Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
As Exhausting As Hospice Work Is, These Caregivers Describe Their Roles As Sacred, Deeply Fulfilling
Stateline: ‘My Soul And My Role Aligned’ — How Hospice Workers Deal With Death
As more Americans opt for hospice care, keeping hospice workers dedicated, replenished and content is a growing concern. The number of hospice patients grew 167 percent between 2000 and 2016, to more than 1.4 million, according to a March 2018 report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which provides Congress with analyses regarding Medicare. Nearly half of Medicare beneficiaries who died in 2015 had received hospice services. (Ollove, 7/26)
Los Angeles Times: Precision Medicine Offers A Glimmer Of Hope For Alzheimer's Disease
The decades-long search for effective ways to treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease is littered with failures, leaving 5.7 million Americans already stricken with this form of dementia without a lifeline. The rest of us are left to hope we won’t be among the 1 in 10 over 65 who gets the devastating diagnosis. But precision medicine — an approach that is changing the treatment of cancer and spawning targeted therapies for a wide range of diseases — may open new avenues for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. And new ways to test experimental treatments promise to more quickly identify treatments that work, and perhaps the patients in whom they will work best. (Healy, 7/26)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: CDC Study Shows What AIDS Advocates Already Knew
According to the CDC’s own statistics, there are 15,000 people in metro Atlanta who are living with HIV but don’t know their status; there has been an almost 90 percent increase of new HIV infections in the African-American community alone, again predominantly gay and bisexual men, ages 13-24; one in two gay black men will be impacted by HIV in their lifetime; Georgia ranks fifth in the nation for new HIV infections and, in metro Atlanta, Fulton and DeKalb counties rank No. 1 and 2, respectively, in the state. ...Without CDC funding, AID Atlanta was forced to halt its Evolution program, which did outreach to gay black men, and lay off its four staff members. (Bonds Staples, 7/27)
Stat: Artificial Hip Maker Demands Retraction Of A Paper Faulting Its Research
Last December, Brown University’s Dr. David Egilman and colleagues published a scholarly paper that identified serious flaws in a study of a hip prosthesis, and accused the medical device maker DePuy — a wholly owned subsidiary of J&J — of “grave fraudulence.” “J&J/DePuy violated the study protocol and manipulated data; consented participants in violation of standards protecting human subjects; and did not secure Institutional Review Board approval for all study sites,” they wrote about a clinical trial of the companies’ Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip replacement system, which was taken off the market in 2013 after many patients had to have the artificial hips removed. (Oransky and Marcus, 7/27)
MPR: All-Plant Impossible Burger And Its 'Blood' Are Safe, FDA Says
The Impossible Burger — a plant-based patty that mimics cow meat's bleeding — got the federal Food and Drug Administration's blessing this week in a letter saying the agency had "no questions" regarding the safety of the ingredient that makes the burger bleed. ... There had been safety and allergen concerns regarding the burger's soy leghemoglobin. (Nelson, 7/26)
Marketplace: The EPA Says TCE Causes Cancer, So Why Hasn't It Been Banned?
The federal government, on the verge of banning some uses of a carcinogenic industrial chemical at the close of the Obama administration, has delayed action under President Donald Trump and kept the chemical on the market. The chemical, trichloroethylene (or TCE) has long been used for degreasing and cleaning metal parts in factories, but has been classified a “human carcinogen” by the Environmental Protection Agency since 2011. (Tong, 7/26)
St. Louis Public Radio: The Weight Of Trauma: Racial Profiling On Black Citizens Has Lasting Effects
A study from the Journal of Mental Health Counselling found that 81 percent of the African-Americans who reported racial discrimination were more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD. The 10 Wash U students are just the latest to experience racial profiling in metro St. Louis. (Davis, 7/27)
