The Great Hunger and the Celtic Gene
Thomas P. Duffy MD of the Yale School of Medicine explores why certain people survived the Great Hunger and reasons that the...
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In This Issue
When It Comes to Health, Kathleen Cares
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (née Gilligan) on the future of American health care, her father’s influence, her Irish heritage, and other topics. “I’m a...
MoreThe First Word: Sláinte! Good Health
“What’s exciting is that millions of families . . .will have access, some for the first time, to quality, affordable options in just a few months.” – Secretary of Health Kathleen...
MoreIrish Woman With MS Loses Assisted Suicide Case
Marie Fleming, a 59-year-old woman from Co. Wicklow in the late stages of Multiple Sclerosis, lost her case against the Irish Supreme Court to overturn Ireland’s laws on assisted suicide. The court...
MoreCigarette Packs in Ireland May Get a New Look
Ireland is leading the way in the fight against smoking. This past May, the Irish Ministry of Health proposed legislation that would ban the use of cigarette pack branding. No more Marlboros or...
MoreFunding Approved for First Cross-Border Bridge
The newest bridge in Ireland is as important for its symbolism as for its ability to carry cars, and both have Irish on each side of the border excited. When completed, the Narrow Water Bridge will...
MoreIrish Methodist Church Elects Its First Female Leader
Reverend Dr. Heather Morris was installed as the new president of the Methodist Church in Ireland this June, becoming the first female to hold not only that post, but the first female head of any of...
More“Rory’s Regulations” Will Fight Sepsis in New York Hospitals
New York has become the first state in the U.S. to mandate a series of protocols to diagnose and treat sepsis before it turns fatal. The protocols have been named “Rory’s Regulations” for...
MoreStudy Shows Immigrants Give More to Medicare Than They Take Out
As the United States Congress debates an immigration reform bill that would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants (which includes about 50,000 illegal Irish...
MoreQuinnipiac Opens State-of-the-Art Medical School
The new Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut is attracting students in primary care medicine. Dr. Bruce Koeppen didn’t just do a double take in 2009 when he...
MoreIrish Eye on Hollywood
The latest news and releases from your favorite Irish and Irish-American stars. 1. The news that The Sopranos star James Gandolfini died of a heart attack at the age of 51 shocked Hollywood and the...
MoreMaureen O’Hara to Hold 93rd Birthday Party in Idaho
For her 93rd birthday, Maureen O’Hara will celebrate with a cause. The Irish queen of the silver screen returned to the U.S. in late 2012 to live near her grandson Conor FitzSimmons and his family...
MoreConcern Honors Carla Harris
Concern Worldwide, U.S., the non-profit founded over 45 years ago by the late Fr. Aengus Finucane, held its annual Women of Concern luncheon on June 27 at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan. The...
MoreDublin Researchers Lead Promising Alzheimer’s Study
An 18-month-long international study of a potential Alzheimer’s drug has begun, and Ireland is playing a big role. The project, coordinated by Brian Lawlor, Connolly Norman Professor of Old Age...
MoreCork Study Suggests Link Between Gut Bacteria and Autism
A new study conducted by scientists at University College Cork (UCC) shows that mice lacking bacteria in their gut displayed autistic behaviors such as repetitive grooming and disinterest in social...
MoreVolunteers Patrol the River Shannon to Prevent Suicide
In Limerick, a group of sixteen local volunteers have joined together to prevent suicide. Over the last ten months, the CSR Suicide Prevention Team has been patrolling the River Shannon and four...
MoreFree Screenings for Tay Sachs Disease at Gaelic Games
At the Gaelic Games in Malvern, PA on July 28, there was one attraction with no clear connection to Irish sports. The Einstein Medical Center of Philadelphia was there, offering free screenings for...
MorePatrick Kennedy Addresses Brain Research in Dublin
Patrick Kennedy, former Rhode Island congressman and son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, delivered the keynote address at “Healthy Brain: Healthy Europe,” a conference devoted to brain health...
MoreAll About Autoimmunity
Ask the Expert: Dr. Noel Rose
As a concept, autoimmunity can provoke unease – there’s something disconcerting about the thought of the body attacking itself; the processes that are meant to protect us running haywire and...
MoreDid President Kennedy Have Celiac Disease?
Dr. Peter Green, Professor of Clinical Medicine, Director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, suspects that JFK was the victim of an undiagnosed...
MoreFact Sheet: Celiac Disease
Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that is characterized by an intolerance for gluten (a protein most commonly found in wheat, barley, and rye). Consuming gluten triggers an immune response...
MoreThe Great Hunger and the Celtic Gene
Thomas P. Duffy MD of the Yale School of Medicine explores why certain people survived the Great Hunger and reasons that the answer may lie in their gene pool. Shortly after the great Irish famine of...
MoreFact Sheet : Hemochromatosis
Hemochromatosis (he-moe-krome-uh-TOE-sis) Hereditary hemochromatosis is a disease caused by a recessive genetic mutation that makes the body absorb too much iron, resulting in excess amounts being...
MoreSisters Sharing Musical Talent and Health Issues
Joyce and Ruth O’Leary are your average pair of young Irish sisters in their early twenties. They share outfits, finish each other’s sentences, and cheer each other up when one is having a hard...
MoreIrish Herbal Medicine
The oldest form of healing, long practiced in Ireland, proved just the thing for writer Jonathan Self. A leafy lane, not much more than a boreen really, dissects the middle of the Kingstons’...
MoreComfortable in My Own Skin
After a diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma at age twenty-eight, Emma Graves Fitzsimmons got smart about being in the sun. I wish I could say that I’ve always appreciated my porcelain skin. But for...
MoreFact Sheet:
Skin Cancer
Skin cancer, like all cancers, is caused by cell mutations that grow uncontrollably to form a mass of cancer cells. Because the skin is comprised of three main types of cells, there are three primary...
MoreFinding the Other:
The Metamorphosis and Compassion
Molly McCloskey, the author of Circles Around the Sun, shares how one profound reading experience led her to better understand her older brother who suffers from schizophrenia. I can still recall, in...
MoreHunger and its Children
Schizophrenia and other diseases associated with starvation. The outward physical consequences of famine and severe malnutrition have been long known. They are the same everywhere. In his recent...
MoreSober: By Malachy McCourt
Malachy McCourt writes about being an alcoholic and what it was that finally made him stop drinking. Was I born alcoholic? That’s not clear but I know that the disease does not discriminate against...
MoreThe Laughter and the Drink
The Irish are known for ‘the craic and the drink.’ Many well-known comedians have given up on one. People of Irish descent face a host of notions and expectations of how they should be – some...
MoreWhen They Want to End It
Suicide in Ireland, particularly among male teens, is on the rise. Sharon Ní Chonchúir reports. Few teenagers make a mark on Irish society in the way 16-year-old Tralee native Donal Walsh did....
MoreKnowing When to Help
If you suspect something, do something. April Drew writes from personal experience. It was a little after 8 p.m. on a cold and dark Sunday evening. It was the first Sunday of 2009. Christmas was just...
MoreThe Doctors
A selection of doctors, many of whom have been honored as Top 100 Irish Americans by this magazine, who are working to understand the pressing topics of our time. Neuroimmunology “This is...
MorePharma Leaders
A selection of leaders in the pharmaceutical industry who have been featured on Irish America’s Business 100 list and who continue to shape the future of medicine. Melanoma “We hope to...
MoreAn Irish Tradition: Nursing
Compassion mixed with equal doses of technical competence and good humor has enabled Irish nurses to help generations of American patients. Nurses were Ireland’s biggest export in the late 1980s...
MoreHospital Nuns: From the Civil War to Today
From the Civil War to Chicago’s Mercy Hospital, the extraordinary history of Irish nuns in health care. The Sisters of Mercy were the first women to go with Florence Nightingale during the Crimean...
MoreA Way of Healing
In memory of her brother David, a victim of MS, Honora Harty joined a group of MS Ireland walkers on the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James), the ancient pilgrimage route. The walkers picked up...
MoreWhat Are You Like?
Mary Roach
An acclaimed, adventurous and hilarious science writer known for her fearless, approachable style and delightful footnotes, Mary Roach is the author of such best-selling and award-winning books as...
MoreA World to Care For
Mary Manning Walsh, a nursing home for the elderly, proves that the twilight years can be joyful if the people in charge really care. The massive stroke that left my mother speechless and paralyzed...
MorePromoting Health and Philanthropy
Mary McFadden and her husband Larry Stifler were well ahead of the curve in recognizing the need to combat obesity, which is at an epidemic level in the U.S. In 1983, Stifler founded the Boston-based...
MoreSpotlight On Community Health Care: Providing for Those in Need
Theresa Maloney Butler, CEO of Middletown Community Health Center, uses the values she learned growing up in St. Brendan’s Parish in the Bronx to bring affordable health care solutions to hundreds...
MoreThe Irish of Medical History
The history of medicine spans millennia – from before the invention in 5th century Greece of the Hippocratic oath, which doctors still take to this day, to the life-changing breakthroughs of the...
MoreReel Life Miracle
Irish Set Dancing Found Therapeutic for Parkinson’s Patients Italian neurologist Dr. Daniele Volpe has long been a fan of Irish traditional music, making yearly trips to Ireland and playing in a...
MoreFrom the Ground Up
Chicagoan Jeanne Nolan talks to Kara Rota about her new book and her commitment to growing organic food. “I am all about people growing their own food,” Jeanne Nolan says to me when we get on...
MoreReview of Books
Stand-out books by Irish-American authors that cover a range of health-related issues. A Drinking Life Pete Hamill’s autobiographical A Drinking Life is an important portrayal of the...
MoreLet the Healing Begin
While it has not been labeled an actual illness, the longing to return home can cause psychological and social problems that get passed down to future generations. Fionnula Flanagan writes that...
MoreBreathe…
The Breath Is Key
An introduction to Yoga. My introduction to Kundalini Yoga in 1982 was a game changer. My type A personality changed to a more patient and certainly chilled out A-. When asked how I stay so calm...
MoreFamily Photo Albums: Doctors and Nurses
Catherine Norah “Norrie” Egan My mother, Norrie Egan, born in Dublin, graduated from St. Vincent’s Hospital/UCD with a Diploma in Radiography in 1940 and worked at St. Mary’s Hospital,...
MoreHibernia
Patrick Kennedy Addresses Brain Research in Dublin
Patrick Kennedy, former Rhode Island congressman and son of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, delivered...
Cork Study Suggests Link Between Gut Bacteria and Autism
A new study conducted by scientists at University College Cork (UCC) shows that mice lacking...
Volunteers Patrol the River Shannon to Prevent Suicide
In Limerick, a group of sixteen local volunteers have joined together to prevent suicide. Over the...
“Rory’s Regulations” Will Fight Sepsis in New York Hospitals
New York has become the first state in the U.S. to mandate a series of protocols to diagnose and...
Dublin Researchers Lead Promising Alzheimer’s Study
An 18-month-long international study of a potential Alzheimer’s drug has begun, and Ireland is...
Free Screenings for Tay Sachs Disease at Gaelic Games
At the Gaelic Games in Malvern, PA on July 28, there was one attraction with no clear connection to...
Irish Methodist Church Elects Its First Female Leader
Reverend Dr. Heather Morris was installed as the new president of the Methodist Church in Ireland...
Irish Woman With MS Loses Assisted Suicide Case
Marie Fleming, a 59-year-old woman from Co. Wicklow in the late stages of Multiple Sclerosis, lost...
Maureen O’Hara to Hold 93rd Birthday Party in Idaho
For her 93rd birthday, Maureen O’Hara will celebrate with a cause. The Irish queen of the silver...
Study Shows Immigrants Give More to Medicare Than They Take Out
As the United States Congress debates an immigration reform bill that would provide a pathway to...
Cigarette Packs in Ireland May Get a New Look
Ireland is leading the way in the fight against smoking. This past May, the Irish Ministry of...
Funding Approved for First Cross-Border Bridge
The newest bridge in Ireland is as important for its symbolism as for its ability to carry cars,...
Quinnipiac Opens State-of-the-Art Medical School
The new Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut is attracting...
Concern Honors Carla Harris
Concern Worldwide, U.S., the non-profit founded over 45 years ago by the late Fr. Aengus Finucane,...