Sleep researcher eyes Boston Police Department
Renowned sleep researcher Dr. Charles Czeisler has made more than a few hospital administrators squirm with his probing studies of sleep-deprived doctors. Now he wants to study sleep habits and fatigue among Boston police officers. But winning approval from the union is another matter.
Czeisler, chief of the division of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has won about $2.5 million in grants from national organizations and agencies to study fatigue and sleep disorders among police. One study of the Massachusetts State Police, which will screen 1,200 of the 2,000 officers for sleep disorders over the next two years and try to improve their health, is proceeding smoothly and will begin this summer.
But getting Boston police -- or any local police department -- to agree to the second study has been dicey. Especially since a key component involves attaching electrodes to officers' heads.
Czeisler wants to carry out a comprehensive fatigue management program, including reviewing working conditions, sleepiness on the job and developing new policies to reduce fatigue and its dangers. As part of the research, he wants to hook up officers to contraptions similar to those he used on Brigham interns who participated in a sleep study from July 2002 to June 2003. Researchers glued 10 electrodes to their heads to measure drowsiness, while portable monitors attached to the electrodes recorded instances of profound fatigue.
''The devil is in the details," said Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. ''Conceptually it's a great idea."
He said officers are concerned that the devices will slow them down while handcuffing suspects or on other physical aspects of the job, and are worried that their personal results will become part of a medical record that the city can access.
''Anytime you try to establish a project that looks at working conditions and work hours and policies, it requires a whole set of negotiations," Czeisler said. ''The commissioner has fully endorsed the project as has Nee. It's a matter of getting the union [members] comfortable with it."
He's not putting all his eggs in one basket. He's also talking to police departments in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Seattle.
Don Berwick achieves a crowning glory
Bill Gates. Steven Spielberg. Rudy Giuliani. Norman Schwarzkopf. And now, Boston's own Don Berwick.
Queen Elizabeth has appointed Berwick, 58, a Harvard pediatrician and policy wonk, an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He is the first American from New England given the honor in at least 15 years, but he joins of an elite group of Americans. Gates, Spielberg, Giuliani and Schwarzkopf also have been appointed honorary knights by the Queen.
''It's very rare," said Terri Evans of the British Consulate-General in Boston.
The title carries no responsibilities and offers no pay. The recipients cannot call themselves ''sir" because they are not British citizens, hence the ''honorary" label. It is bestowed to recognize distinguished service. In Berwick's case, he has worked with British doctors since the mid-1990s to improve the British health care system. He heads the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Cambridge, a research and consulting firm that focuses on medical quality.
The British ambassador in Washington presented Spielberg with his award, while the queen herself bestowed the honor on Gates and Giuliani at the palace.
''Obviously I'd love to meet the queen," Berwick said.
Harvard beats out Harvard
The National Institutes of Health selected one Harvard team of researchers over another for an unprecedented and controversial grant for HIV/AIDS research. A team headed by Dr. Barton Haynes of Duke University Medical Center will receive $15 million the first year and potentially more than $300 million in the next seven years to find ways around obstacles in designing, developing and testing novel HIV vaccine candidates.
Two top members of his team are Dr. Norman Letvin of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Dr. Joseph Sodroski of the medical school and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The group beat out a team led by Dr. Bruce Walker, a prominent international AIDS researcher at the medical school and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Researchers spent months developing proposals that averaged 700 pages. A Harvard official said that in six to eight weeks each of the four teams that applied will receive ''pink sheets," which describe what reviewers thought of their proposals.
The idea is that the team will head a virtual center, in which high-powered researchers from different universities collaborate on developing vaccines. Some AIDS researchers have criticized the NIH's approach, worried that the team will soak up limited funds at the expense of individual scientists working in their own labs.
Liz Kowalczyk can be reached at kowalczyk@globe.com. 
