Mark Ray

Are you a comfort giver or a flu giver? That’s the question the UK’s South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust recently posed in a series of advertisements targeting its employees. In one advert, an elderly woman reaches out to a nurse, who shares a smile — and perhaps the flu virus. In another, a boy tightly hugs the neck of a caregiver who may well be infected even though she shows no symptoms.

Hospitals should be places of healing, but far too often, patients develop infections before they can be discharged. In fact, hospital-acquired infections are among the most common hospital-related complications, affecting 1 in 25 patients, according to The New England Journal of Medicine. And they're largely preventable.

In a 1996 robbery gone wrong, jewelry store owner Mark Chilutti lost the use of his legs. In 2015, a tragic auto accident made TOPGUN instructor Buddy Marshall a quadriplegic.
But disability isn’t the only thing that connects the two men’s stories.

He’s been called Patient Zero, but his real name was Emile Ouamouno. He was two years old, he lived in the Guinean farming village of Meliandou and he loved listening to his family’s bright red portable radio. Emile died in December 2013, the first victim of an Ebola outbreak that would quickly spread across Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries in 2014. Ebola eventually claimed 11,325 victims, including Emile’s mother, grandmother and three-year-old sister, all of who died within a month of the young boy.

If you hate Zoom meetings, imagine how Heidi Carles, 56, of Bernville, Pa., feels. Carles, an auction lead, cataloger and photographer for an online auction company, has hearing loss, which makes videoconferencing challenging at best. Early in the pandemic, Carles often struggled during calls that included dozens of co-workers. Between the crosstalk and background noise, she found them exhausting and frustrating.

In April 2020, Eleanor Howland moved into an independent living apartment at Concordia Village of Tampa. She barely left it until July. The continuous care community went on lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, so Howland spent months isolated from staff and neighbors she'd never even met.

From apples that are slightly dated to items returned by members, Costco takes steps to keep perfectly usable products out of local landfills. Through partnerships with various groups, these goods end up in needy communities where they’re put to good use.

Prostate cancer grows so slowly in some men that doctors often recommend active surveillance or watchful waiting instead of more aggressive treatment. In fact, one study from the Johns Hopkins Active Surveillance Program found that less than 1% of men with low-risk prostate cancer developed metastatic disease after 15 years of active surveillance. But if prostate cancer grows slowly, the same can’t be said for research into the disease.

Joel Sartore (Eagle Class of 1977) is an overachiever. Like most concerned citizens, he wants to save the whales and the giant pandas. But he also wants to save the Florida grasshopper sparrow. And the Colombian spider monkey. And the hellbender. And even the homely Sunda pangolin, which looks like a dinosaur that didn’t get the memo about extinction.

Digital security has never been so important or perhaps so easy. You can unlock your phone with your fingerprint or your face. You can use a password manager to store all your login credentials behind a single master password. And you can secure many online accounts with two-factor authentication (where a website sends a one-time code to your phone).

After working together at Yawgoog Scout Reservation, Mike Hogan and Brad Orleck reunited to lead First Providence Troop, a 111-year-old unit that now serves a mix of working-class and immigrant families in Providence,

In a Medium post a few years ago, entrepreneur Ryan Holmes revealed a key secret that let him build tech start-up HootSuite from seven employees in Vancouver, B.C., to more than 1,000 around the world in its first decade. His secret, perhaps surprisingly, was yoga.

Pastor Larry Stoess and his wife, Kathie, create community one meal at a time.

Sylvie Radunz, 67, of Machesney Park, Ill., hasn't seen her daughter in person in more than a year — and probably won't see her again until the COVID-19 pandemic ends.

Pueblo, Colo. guitarist and singer Tom Munch has performed everywhere from restaurants to dude ranches to the Royal Gorge Bridge, but nursing home concerts take up much of his time, accounting for 50 gigs a month. That all changed in March, as COVID-19 forced senior living facilities across the country to take ever more stringent steps to keep their residents safe.