Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Employers Tip Toe Around Requests From Younger Workers Seeking Help For Mental Health Conditions
The Wall Street Journal: Young Workers Seek Mental Health Accommodations, Employers Try To Keep Up
Managers and younger employees are struggling to adapt as a generation of people with higher rates of reported mental illness enter the workforce. Many of these new workers are coming to offices from colleges and high schools where they received accommodations, such as extra time to take tests or complete assignments—in some cases from elementary school onward. They are confronting a world of work that operates under different legal standards and less-flexible pressures and deadlines. (Weber, 2/12)
NPR: New Emojis Include Rocks And Flies: Scientists Have Mixed Feelings
Scientists can get very excited about what they study, and that means they can be pretty jazzed when what they study gets turned into one of the official emojis of the world and enters our shared visual language. But sometimes that enthusiasm is tempered by more complex feelings, which is the case with some of the latest emojis that are about to hit our smartphones. Consider the "rock" emoji. (Greenfieldboyce, 2/12)
CNN: Medtronic Recalls Certain MiniMed Insulin Pumps Tied To 1 Death
Medtronic has recalled some of its insulin pumps after injuries and one death were reported due to the device malfunctioning, according to a US Food and Drug Administration announcement on Wednesday. The FDA identified it as a Class I recall, the most serious type of recall. (Howard, 2/12)
ProPublica: House Subcommittee Opens Investigation Of Evenflo, Maker Of 'Big Kid' Booster Seats
A congressional subcommittee is launching an investigation of Evenflo, a major maker of children’s car booster seats, over its product marketing and testing practices. A ProPublica investigation last week showed how the company put marketing over safety in pushing its booster seats as “side impact tested,” even though its own tests showed a child using that seat could be paralyzed or killed in such a crash. (Callahan, 2/12)
Reuters: Sleep Difficulties Are Perfectly Normal For Babies, Study Confirms
New parents who struggle to get babies to sleep through the night may not be doing anything wrong, according to new research suggesting that many apparent sleep problems are really part of normal infant development. For example, the study found that 6-month-old babies still take 20 minutes, on average, to fall asleep. And by age 2, toddlers still wake up an average of once each night. (Rapaport, 2/12)
CBS News: Infants As Young As 19 Months Can Be Altruistic, Study Finds
It's been well-documented that human adults can engage in altruistic behavior — giving up something valuable to help others, even at a personal cost — but a new study published in the journal Science Reports suggests that babies can be altruistic, too. (O'Kane, 2/12)
CNN: Parents, Grandparents To Blame For Half Of Child Poisonings, Study Says
Parents and grandparents, listen up -- this is serious. More than half of children under age five poisoned by prescription pills ate them after an adult removed the childproof safety packaging. These medications include those to treat diabetes or cardiac conditions, which are hazardous to children even in small doses. (LaMotte, 2/12)
Reuters: Virtual Reality May Help Relieve Pain During Childbirth
Immersion in virtual reality may relieve some of the pain of contractions before childbirth, a small study suggests. In a half-hour test among 40 hospitalized women in labor, those who used VR headsets that provided relaxing scenes and messages reported pain reductions compared with those who didn't get headsets, researchers said in a presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in Grapevine, Texas. (Goodier, 2/12)
CNN: The World's Oldest Living Man Is 112. His Secret Is To Just Keep Smiling And Never Get Angry
Chitetsu Watanabe turns 113 next month, but he got an early birthday present from Guinness World Records, which confirmed that he is the world's oldest living man. He was presented with a certificate on Wednesday at the nursing home where he lives in Niigata, Japan -- he's 112 Years, 344 days old, according to Guinness. (Williams, 2/12)
