Community preparedness for a bioterrorism attack or influenza outbreak has been the focus of much interest and effort in recent years. Now, public health experts at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have developed a strategy for how hospitals can most efficiently inoculate their own staff with minimal disruption to patient care.

Each year, 40 to 60 percent of American adults suffer from chronic back pain. More than one million spine surgery procedures are performed annually, with medical costs to treat back pain approaching $24 billion per year.

Physician-scientists from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medical College are presenting exciting new research at the 2007 Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) Vascular Annual Meeting (VAM) in Baltimore, June 6-10.

In response to a glut of confusing and sometimes incorrect information about public and private banking of umbilical cord blood, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has issued new recommendations that seek to clarify the options available to parents. Among several recommendations, the report encourages parents donate to public cord blood banks and discourage parents from using private cord blood banks – unless they have an older child with a condition that could benefit from transplantation.

Until now, there has been little research on the best ways to care for geriatric patients with bipolar disorder. Now, a major National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)- funded multi-site clinical research study—led by the Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division - is the first to compare the efficacy of two commonly used mood stabilizers for geriatric patients suffering from the episodes of symptoms that characterize bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic-depressive illness.

NewYork-Presbyterian/Westchester Division is the first hospital to earn green business certification through Westchester Green Business-Certified (WGB-Certified), a program launched by Westchester County and The Business Council of Westchester in 2014. The hospital accepted the award at a ceremony last month.

Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is one of the first medical centers in the country participating in a novel clinical trial investigating if a patient's own stem cells can treat a form of severe coronary artery disease. The Autologous Cellular Therapy CD34-Chronic Myocardial Ischemia (ACT34-CMI) trial is the first Phase II adult stem cell therapy study in the U.S. designed to investigate the efficacy, tolerability and safety of blood-derived selected CD34+ stem cells to improve symptoms and clinical outcomes in patients with chronic myocardial ischemia (CMI), a severe form of coronary artery disease.

In what could be a breakthrough in the treatment of neurological disease, a team led by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has completed the first-ever phase 1 clinical trial using gene therapy to battle Parkinson's disease.