Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
Each week, KFF Health News finds longer stories for you to enjoy. This week's selections include stories on AI, space research, Puerto Rico, cannabis, and more.
Harvard Public Health:
Three Ways AI Is Improving Public Health
Artificial intelligence in health care could improve health for postpartum mothers, combat superbugs, and boost colorectal cancer detection. (Gardner, 2/15)
Stat:
Deep Space Medicine: Astronaut Health May Spur Benefits On Earth
Space is famously known as the final frontier for human exploration. It may also be the final frontier for human medicine. That’s what Dorit Donoviel, executive director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health, and her team are working towards. TRISH is a consortium between Baylor College of Medicine, Caltech, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that partners with NASA to solve the health challenges of humans exploring deep space. (StFleur, 2/16)
AP:
Puerto Rico Is Entangled In A Heated Public Health Debate Over Vaccines And Masks
A fiery debate over public health and personal rights has gripped Puerto Rico as legislators clash with medical experts. (2/14)
The Washington Post:
New Marketing Push By Ozempic And Others Sparks Body-Positive Backlash
When Virgie Tovar got an email asking her to promote injectable weight-loss medications on her social media, she thought it was spam. As an activist, she had spent the last 13 years espousing body positivity and fat acceptance. Why would she promote drugs like Ozempic on her Instagram account? But the offers to promote companies proffering drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic kept coming in. (O'Neill, 2/14)
The New York Times:
Curing Pets With Cannabis As Veterinarians Try CBD And THC
While many people and their doctors have embraced medical marijuana for health ills, treating pets and zoo animals with CBD and THC is just beginning. (Nuwer, 2/6)
In obituaries —
The Washington Post:
Brooke Ellison, Resilient Disability Rights Activist, Dies At 45
Brooke Ellison’s “first life,” as she called it, ended on Sept. 4, 1990, when she was 11 years old. It was the day before the start of seventh grade. She was crossing a busy street on her walk home from orientation at her junior high school in Stony Brook, L.I., when she was hit by a car. The impact cracked open her skull, broke nearly every major bone in her body and left her in a coma for 36 hours. When she awoke, she learned she had been paralyzed from the neck down. For the rest of her life — her “second life,” she said — she depended on a ventilator to breathe and a motorized wheelchair, which she controlled with her mouth, for mobility. (Langer, 2/14)
