Features

September 13, 2024 0

New Screening Tech Could Address Racial Disparities in Cervical Cancer

For many women, Pap smears are an uncomfortable, even painful experience. While effective at screening for cervical cancer, the technique calls for the patient’s legs to be held apart and a metal speculum to be inserted into the vagina to scrape cells from the cervix. The process can cause physical distress and evoke mental trauma. Pap smears, however, might soon become a thing of the past. In May, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new method of testing for […]

September 13, 2024 0

GUEST COLUMN: Getting the Right Care is Key to Treating Parkinson’s. For Asians, That’s a Problem

by Catherine Chung

“My mother started to have these horrible nightmares,” says Anne, an Asian American woman in Greater Boston. “She would wake up in the middle of the night multiple times … in a panic.” Anne assumed these ‘night terrors’ were a normal part of her mother’s aging, but then she noticed her mother started to fall a lot more over the next few years, which she took as a sign of something more serious. “Even after multiple visits to the primary […]

September 13, 2024 0

Weight-Loss Drugs Changing the Shape of America, But Not ‘Silver Bullet,’ Says Doc

by Jeff Millman

If you have watched any daytime television or YouTube videos over the past few years, you have no doubt seen advertisements for medications like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro. The ads are ubiquitous, and so are the medications – 5 million Americans were prescribed semaglutide (the major ingredient in many of these medications) in 2023, a 40-fold increase from the past five years. Researchers for JPMorgan estimate that by 2030, nearly 10% of the U.S. population may be taking weight-loss drugs. […]

September 13, 2024 0

Why ‘Forever Chemicals’ Don’t Have to Stick Around … Forever

by Aurora Hao

Rain jackets, shampoo, meat, and cookware might wear out and go away, but they might never leave you. Perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are integrated into almost every aspect of daily life. Given their strong carbon-fluorine chemical bonds, PFAS take an extremely long time to break down, lingering in the environment and the human body, and thus coined “Forever Chemicals.” These persisting forever chemicals can be found in water and soil, especially near waste sites as they enter the environment through production […]

August 23, 2024 0

Doc Explores How Gender Affects Usefulness of Psychiatric Drugs

by Jeff Millman

Dr. Briana K. Chen is a neuroscientist whose work may one day change the way doctors prescribe antidepressants. As a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Chen studies sex differences, stress, and psychiatric disorders with an interest in developing sex-specific treatments for mental health conditions.Since the development of the first antidepressants in the 1950s, the subjects in clinical trials for medications to treat stress-related disorders have been primarily male. Chen says this is a problem for a number […]

August 23, 2024 0

Boston Offers Electric-Bike Vouchers to 1,000 Low-Income, Disabled Residents

by Sampan Staff

Running errands and getting to work could become an easier task for hundreds of low-income and disabled Boston residents, thanks to a pilot program to help people pay for electric-motor-assisted bicycles. The Boston E-Bikes Incentive Program will provide around 1,000 vouchers worth from $800 to $2,400 to help cut the costs of buying an “e-bike,” or electric-motor-assisted bicycle. Each person eligible to receive the voucher will also get $150 to help pay for safety equipment such as helmets. “… We […]

August 23, 2024 0

Artist Kenson Truong Sheds Light on Asian, Gay Identity

by Ryan Lundgren

Artist Kenson Truong was at work in a small nondescript gray building on a steep, hilly road in Roxbury that serves as a studio for Tufts’ School of the Museum of Fine Arts when I met him last week. He was tinkering with some black, glittery cubes at the time – cubes that appeared like props for the background of an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” of which Truong is coincidentally a fan. The black cubes, however, were part of […]

August 23, 2024 0

Asian American’s No. 1 Killer Goes Under the Microscope – As National Cancer Institute Funds Large Study, We Talk to Doc About the Disease

by Aurora Hao

To advance study of cancer among the Asian Americans, the National Cancer Institute this spring set aside $12.45 million for researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. The researchers’ aim will be to gather data and uncover potential causes of cancer in the Asian American population for whom the disease is the leading cause of death.“This study represents a significant advancement by recognizing these distinctions and offering relevant data specific to diverse Asian populations,” said Dr. Tim Rebbeck, […]

August 23, 2024 0

Golden Monkey Cafe, a Cambodian Restaurant in Lynn, Is Full of History, Flavor and Family

by Christopher John Stephens and Ingrid Stendhal

The Golden Monkey Cafe is a small, cozy restaurant located at 468 Chestnut St. in Lynn. The restaurant speaks to the perseverance, resiliency, and history of the food it serves and the people that prepare and present it. Unpretentious, the cafe is decorated with soft pink pastel walls and white trim, and is neat and tidy in its simplicity. In addition to offering free parking, the place affords some seating both inside as well as outside on the veranda for […]

August 23, 2024 0

Asian Americans’ History in Hollywood Was Anything But Golden. Now, It’s Time to Shine

by DongDong Yang

It is no secret that for years Asian Americans had been sidelined in Hollywood, facing discrimination and disrespect. You might get a brief appearance of a short Asian nerd with the smell of “kimchi” in his lunchbox in school. And the typical Asian character in a Hollywood film was usually never played by an Asian actor, but by a white actor who played an Asian role. Famously, Mickey Rooney played an especially offensive Asian caricature in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” This […]

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