News and Notes
February 27, 2025: USA Today quoted Michael Rembis, associate professor of history and director of the Center for Disability Studies, in an article about Elon Musk’s use of slurs on social media targeting people with disabilities. The article concludes that, if the language continues, it's "just another reminder that disabled people must continually fight for their rights and for their dignity," Rembis says. "This is a fight that disabled people and their allies are ready to take on; we will continue to speak out, protest, demonstrate, write, make art, tell our stories and work together to make a better, more accessible, more loving world."
A UB researcher was part of a committee writing a report outlining linkages between low-to-moderate alcohol consumption and health outcomes. The report was released last month by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and came out just weeks before U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a new advisory on the direct link between drinking alcohol and increased cancer risk.
The surgeon general’s advisory calls for updating the health warning labels on alcoholic beverages to include the greater cancer risk.
In addition to the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption — defined as two drinks in a day for men and one drink for women — and certain types of cancer, the National Academies report also examined linkages to seven other health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, weight changes, all-cause mortality and neurocognitive health.
Jo L. Freudenheim, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, School of Public Health and Health Professions, served on the 15-member Committee on the Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health, which wrote the report at the request of Congress.
The report will help inform the next edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which was last updated in 2020. The next update of the guidelines, which are revised every five years, is expected to be released in the next few months.
The review on alcohol consumption and cancer — Freudenheim’s area of expertise — is a big part of the National Academies’ latest report.
“Within the research community, it has long been known that alcohol causes seven different kinds of cancer, and that there is a wealth of information about the impact of alcohol on breast cancer,” Freudenheim says. Past research, she notes, has found a linear association between alcohol use and breast cancer, meaning that drinking in low amounts has been shown to lead to a small increase in risk, while heavy drinking is linked to a proportionately larger increase in breast cancer risk.
“But there is less awareness within the general population of the relationship of alcohol to cancer, even though it’s been established for a long time,” Freudenheim adds. “That is beginning to change; people are becoming more aware of the health effects of alcohol. Understanding the role of alcohol in cancer is important.”
There is growing concern around the globe about the health effects of alcohol. In June, the World Health Organization issued a statement saying that “There is no form of alcohol consumption that is risk-free.” While the WHO provided more of a blanket statement, Freudenheim says she finds Canada’s guidance on alcohol and health to be more useful in that it outlines the continuum of risk associated with alcohol use, breaking that risk down by the amount of drinks consumed per week.
“The Canadian guidelines say that there is no amount without risk, but if you drink, here is the impact,” Freudenheim says. “There are things we do every day, like driving, that entail risk. The question with alcohol consumption is, what level of risk are we comfortable with, and how do we handle that?”
Alcohol and breast cancer risk
Freudenheim also co-authored a paper published last month in the journal Breast Cancer Research that examined the effects of quitting drinking compared to continuing drinking alcohol on breast cancer risk according to hormone receptor status: estrogen receptor positive (ER+) and estrogen receptor negative (ER-).
There are several different subtypes of breast cancer, Freudenheim explains, and there is evidence that there are differences in what causes these subtypes. “Alcohol is generally found to be more associated with ER positive than ER negative breast cancer,” she says.
The study suggests that alcohol cessation, compared to continuing to drink, is associated with lower risk of ER+ breast cancer and but not ER- breast cancer. One of the strengths of the meta-analysis conducted by the researchers is that the assessment of breast cancer risk for alcohol cessation was compared to that for continuing consumption rather than to abstention from drinking.
“The higher risk for cessation compared with abstention may be due to longer-term effects related to prior alcohol consumption,” the researchers say.
NEJM report
In 2023, Freudenheim was a co-author on a report in the New England Journal of Medicine in which the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a summary review of alcohol reduction or cessation and cancer risk.
Freudenheim was part of a working group of 15 scientists from eight countries that reviewed published studies and evaluated the strength of epidemiologic evidence on the potential for alcohol reduction or cessation to reduce alcohol-related cancer risk.
“We found that for some kinds of cancer there’s not enough research yet, but for oral and esophageal cancer, there is strong research that if you cut down or stop drinking it will reduce your risk,” Freudenheim says.
Michael Rembis has received The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. The award recognizes the work of those who engage actively in scholarly and creative pursuits beyond their teaching responsibilities. Rembis is an interdisciplinary historian who serves as director of UB’s Center for Disability Studies. His research interests include work in the fields of disability history and the history of medicine, specializing in what is generally referred to as the history of madness.
Rembis is the author of “Defining Deviance: Sex, Science and Delinquent Girls, 1890-1960,” “Disabling Domesticity” and “Disability: A Reference Handbook.” His latest book, “Writing Mad Lives in the Age of the Asylum,” will be published this winter. He has also co-edited works such as “Disability Histories” and “The Oxford Handbook of Disability History,” winner of the Disability History Association’s Outstanding Book Prize and the American Association for the History of Medicine’s George Rosen Prize. In 2012, with co-editor Kim Nielsen, he launched the “Disability Histories” book series with University of Illinois Press.
As a historian of disability and madness in the 19th- and 20th-century United States, Rembis uses innovative methodologies and “radical empathy” to explore the lived experiences of people confined to institutions and subjected to eugenic interventions. Rembis contends that while discrimination, marginalization and other forms of political oppression have been defining experiences for people with disabilities, they are only one aspect of their rich lives.
Colleagues say this approach has led to “path-breaking analyses” that have transformed the field by considering both disability as a social construct and the lives of people with disabilities.
His work, which has been foundational to disability history, has been funded by, among other organizations, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A dedicated instructor and mentor of both undergraduates and graduates in multiple fields, Rembis received the UB Gender Institute’s Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2021.
News article intro by Buffalo Spree: Childbirth has been called the ultimate creative act and yet depictions of motherhood are conspicuously absent from art. Artist Julia Bottoms began confronting this imbalance nearly three years ago when she became a mother herself. “This is all recent work,” Bottoms says, gesturing to paintings of mothers and children around her workspace at Buffalo Arts Studio. “Before, my work never really had children in it. Motherhood changed where my focus is.” Continue reading Buffalo Spree.
Intro by WBFO: "This year’s Disability Pride Festival, held at the end of July, featured several disabled musicians, artists, poets, and performance groups from our area. Among them was MahataMmoho Collective, a dance group that began a grant-funded project at this year’s festival, and will share the results of the project at next year’s festival. WBFO’s Emyle Watkins sat down with founder Megan Rakeepile before their performance at the festival to hear about how dance can help our community rethink care and equity." Continue reading transcript.
UB receives $2.5 million Mellon grant to address support needs of caregivers, those with disabilities
From left to right, Jo L. Freudenheim, Victoria Wolcott and Michael Rembis. Credit: Douglas Levere, University at Buffalo.
Release Date: December 11, 2023
BUFFALO, N.Y. – The University at Buffalo has received a $2.5 million grant from The Mellon Foundation in support of a new interdisciplinary research project that seeks to better understand and address issues faced by caregivers and those with disabilities.
The Communities of Care project derives inspiration from an existing though informal “communities of care” social strategy. This concept recognizes that care is delivered not only by the health care system, but additionally through significant community-level support systems within families, among friends, throughout neighborhoods, and other networks. In this context, the project focuses on those with disabilities and caregivers, who are frequently women of color.
Communities of Care will combine the expertise of UB’s Center for Disability Studies (CDS) and the Institute for Research and Education on Women and Gender (Gender Institute) to develop elements both within the university and throughout the larger community. With Buffalo as the study’s nucleus, the project will explore these local care networks to identify the everyday ways that low-income, racialized and disabled people balance life, work and other responsibilities while navigating health care options when critical infrastructure and resources are otherwise lacking.
“This transformational funding from the Mellon Foundation will give our researchers the ability to explore health inequities that profoundly impact caregivers in Buffalo,” said Robin Schulze, PhD, dean of the UB College of Arts and Sciences. “It will allow them to collect critical insights from members of the community that will help change our city for the better.”
The project, which includes curriculum development and new faculty positions within the university, will provide a knowledge platform for caregivers and those receiving care at the intersection of disability, race, and gender.
Various community initiatives such as collecting oral histories, cultivating artistic production and writing workshops will provide information resources for people looking for ideas, inspiration and encouragement from those who have had similar experiences.
“Collecting this kind of humanities-based evidence, archiving what’s gathered and making it searchable, with the consent of their creators, will allow future researchers and community members to access the experiences and voices of people who have been historically silenced,” says Michael Rembis, PhD, an associate professor of history, one of the grant’s co-principal investigators and director of the university’s Center for Disability Studies. “We’ll gain new perspectives on the delivery of health care, the working conditions for employees, and other valuable information related to physical health, mental health, nutrition and well-being.”
Beginning Dec. 1 and unfolding over three years, the project will build and curate a website where people can access the stories related to care. There will be a searchable database with transcribed audio interviews.
“The key here is the power of storytelling,” says Victoria Wolcott, PhD, a co-principal investigator and UB professor of history who directs the university’s Gender Institute. “The humanities are well situated to gather and collect these important stories and create the space required to create new levels of awareness by sharing those narratives with the broader public.”
As part of the grant, the university will be hiring three new faculty members, creating opportunities for postdoctoral fellows, and inviting visiting scholars to the campus and wider community while developing new curriculum and expanding the presence and role of both the Gender Institute and the Center for Disability Studies.
“This grant will help place UB at the center of medical humanities studies by looking at the multiple factors related to how marginalized communities receive health care in the city,” says Wolcott. “It’s a demonstration of the many possible paths for UB to realize its ambition to becoming a Top 25 public university.”
Insights from the project would apply not just to Buffalo, but to people elsewhere engaged with creating communities to address issues of care, according to Jo L. Freudenheim, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health in UB’s School of Public Health and Health Professions, who is the third of the grant’s three co-principal investigators.
“The collaboration between the Gender Institute and the CDS makes UB an excellent place to do this work,” says Freudenheim. “Buffalo is a racially diverse city, with a strong community of disabled people and their advocates.”
“As someone who works in public health it is exciting to be part of a project that is focused on leveraging the humanities to address significant issues that affect our world,” says Freudenheim.
The grant comes during the final phase of the university’s historic Boldly Buffalo campaign, which recently surpassed its billion-dollar goal. At its conclusion in June 2024, it will be one of the largest comprehensive campaigns by a public university in the Northeast and the largest campaign UB has ever undertaken, in both impact and duration.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.
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