Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The New York Times: Can Virtual Reality Help Autistic Children Navigate The Real World?
Vijay Ravindran was noodling around with a virtual reality headset when his son asked to try it out. After spending 30 minutes using the headset in Google Street View, the child went to his playroom and started acting out what he had done in virtual reality. “It was one of the first times I’d seen him do pretend play like that,” Mr. Ravindran said. “It ended up being a light bulb moment.” Like many autistic children, Mr. Ravindran’s son struggled with pretend play and other social skills. His son’s ability to translate his virtual reality experience to the real world sparked an idea. A year later, Mr. Ravindran started a company called Floreo, which is developing virtual reality lessons designed to help behavioral therapists, speech therapists, special educators and parents who work with autistic children.
NBC News: Calorie Counts On Menus: Have They Helped?
Calorie labeling on menus hasn’t dramatically changed how many calories most people consume when they dine out, new research has found four years after the Food and Drug Administration began requiring chain restaurants nationwide to post calorie counts. “Some studies have shown that there’s not much of a difference in what people are ordering, or if there is, it’s a slight difference, anywhere from like 25 to 100 fewer calories for the meal,” said Colleen Tewksbury, a senior research investigator at the University of Pennsylvania and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Now as to how much of an impact that makes over their overall diet, it’s not really clear. So it’s a slight change. It’s not as drastic of a change as many people may have expected.” (Stenson, 6/11)
NBC News: New Weight-Loss Drugs Are Highly Effective, So Why Aren’t They Widely Used?
A new class of weight-loss drugs is giving some patients with obesity new hope that they’ll be able to lose excess pounds and improve their health without experiencing the dangerous side effects of older medications. But despite mounting evidence that the drugs are both safe and effective, doctors say relatively few of the country’s millions of eligible patients are taking them. (Dunn, 6/10)
The New York Times: Growing Numbers Of Girls Resist Genital Cutting In Sierra Leone
When Seio Bangura’s final high school exam results arrived not long ago, she learned she had earned grades high enough to get into college. It was a thrilling moment for the daughter of farmers who never finished primary school. But Ms. Bangura is not making plans for university. Instead, she spends most days sitting on a bench, watching others head to class or work. Ms. Bangura, 18, left home almost five years ago, after her parents gave her a choice: to be initiated in a ceremony centered on genital cutting, or leave. The ceremony allows entrance to bondo, or “the society,” a term for the gender-and-ethnicity-based groups that control much of life here. (Nolen, 6/14)
In celebrity news —
The Wall Street Journal: Lizzo Changes ‘Grrrls’ Lyrics After Criticism From Disability Advocates
Lizzo, the Grammy Award-winning singer and flutist, said she changed the lyrics in her new single “Grrrls” because of criticism that it contained a word that is offensive to people with a type of cerebral palsy. The tweak was made on Apple Music, Spotify and other music-streaming apps Monday, three days after the single made its debut and about a month before the release of Lizzo’s new album, “Special.” (Pisani, 6/14)
The Washington Post: ‘Gangnam Style’ Singer Psy’s Water Cannon Concerts Prompt Covid Warnings About Wet Masks
K-pop superstar Psy, whose hit song “Gangnam Style” propelled him to international fame a decade ago, is back with a new album and new concerts, but has found it tough going in a South Korea changed by covid and climate change. The singer has been criticized for bringing back his signature Psy’s Drenched Show concerts amid drought conditions in the country and an ongoing pandemic. The summer concert series, famous for using a large amount of water to splash the audience, is set to return in early July after a pandemic hiatus. However, South Korean health authorities on Thursday raised concerns about heightened infection risk among drenched concertgoers. “There is a higher risk of germs spreading on a wet mask, and it is necessary to take appropriate measures like changing to a new mask,” said Koh Jae-young, a spokesman for the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency. Koh added that he needs to review the official coronavirus rules to determine whether Psy’s concert will constitute a violation for spraying water to the audience. (Kim, 6/16)
Also —
The Washington Post: Some Women Want Flat Chests After Mastectomy. Some Surgeons Don’t Go Along
During her training as a breast surgeon, Deanna Attai, an associate professor at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, read studies and heard mentors say that women who opted against breast reconstruction after a mastectomy generally had a lower quality of life. But Attai found that didn’t jibe with what she was had been seeing online in the past few years: Facebook groups with names such as “Not Putting on a Shirt” and “Flat and Fabulous” that included many hundreds of women’s happy stories — and photos — about their choice to have an “aesthetic flat closure,’’ the term used by the National Cancer Institute starting in 2020, and forgo breast reconstruction. So Attai did her own survey of close to 1,000 women who’d had a single or double mastectomy without reconstruction. Published last year in Annals of Surgical Oncology, it found that close to three-quarters of the women said they were satisfied with the outcome. (Kritz, 6/11)
The Washington Post: Debunking Myths About Cancer
For someone recently diagnosed with cancer, or just terrified of getting the disease, the world — especially social media — is full of scientifically inaccurate information about how to avoid it, how to treat it and what to fear about it. Yet to the frustration of many cancer doctors, these outdated myths — such as whether, absent scientific evidence, you should eat or avoid certain foods, take herbs or other supplements, or skip therapy in favor of a “naturalistic” approach — continue to appeal to many patients, harming how they cope with a cancer diagnosis and putting their treatment at risk. (Cimons, 6/10)
The Washington Post: Getting Closer To A Vaccine For Cancer
For decades, researchers have been trying to harness the natural power of the human immune system to fight cancer, looking for ways to circumvent the defenses tumors use to thwart it. Despite early disappointments and challenges, scientists studying cancer vaccines believe they now are closer than ever before. While these vaccines are still a long way from approval, researchers think they represent the future of cancer care. “It’s a very exciting time for the field of cancer vaccines,” says Vinod Balachandran, an oncologist and surgeon-scientist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “We have made so much progress in understanding how the immune system recognizes cancers. There are dozens of cancer vaccine candidates under study by researchers around the world.” (Cimons, 6/14)
