Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Pediatric Hospice Can Be A Godsend For Heartbroken Parents. But The Facilities Often Struggle To Stay Afloat.
The New York Times: Where Should A Child Die? Hospice Homes Help Families With The Unimaginable
Children dressed as superheroes skidded over the hardwood floors of a toy-filled living room. Local police officers and firefighters pretended to give chase. The birthday boy, a month shy of 1, wore a Superman T-shirt and a red cape with a yellow lightning bolt. His 3-year-old sister, in a Batgirl costume, was cheering in the open kitchen as she heaped sprinkles onto cookies straight from the oven. Parents and grandparents laid out green-and-blue-frosted slices of cake on the communal dining tables. Balloons floated overhead, adding splashes of color to the cathedral ceiling. Through skylights, the early winter sun beamed down onto the gas fireplace. A photographer circulated through the room. It was noon on a Thursday last December, and the 50 or so guests all knew that the birthday boy, Parker Graf, was going to die the next day. (Ouyang, 5/15)
The New York Times: Was It An Invisible Attack On U.S. Diplomats, Or Something Stranger?
The piercing, high-pitched noises were first heard by a couple of recently arrived United States Embassy officials in Havana in late 2016, soon after Donald Trump was elected president. They heard the noises in their homes, in the city’s leafy western suburbs. If they moved to a different room, or walked outside, the noise stopped. The two officials said they believed that the sound was man-made, a form of harassment. Around the same time, they began to develop a variety of symptoms: headaches, fatigue, dizziness, mental fog, hearing loss, nausea. (Hurley, 5/15)
Reuters: 'Hidden Health Crisis' Of Snakebites Gets $100 Million Funding Injection
A global health trust is to inject 80 million pounds ($102 million) into finding more modern and effective treatments for snakebites - a "hidden health crisis" that kills 120,000 people a year and maims thousands more. The project, launched by Britain's Wellcome Trust global health charity on Thursday, aims both to improve the world's supply of antivenoms - the only current treatment for snakebites - and to develop new and more effective drugs for the future. (5/15)
The New York Times: Fitness For Bodies That Don’t Fit The Mainstream
Five years ago, Asher Freeman tried to find a personal trainer knowledgeable about the fitness needs of queer and transgender people. The search came up empty. So Freeman, who identifies as nonbinary and uses the pronouns they and them, took college courses in exercise science and became certified as a personal trainer. “It was really my own experience that made me realize the need for fitness professionals serving those of us whose bodies do not fit into the mainstream fitness industry’s narrow definition of health,” said Freeman, who prefers not to use labels like Mr. or Ms. (de la Cruz, 5/16)
Stat: Brain Training Improves Veterans' Cognitive Performance After TBI
Now, however, a Pentagon-funded study has found that a specific form of computer-based brain training can improve cognitive performance in vets such as Deegan who suffered persistent mental deficits after a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), researchers reported on Thursday at a conference in Washington. If the results hold up, the training, a commercial product called BrainHQ, will be the first intervention shown to do so. (Begley, 5/16)
The Associated Press: Blurred Lines: A Pregnant Man's Tragedy Tests Gender Notions
When the man arrived at the hospital with severe abdominal pains, a nurse didn't consider it an emergency, noting that he was obese and had stopped taking blood pressure medicines. In reality, he was pregnant — a transgender man in labor that was about to end in a stillbirth. The tragic case, described in Wednesday's New England Journal of Medicine, points to larger issues about assigning labels or making assumptions in a society increasingly confronting gender variations in sports , entertainment and government . In medicine, there's a similar danger of missing diseases such as sickle cell and cystic fibrosis that largely affect specific racial groups, the authors write. (5/15)
North Carolina Health News: New Tech For Tuberculosis Patients
While historical novels and pop culture are filled with references to “consumption,” “wasting disease” and tuberculosis sanatoriums, TB is by no means a disease that’s only consigned to history. In 2017, 1.6 million people worldwide died from TB, the World Health Organization reports. To combat the extremely contagious disease, since 1993 the WHO has recommended directly observed therapy (DOT), in which a provider watches patients take their daily pills. (Duong, 5/16)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Teen Suicide Prevention Treatment Can Be Hard To Find Across The USA
Teens across America are increasingly anxious and depressed. Social media is amplifying bullying and other bad behaviors, leaving kids feeling isolated and tormented.In many parts of the country, it is difficult to get treatment for mental health problems. (Linnane, Zettel-Vadenhouten and BeMiller, 5/15)
NPR: Highly Potent Weed: What We Know About The Health Effects
As more states legalize marijuana, more people in the U.S. are buying and using weed — and the kind of weed they can buy has become much stronger. That concerns scientists who study marijuana and its effects on the body, as well as emergency room doctors who say they're starting to see more patients who come into the ER with weed-associated issues. (Chatterjee, 5/15)
The New York Times: How Tiger Woods Won The Back Surgery Lottery
Few would have predicted that Tiger Woods would be playing in the P.G.A. Championship this week. He had three failed back surgeries, starting in 2014. He had taken opioids. His astonishing career seemed over. Then he had one more operation, a spinal fusion, the most complex of all, in 2017. And last month he won the Masters, playing the way he used to. An outcome like his from fusion surgery is so rare it is “like winning the lottery,” Dr. Sohail K. Mirza, a spine surgeon at Dartmouth, said. (Kolata, 5/15)
