Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
A Look Inside Federal Prisons’ Failure To Treat Inmates With Mental-Health Illnesses Despite Policies Enacted To Do Just That
The Washington Post/The Marshall Project: Federal Prisons Are Failing Inmates With Mental Health Disorders
In 2014, amid mounting criticism and legal pressure, the Federal Bureau of Prisons imposed a new policy promising better care and oversight for inmates with mental-health issues. But data obtained by the Marshall Project through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that instead of expanding treatment, the bureau has lowered the number of inmates designated for higher care levels by more than 35 percent. Increasingly, prison staff are determining that prisoners — some with long histories of psychiatric problems — don’t require any routine care at all. As of February, the Bureau of Prisons classified just 3 percent of inmates as having a mental illness serious enough to require regular treatment. (Thompson and Eldridge, 11/21)
Boston Globe: How Culture Shapes Your Mind — And Your Mental Illness
Culture shapes who we are, so it follows that it would also shape our manifestations of stress, mental disorder, emotion. Yet, that also implies a kind of messiness that modern psychology and psychiatry, particularly the American kind, have spent the last 100 years struggling to tidy up. (Rodriguez McRobbie, 11/28)
The New York Times: Study Warns Of Cascading Health Risks From The Changing Climate
Crop yields are declining. Tropical diseases like dengue fever are showing up in unfamiliar places, including in the United States. Tens of millions of people are exposed to extreme heat. These are the stark findings of a wide-ranging scientific report that lays out the growing risks of climate change for human health and predicts that cascading hazards could soon face millions more people in rich and poor countries around the world. (Sengupta and Pierre-Louis, 11/28)
The New York Times: Online Cancer Information Is Often Unreliable
Many YouTube videos about prostate cancer are unreliable sources of information. Researchers searched YouTube for “prostate cancer screening” and “prostate cancer treatment.” Then they scored the first 75 hits for each phrase, using validated scales to assess such measures as whether the video favored new technology, recommended unproven treatments, accurately described risks and benefits or showed commercial bias. (Bakalar, 11/28)
Stat: Study Sees Bias In Tests Used To Determine If Patients Needs Dementia Evals
It’s widely known that these quick screening tests — some of them technically copyrighted but often easily downloadable for free — aren’t always right. Some patients might pass the animal-naming test with flying colors but still have dementia; others might be sent for hours of in-depth evaluation that they don’t need. But what predisposes a patient to get a misleading result turns out to be very different form one screening method to another, according to a paper published Wednesday in Neurology. (Boodman, 11/28)
The Associated Press: HIV Cases In Children Dropping But Still Too Slowly, UN Says
The United Nations children's agency says the number of youths living with HIV could drop by about one-third to 1.9 million between now and 2030, while children dying each year from AIDS-related causes could drop by nearly half to 56,000 in 2030. Its new report says that while the projected decline in HIV cases is good news, it's still too slow. The report says 270,000 people up to age 19, the bulk of them in Africa, could be infected in 2030 alone. (11/29)
Bloomberg: Male Birth Control Closer As U.S. Tests Hormone Skin Gel
U.S. government scientists will test an experimental birth control method for men, which would be a major advance in contraception and bring more equality to a family planning burden borne largely by women. The study is being conducted by the National Institutes of Health and will involve 420 couples. The experimental treatment is a gel, applied to the back and shoulders, that combines two types of hormones to halt the production of sperm while maintaining the energy and libido benefits of testosterone. (Cortez, 11/28)
The New York Times: You Don’t Want French Fries With That
If French fries come from potatoes, and potatoes are a vegetable, and vegetables are good for you, then what’s the harm in eating French fries? Plenty, say experts and nutritionists, including Eric Rimm, a professor in the departments of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, who called potatoes “starch bombs.” Potatoes rank near the bottom of healthful vegetables and lack the compounds and nutrients found in green leafy vegetables, he said. (Mele, 11/29)
NPR: Trauma Surgeon Joseph Sakran Talks About Gun Violence
For trauma surgeon Joseph Sakran, gun violence is a very personal issue. He has treated hundreds of gun wound victims, comforted anxious loved ones and told mothers and fathers that their children would not be coming home. But Sakran's empathy for his patients and their families extends beyond the hospital. Sakran knows the pain of gun violence because he is a survivor of it; when he was 17, he took a bullet to the throat after a high school football game. (Gross, 11/28)
Georgia Health News: Federal Report Urges Bigger Fight Against Diseases Caused By Ticks
Federal health officials are calling for a bigger effort to fight tick-borne diseases. In a report earlier this month, an advisory committee for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called for improved diagnosis, lab testing and treatment, as well as more funding in fighting Lyme disease and other tick-related diseases. (Miller, 11/28)
The New York Times: To Treat Eating Disorders, It Sometimes Takes Two
The issue was peanut butter. No matter what form it took — creamy, crunchy, straight from the jar or smeared between two slices of bread — it caused Sunny Gold enormous anxiety. In fact, the gooey spread posed such a threat that during her first few years of recovery from binge eating disorder, between 2006 and 2007, Ms. Gold, 42, a communications specialist in Portland, Ore., couldn’t keep it around the house. It was one of her favorite foods, and she feared she would binge on it. Just knowing it was there, lurking in her cupboard, made her feel “unsafe,” as she put it. (Ellin, 11/29)
