Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Mental Health's Role In Early Investigative Journalism; Doctors Sound The Alarm; The Measles Spread
Reveal: Nellie Bly Makes The News
Elizabeth Cochran, who wrote under the pen name Nellie Bly, was one of the best-known female journalists of the Victorian era. She gained instant fame for her exposé of poor conditions at a mental asylum, which she uncovered by feigning insanity and having herself committed. ... This short film examines the porous line between reporting facts and telling stories, while creating a dynamic portrait of a woman who refused to accept the status quo. (5/30)
The New York Times: Doctors Were Alarmed: ‘Would I Have My Children Have Surgery Here?’
Tasha and Thomas Jones sat beside their 2-year-old daughter as she lay in intensive care at North Carolina Children’s Hospital. Skylar had just come out of heart surgery and should recover well, her parents were told. But that night, she flatlined. Doctors and nurses swarmed around her, performing chest compressions for nearly an hour before putting the little girl on life support. Five days later, in June 2016, the hospital’s pediatric cardiologists gathered one floor below for what became a wrenching discussion. Patients with complex conditions had been dying at higher-than-expected rates in past years, some of the doctors suspected. Now, even children like Skylar, undergoing less risky surgeries, seemed to fare poorly. (Gabler, 5/30)
Wired: Why Tracking Your Symptoms Can Make You Feel Worse
Katie Golden began a symptom diary when she was first diagnosed with chronic migraines eight years ago. She recorded her pain score, what she ate, where she went, the weather and barometric pressure—anything that would unlock the possible triggers of her recurring headaches and help ease the pain. But here’s the problem with meticulous tracking of symptoms: It can make you feel worse. Fifteen percent of adults in the US use an app regularly or occasionally to track symptoms of a disease. About as many use a sleep-tracking app to figure out whether they get enough shut-eye. (Cohen Marill, 5/30)
The Economist: Measles Is Often Spread By Adults - Never Too Old
The [measles] resurgence has been blamed on parents refusing to vaccinate their children or delaying jabs. But what has also become clear is that vaccinating only children is no longer sufficient. In 2013-17 between 33% and 63% of the annual measles cases in Europe were among people older than 14 years. In 2017 the median age for measles cases in Italy, which has frequent outbreaks, was 27 years. A paper published in Science this month shows how this pattern evolved. Using historical data and statistical modelling, the paper’s authors find that as a country gets closer to fully eliminating measles, the age range of those who are not immune to the disease widens (see chart). Catch-up jabs, in other words, need to cover older and older groups of people. (5/25)
The Guardian: What Banned Substances Might Be Hiding In Your Groceries? Find Out Now
Food in the US, in contrast to Europe, can be made with new chemicals that haven’t passed a government safety evaluation. As a result, Americans may consume over 10,000 additives, thousands of which have been introduced without the government’s knowledge. The FDA and EPA defend the chemicals in our food as safe or safe in limited amounts. But the system also assumes that consumers have enough information to make their own decisions. Find out what additives, pesticides and antibiotics you could be buying – and how you might avoid them. (Enders and Morris, 5/29)
OneZero: Dangerous DIY Sunscreen Recipes Are Spreading On Pinterest
The study looked at how people share information about homemade or do-it-yourself sunscreen on Pinterest, and found that nearly 95% of pins about homemade sunscreen portrayed it positively, and a full 68% of the pins recommended recipes for DIY sunscreen that didn’t even work. Lara McKenzie, a principal investigator at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and one of the study’s authors, says she and her co-authors were interested in studying Pinterest specifically because of how many parents use the platform. She says that, as a parent herself, “I understand the movement and wanting to provide the best for your kids and to not give them things that are harmful or dangerous or hazardous,” but that, in fact, relying on homemade sunscreen puts a child more at risk than whatever potential dangers people think lurk in sunscreen chemicals. (Lashbrook, 5/29)
The Marshall Project: I Spent 22 Years In Solitary Confinement. Then I Didn’t Want To Leave
After spending 22 years in solitary confinement, anything larger than my cell threw me into panic. (Frank de Palma, 5/24)
