Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: Evidence Emerging That Colds Can Prevent Flu; Warming Temperatures Pose Health Risks
The Boston Globe: A Potential Saving Grace In The Next Cold And Flu Season
As mask mandates end and workplaces and schools reopen, viruses long held in check by precautions against COVID-19 are making comebacks. And they’ll be infecting a population in which relatively few people have picked up any immunity to them since the pandemic began. Are we headed for a year of nonstop sniffles and coughs and even worse? Not necessarily. Researchers studying how COVID-19 and the common cold interact with the body’s immune system suggest that as we return to a semblance of normalcy, an underappreciated phenomenon called viral interference may help put some limits on the next cold and flu season. (Veronique Greenwood, 6/25)
CNN: Health Risks From Heat Waves Send A Climate Alarm
"I'm sorry I'm late Dr. Tummala," a patient tells me at the start of a recent clinic appointment. Smiling with what I hope is a look of understanding, I brush off her apology. I have come to know this patient over many years and am well aware that she is apologizing for something that is not her fault. Using a walker for support, she takes three different modes of public transportation and braves the elements -- whether it's rain, snow or sweltering heat -- to get to her clinic visits. (Neelu Tummala, 6/27)
Bloomberg: Is The FDA's Drug Approval Process Broken?
Max Nisen: In November, a prestigious FDA advisory committee you sit on overwhelmingly voted that there wasn’t convincing evidence that Biogen Inc.’s Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab helps patients. The FDA approved it anyway earlier this month, and you resigned in protest. Most people don’t know what these advisory committees do. What purpose do they serve, and how did you end up on one? (Max Nisen, 6/26)
Stat: PASTEUR Act Takes Aim At The Scourge Of Antimicrobial Resistance
Look no further than the coronavirus pandemic to see an immediate and high-profile example of the evolutionary battle between microbes and humans and the antimicrobial resistance it breeds. Even as medicines and vaccines are developed to defeat Covid-19, new viral variants that resist treatment are evolving and spreading. (Sevahn Vorperian and Stephen Quake, 6/25)
Houston Chronicle: Conversion Therapy Is Discredited Yet Fewer Than Half Of US States Have Bans In Place
Pride Month is being marked by some lawmakers in Kentucky with a renewed push to ban “conversion therapy — the discredited practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. If successful, the bill, which aims to prohibit mental health professionals in the state from “engaging in sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts” with minors, would make Kentucky the 21st state in the U.S. to put in place such a prohibition. As experts in mental health counseling, we welcome these moves. But we remain concerned that at present many LGBTQ youth live in states that have no ban in place protecting them from conversion therapy — a practice that the scientific community has long since shunned. (Donna Sheperis and Carl Sheperis, 6/25)
Stat: An Open Letter To 2021 Medical School Graduates
To the medical school graduating class of 2021: As I write this, I imagine a younger version of myself sitting next to you, not knowing, like you, what will come next. I worried, during that anxious period between graduation and the start of residency, whether I was up to the physical and mental tasks of being a physician: the long hours and the intellectual requirements of practicing medicine. What I learned was that the most important challenges would be emotional, ethical, and philosophical, tests of the spirit and soul rather than of the body and mind. (David Weill, 6/27)
Newsweek: Why Women Need Mental Health To Be A Part Of Every Annual Exam
The greatest threat to our health is not heart disease, nor is it cancer (the most common causes of death for women), but the insidious effects of women's declining mental health. I make this claim not simply because women continue to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression at more than double the rate of men; nor do I assert this because providers are much more likely to write-off a female patient suffering from pain and mental illness than a male patient—though both these facts are true. I make this assertion because research has shown time and time again that how we perceive stress and internalize it in our bodies has a lasting impact on our physical health. And yet, our health care system has not responded to this evolving research and nuanced understanding of the way psycho-social stress implicates long-term health outcomes. (Felicity Yost, 6/25)
