News

Alumna Sydney Clark never allowed her disability to stop her from achieving her goals: attending and graduating from the University of Kentucky. Now Clark, along with a team of dedicated faculty and staff, are looking to expand access for students who are blind or vision impaired.

The publication from Dr. Jessica Chao and Dr. Keith B. Wilson discusses how the COIVD-19 pandemic created additional barriers for people with disabilities already experiencing disparities in medical care.

The UK vaccination clinic has marked a monumental milestone in the fight against the virus — administering 180,000+ COVID-19 vaccines to citizens across the Commonwealth, including front-line health care workers, first responders, teachers, school personnel and people over age 70. Members of the entire UK community have joined forces to help the community meet this unprecedented challenge.

The Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a single vaccine dose of the Janssen investigational COVID-19 vaccine candidate versus placebo. Approximately 45,000 people participated worldwide. The combined UK, Baptist and Norton site was among the top enrolling sites in the world.

The University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center is teaming up with the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), the American Cancer Society (ACS) and other leading cancer organizations across the country to endorse the resumption of cancer screening and treatment during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"While approved vaccines are able to prevent a COVID reinfection with a high effectiveness rate, it is still early on and we don't know how durable they are going to be in the long run. We also don’t know how effective these vaccines are at preventing asymptomatic spread. These questions are what researchers in my field will be looking at for many years to come."

Vince Venditto, PhD, assistant professor in the UK College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical Science, has extensive expertise in vaccine design. He was trained in organic synthesis and vaccine development. He is currently working on a clinical trial with community pharmacies to understand the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in Kentucky.

Researchers at the UK developed and pilot-tested a family-centered, youth-engaged home radon testing toolkit and trained high school students as “citizen scientists” to educate their parents about the dangers of radon and how to test for it.

A new University of Kentucky study provides direct evidence for a testing strategy that could be used to support a shortened period of quarantine for university students who are exposed to the virus but are asymptomatic.

In our third and final part of this interview, we ask Vince and Brooke about how this pandemic possibly ends, and how we progress into a new world after COVID-19.