Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Prescription Heroin; Smartphone Psychiatry; And Obamacare Repeal
Vox: The Case For Prescription Heroin
A clinic where patients use heroin may sound shocking and irresponsible, particularly now, as a deadly and devastating opioid epidemic ravages North America. But this approach is meant to treat the victims of that epidemic. The idea is this: If some people are going to use heroin no matter what, it’s better to give them a safe source of the stuff and a safe place to inject it, rather than letting them pick it up on the street — laced with who knows what — and possibly overdose without medical supervision. Patients can not only avoid death by overdose but otherwise go about their lives without stealing or committing other crimes to obtain heroin. (German Lopez, 6/12)
The Atlantic: The Smartphone Psychiatrist
Sometime around 2010, about two-thirds of the way through his 13 years at the helm of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)—the world’s largest mental-health research institution—Tom Insel started speaking with unusual frankness about how both psychiatry and his own institute were failing to help the mentally ill. Insel, runner-trim, quietly alert, and constitutionally diplomatic, did not rant about this. It’s not in him. You won’t hear him trash-talk colleagues or critics. (David Dobbs, 6/8)
FiveThirtyEight: Facts Alone Won’t Convince People To Vaccinate Their Kids
Measles is a highly contagious and potentially deadly viral infection. Although the MMR vaccine that prevents it is quite effective, some children — including those with pre-existing health conditions, like cancer or compromised immune systems, and those who are younger than 6 months old — cannot receive it. These vulnerable populations rely on herd immunity to protect them. When vaccination levels reach a critical threshold — 83 percent to 94 percent for measles — the high concentration of immune people squelches the spread of the disease, preventing it from reaching large numbers of unprotected people. (Erin Hare, 6/12)
Vox: “This Is Red Alert”: Inside The Left's Game Plan For Beating The GOP Health Bill
Progressive activists and Senate Democrats are trying to mount an all-out campaign to sink a Republican health care bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to pass before Congress’s July 4 recess. ... There’s just one key problem with this effort: Nobody on the left knows exactly what they’re fighting against, because Senate Republicans haven’t yet released their bill. (Jeff Stein, 6/14)
The Guardian: One Community Garden At A Time: How New Yorkers Are Fighting For Food Justice
As part of New York mayor Bill de Blasio’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, the city recently upped the number of GreenThumb gardens in underserved neighborhoods with limited access to healthy food. The new grants include gardens in East Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant and the H.E.A.L.T.H for Youths garden on police department property.But even as community food production programs gain in number, the overall picture is darkening. (Edward Helmore, 6/12)
FiveThirtyEight: Why Some Conservatives Don’t Like The House Health Care Bill
As a group of Republican senators works behind closed doors to draft new health care legislation to repeal and replace parts of the Affordable Care Act, a somewhat surprising group of dissidents to the GOP effort has emerged: conservative policy wonks. (Anna Maria Barry-Jester, 6/13)
