Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: A Dismantled Mental Health System; Abortion In Texas; Fighting Zika
The Boston Globe: The Desperate And The Dead: Families In Fear
Fifty years ago, Lee Chiero might have been treated — and locked away — in one of the public psychiatric hospitals that once dotted Massachusetts. Today, nearly all of those institutions have been bulldozed or boarded up — and many had to be, having evolved into inhumane asylums for people who are, in the great majority, no threat to anyone. But the hospitals were not replaced with anything resembling a coherent care system, leaving thousands of people with serious mental illness to navigate a fragmented network of community services that puts an extraordinary burden on them to find help and to make sure they continue getting it. (Michael Rezendes, Jenna Russell, Scott Helman, Maria Cramer and Todd Wallack, 6/23)
The Atlantic: How Syphilis Came Roaring Back
For many years, syphilis was considered a practically ancient ailment—a “Great Pox” that, like tuberculosis or polio, Americans just don’t get anymore. There were just 6,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis in 2000, and the CDC briefly thought the disease’s total elimination was within reach. For many years, syphilis was considered a practically ancient ailment—a “Great Pox” that, like tuberculosis or polio, Americans just don’t get anymore. There were just 6,000 cases of primary and secondary syphilis in 2000, and the CDC briefly thought the disease’s total elimination was within reach. (Olga Khazan and Russell Berman, 6/28)
NPR's Fresh Air: 'Nobody Is Immune': Bracing For Zika's First Summer In The U.S.
The mosquito-borne Zika epidemic is headed for its first summer in the United States. New York Times reporter Donald G. McNeil Jr. tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that if the virus is ever going to hit hard in the U.S., 2016 will be the year. Podcast. (6/28)
The New York Times: Leaving The Pediatrician? Not At 26
A poll from the Pew Research Center last month found that for the first time in more than a century, young adults are more likely to live with their parents than with a partner or a spouse. So it should come as no surprise that many are perfectly happy to remain with their childhood physicians. The age at which patients leave the pediatric nest varies, depending on whether their doctors are trained to treat adolescents and young adult patients. Historically, that age has been 18 to 22. It seems to be moving up. (Jane H. Furse, 6/23)
Vox: It Could Take Years For Texas Abortion Clinics To Reopen, Even After A Supreme Court Victory
Pro-choice advocates won a huge victory on Monday when the Supreme Court struck down two major anti-abortion laws in Texas in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. Those laws, part of an omnibus anti-abortion bill called HB 2, were responsible for closing about half of all abortion clinics in Texas. (Emily Crockett, 6/27)
The Atlantic: Zika Is The ‘Most Difficult’ Emergency Health Response Ever, CDC Official Says
After the House of Representatives finally passed a Zika funding bill on Thursday—for $1.1 billion (less than the $1.9 billion President Obama originally requested), much of it taken away from Affordable Care Act funding, and remaining Ebola emergency money. Given that, the White House has threatened to veto the bill. Which would mean still no federal funding for what Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called “the most difficult” emergency response the agency has ever had to do, on Thursday at Spotlight Health, a conference co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. (Julie Beck, 6/24)
