Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Doctors, Facing Blowback From Gun Advocates, Galvanize To Fight Violence
NBC News: ‘This Is Our Lane’: Doctors Speak Out Against Gun Violence After Texas School Shooting
Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, knows what assault rifles can do to a child’s body. The damage, she said, is often insurmountable. “It’s not just the hole you see on the outside. It’s a huge blast effect,” Naik-Mathuria said. “You see completely shredded organs. Vessels are completely disrupted. There’s no way to salvage them. ”That’s why Naik-Mathuria is full-throatedly proclaiming that the issue of gun violence is “very much our lane.” “We have our hands inside these people, these children, trying to save them,” she said. “How can anyone tell us that it’s not our problem?” (Edwards, 5/26)
NBC News: Surgeon On Treating Texas Shooting Victims: 'Moment Of Crisis With Lifetime Of Impact'
Sitting in a quiet conference room, away from the chaos of the trauma unit at University Hospital [in San Antonio], Dr. Ronald Stewart paused and closed his eyes several times Thursday before choking back tears. “I feel so bad for those families,” he said, “and guilty, to some degree, that they don’t have their children and I do.” Stewart, senior trauma surgeon at University Hospital and the father of three adult children, was one of the doctors who treated the victims of Tuesday’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, where a gunman opened fire with a weapon of war, killing 19 children and two teachers. (Lozano, 5/26)
Houston Chronicle: In Uvalde, A County Without A Medical Examiner, This Judge Had Horrific Duty Of Identifying Slain Children
Sitting in his office on the third floor of the courthouse here, Judge Eulalio Diaz first saw a post around noon Tuesday from the city’s police. Not a first responder, he went about his day, watching ambulances and buses out two windows behind his desk, hearing and reading reports. About two hours later, he got a call requesting he “make a location,” indicating that at least one person is dead in a Texas county without a medical examiner. As the county’s justice of the peace, his duties usually include court cases and officiating weddings, but his role also includes serving as the coroner. “We were under impression that it was two or three people,” Diaz, 49, recounted Thursday. (Serrano, 5/26)
On gun legislation —
Houston Chronicle: Cornyn Calls For Bipartisan Gun Law As Schumer Blasts Abbott
As negotiations on possible gun reform got underway in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blasted Gov. Greg Abbott as an “absolute fraud.” Schumer accused Abbott of offering nothing but “empty platitudes about healing and hope” after he was confronted by Beto O’Rourke during a press conference in Uvalde on Wednesday. “He asked the people to put their agendas aside and think about someone other than themselves,” Schumer said. “How dare he. What an absolute fraud the governor of Texas is." (Wermund, 5/26)
CalMatters: CA Advances Gun Control Bills Amid School Shooting
As news traveled around the country Tuesday of a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that left at least 22 dead — including 19 children, two teachers and the 18-year-old gunman — California lawmakers were advancing a package of gun control bills, including one sponsored by Gov. Gavin Newsom that co-opts the structure of Texas’ abortion ban to crack down on illegal firearms. The striking timing highlighted a shared challenge facing California, Texas and other states: reducing gun deaths, which have ticked up dramatically nationwide amid the pandemic. (Hoeven, 5/25)
More about the gun violence epidemic —
Reuters: Texas School Shooting Swells Ranks Of Traumatized Teachers
After a teenage gunman killed two of her high school students and wounded four others in her Florida classroom in 2018, Ivy Schamis found the strength to carry on teaching for two more years. Missy Dodds, who watched five of her pupils gunned down by a former student who shot his way into her classroom in Minnesota in 2005, returned for six weeks before abandoning the career she loved. (Reid, 5/26)
Los Angeles Times: What Should You Do In A Mass Shooting?
A grocery store. A church. An elementary school. Again. Within 10 days this month, mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., Laguna Woods, and Uvalde, Texas, have claimed dozens of lives, shattered families and communities, and put people around the U.S. on edge. (Amato, 5/25)
The Washington Post: How To Stay Up-To-Date On Terrible News Without Burning Out
It’s important to stay informed, engaged and even outraged. But it’s also important to pay attention to our own limits and mental health by taking breaks, looking for signs of burnout, connecting with our families and consuming news in the smartest way possible. That means setting some ground rules for the main portal connecting us to nonstop tragedy: our phones. (Kelly, 5/25)
KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: A(Nother) Very Sad Week
This week’s mass shooting of elementary schoolers in Texas (just 10 days after a racially motivated mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store) has reignited the gun debate in Washington, D.C., and around the country. But the political disagreements over guns and their appropriate role in American society are as insoluble as ever. Meanwhile, Oklahoma becomes the first state to try to ban all abortions, as the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case it is expected to use to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. (5/26)
