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I'm a Finger Lakes-based freelance reporter, writer, and editor covering the environment and academic health sciences. When I'm not at the keyboard, I farm. My favorite crops: baby ginger, black currants, and purple potatoes.
Recent work:
An epidemiologist bridges science and the arts as she embraces her full truth:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/epidemiologist-embraces-her-full-truth
In memoriam: How an anatomist conveyed awe in the classroom:
A biostatistician deploys AI in his quest for therapies to interrupt Alzheimer's Disease before symptoms even start:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/biostatistician-designs-ai-tools-early-diagnosis-treatment-alzheimers-other-complex-diseases
An environmental health scientist investigates how lead and other toxins affect the health of women and children across the lifespan:
A social epidemiologist searches for clues to the rise in cancer incidence among young adults:
Liver cancer sets a survivor on the path to transplant advocacy:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/summer-2025/a-champion-for-organ-transplants/
By analyzing infant and maternal health policies around the world, a political scientist finds clues to what different societies value:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/political-science-maternal-infant-health-trends
A child psychologist helps parents and teachers team up on behalf of kids with autism:
Three decades after his own brain tumor diagnosis, a psychologist helps kids cope with cancer and other chronic conditions:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/spring-2025/pediatric-cancer-survivor-helps-kids-cope/
A clinician's quest to thwart pancreatic cancer hones her problem-solving mettle and sets the stage for leadership:
A statistician aims to right historic wrongs by embracing "algorithmic fairness":
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/biostatistician-pursues-causality-algorithmic-fairness
"Choose altruism," counseled a champion for humanism in medicine:
https://www.vagelos.columbia.edu/about-us/columbia-medicine-magazine/fall-2024/featured-stories/good
An educator's heart strings pulled him toward a life of service:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/immigrants-heritage-sets-stage-life-service
An applied ethicist works at the intersection of immigration status and health policy:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/champion-ethical-policies-migrant-health
Transfusion experts partner to reduce the global burden of a pregnancy complication virtually eliminated in the U.S. :
A mathematician pits AI against cancer and pregnancy hazards:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/mathematician-uses-ai-find-meaning-genomic-data
Psychiatric epidemiologists explore how structural racism affects disparities in schizophrenia:
An epidemiologist takes a slow-cooker approach to formulating big questions:
An environmental epidemiologist pivots to the evidence-based policies necessary to buffer the public health effects of climate change:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/climate-change-spurs-scholars-pivot-evidence-based-policy
A scientist devotes her career to the progressive, fatal disease that plagued her family:
An ornithologist deconstructs human aging:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/deconstructing-aging-pursuit-unified-theory-health
Native professionals host medical and public health students in Minnesota:
https://tdi.dartmouth.edu/news-events/native-place
Providers, parents, and policy makers advocate for kids with advanced cancer:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/spring-2023/wrap-around-care-for-kids-with-cancer/
Pricing fixes to Medicare's prescription plan bear a Dartmouth grad student's touch:
https://tdi.dartmouth.edu/news-events/classroom-congress
A self-described "data nerd" makes the case for mental health equity:
https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/data-nerd-change-agent
Columbia Med students champion health equity:
https://www.columbiamedicinemagazine.org/features/fall-2022/admirable-and-inspiring
Mt Sinai investigators seek clues to treating trauma, eating disorders, and more (p.34):
https://cloud.3dissue.com/200345/200664/235470/Summer-2022/index.html
Genetic clues could stop pediatric cancer before it starts:
https://dhgeiselgiving.org/stopping-cancer-it-starts
Global health systems can do better:
A health economist bridges the public and private sectors:
Do beauty products affect racial disparities in breast cancer?
Engineers tackle blood transfusion challenges in Kenya:
https://news.engineering.pitt.edu/a-wicked-challenge/
How zip code affects access to cancer care:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/spring2022/medicaid-a-partial-safety-net/
Engineers design better patches to heal pelvic injury:
https://news.engineering.pitt.edu/transforming-womens-health/
An open-source bioengineering project in Malawi helps patients breathe:
https://www.pittmed.pitt.edu/news/concentrate-oxygenate
An endowed professorship helps kids with cystic fibrosis breathe easier:
Study explores how surviving cancer affects Latinx and Hispanic people in the U.S.
Monica Lypson envisions the future of medical education:
One woman's death shines a spotlight on physician suicide:
http://www.columbiamedicinemagazine.org/features/spring-2021/one-us
The travails before the trials for a promising COVID-19 antibody treatment:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/panning-antibodies
After prison: What's positive psychology got to do with it?
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/05/engaged-learning-spotlight-beyond-incarceration
Behind the scenes of COVID-19 clinical trials:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/big-stakes-big-stats
Female cardiologists tackle the top cause of mortality among women in the U.S.:
http://www.columbiamedicinemagazine.org/features/fall-2020/broken-hearts
A medical school reckons with the Black Lives Matter movement:
To boost survival rates and expand treatment options, docs urge many with cancer to delay surgery:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/fall2020/worth-the-wait/
Evidence on acupuncture points to pain management benefits:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/Pages/Fall2020/Getting-to-the-Point.aspx
Advances in microscopy reveal insights to guide evidence-based drug design:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/another-look
RACE boosts prospects for kids with cancer:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/Pages/Winter2019-2020/Targeted-Treatments-for-Tots.aspx
After 20 years at the helm of Pitt's medical school, a visionary steps aside:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/man-behind-momentum
New CRISPR-based tools help scientists zero in on basic disease processes:
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/future-gene-editing
Double transplants give patients a new lease on life and promise a breakthrough for the field:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/beyond-donor-match
The label every home DNA test ought to carry:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/Pages/Summer2019/Let-the-Buyer-Be-Aware.aspx
A genetic signature found in some tumors holds clues to better post-cancer care:
https://www.cancertodaymag.org/Pages/Spring2019/Lynch-Syndrome-Linked-to-More-Cancers.aspx
An ophthalmologist gets philosophical about the role of symmetry in vertebrate development:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/balance
A pediatrician leverages lessons from the front lines of the AIDS epidemic to bolster healthcare in Brooklyn:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/higher-bar
Are they really out there?
https://magazine.nd.edu/stories/are-we-alone/
Public health practitioners tackle trauma (and more):
https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/publications/magazine
An orthopaedic oncologist aims to improve on the treatments for sarcoma he received 25 years ago:
https://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/molecular-scalpel
With CRISPR, scientists can cut and paste the basic code of life. Will they use their newfound powers for good?
https://magazine.nd.edu/news/cut-and-paste/
Scientists implicate the "inocuous" virus that turns gluten into kryptonite in a kid's gut:
http://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/broken-bread
For Raul Ruiz, MD, putting patients first meant running for Congress:
http://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/door-door
Measures to promote social justice combat health disparities. And more:
https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/public-health-now/publications/magazine
Docs in Washington Heights combat health disparities by putting community first:
http://ps.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2017_Columbia_PS_Annual_Report.pdf
Urban planners put food systems on the map:
An array of unconventional farmers reflect on their agricultural legacy.
http://magazine.nd.edu/news/food-farms-and-family/
An urban apiary, by the books:
http://magazine.nd.edu/news/part-time-bee-keeper/
Public health scholars tackle the needs of modern-day refugees, the value of work after retirement, and more:
Clinicians aim to level the playing field with interventions tailored to their diverse patients:
http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Medical-Inequality.pdf
Good Bug, Bad Bug: Scientists dig into the ecology of the microbiome:
http://newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Microbes-Within-Us.pdf
Pennsylvania's heroin epidemic, by the numbers:
http://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/forensics-epidemic
Trailblazers: Twentieth-century women scientists left their mark at Columbia U:
A scientist homes in on the immune system's reset button:
http://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/reboot-and-rebuild
A team of big thinkers crafts algorithms to parse cause and effect:
http://www.pittmed.health.pitt.edu/story/cause-and-effect
A neuroscientist investigates the mind in motion:
Public health confronts social inequality, incarceration, e-cigarettes and more:
http://issuu.com/columbiapublichealth/docs/columbia_public_health_2014/0
The Right Stuff: On Annie Leonard, executive director of Greenpeace USA:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1939&Itemid=56&ed=43
The Buck Stops Here: Cornell University confronts its cloven-hooved conundrum:
https://cornellalumnimagazine.com/the-buck-stops-here/
A public health take on climate change, obesity prevention, and kids growing up in poverty:
http://issuu.com/columbiapublichealth/docs/cph_2013_hi-res
The long road to synthetic insulin, in 200 painstaking steps:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Winter_2012/darkness.pdf
A designer champions green homes to welcome people of all ages and abilities:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1299&Itemid=9
A spring paean to weeds in the ’burbs:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1049&Itemid=56&ed=23
Flour, the old-fashioned way:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=943&Itemid=56&ed=21
Pitt geriatricians take a new tack on the graying of America:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Winter_2010/how_little.pdf
Domestic bliss gets a radical overhaul:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=893&Itemid=56&ed=20
A NASA scientist and master beekeeper turns to his charges for clues to climate change:
http://archive.magazine.jhu.edu/2010/06/the-buzz-what-bees-tell-us-about-global-climate-change/
Academic investigators tango with industry—very carefully:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Summer_2010/verycarefully.pdf
A "fantastic" picture launches a career and takes the lethal bite from a rare form of leukemia (p. 39):
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Winter_2009/alumni.pdf
The summer of rotten tomatoes:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=588&Itemid=1&ed=14
Scientist Cecilia Lo delves into the precursors of congenital heart defects:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Summer_2009/heart_matter.pdf
Diabetes researcher Richard Bergman and his beard (p. 39):
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Spring_2009/alumni.pdf
Carbon sequestration and the ancients:
http://cornellalumnimagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=296&Itemid=56&ed=9
From a lab with a bay view, med students explore the scientific method:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Fall_2008/thefishandmedstudent.pdf
Pitt docs take the high road to bar conflicts of interest:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Spring_2008/newdiet.pdf
A psychiatrist trained in the Civil Rights Era
https://news.weill.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/publications/2008_fall.pdf
An eco sensibility bolsters patient care at Dartmouth's medical center:
http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/summer07/html/green.php
The question that drove the research career of reproductive endocrinologist Ernst Knobil:
http://pittmed.health.pitt.edu/Winter_2006/inthetiming.pdf
Cookbook author and food policy advocate Anna Lappé extends her family legacy:
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/may/june-2006/what-we-eat.html
Contact me at: srtregaskis[at]gmail.com
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