb,” Bernice Dahn, Liberia’s minister of health, said at Global Health: Next Decade, Next Generation, an event celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington, her alma mater. 

"We all learned a lot of lessons from the Ebola outbreak. At least one lesson that we have learned is that an epidemic... could quickly become a pandemic," she said.

By Jacqueline Howard

The future is expected to hold more deadly heat waves, the fast spread of certain infectious diseases and catastrophic food shortages.

These events could cause premature deaths -- and they're all related to climate change, according to a panel of experts who gathered at the Carter Center in Atlanta for the Climate & Health Meeting.