Perspectives: Nurse Licensing Laws Need Updating; AAPI Medical Students Discuss Racism In Healthcare
Editorial pages weigh in on these public health issues.
LA Daily News:
California Needs To Reform Nurse Licensing Requirements
Nurses shouldn’t need to alert a state legislator to get a license to help people. For the last year, nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals have been on the frontlines fighting a once-in-a-century virus sweeping the United States. This pandemic has required Americans to make sacrifices big and small to stop the spread. And it has exacerbated shortages in the medical community. (Karin A. Lips, 3/31)
Stat:
Medicine Needs To Listen To Asian American, Pacific Islander Trainees
The shocking shooting rampage in Atlanta targeting Asian spas, followed not long after by an attack on a 65-year-old Asian American woman in Midtown Manhattan this week, felt to us like the culmination of a year of increased hatred, a year of Asian American and Pacific Islander people clamoring for recognition when our suffering wasn’t believed. As Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) medical students, we have had front-row seats in seeing the hikes in anti-Asian racism this past year. While many health care workers across the country were being called “heroes” for treating people with Covid-19, AAPI health care workers were often vilified. (Jesper Ke, Kate E. Lee and Hueyjong Shih, 3/31)
Scientific American:
We Learned The Wrong Lessons From The Tuskegee "Experiment"
Rarely a day goes by without national news stories about vaccine hesitancy: How many people say they definitely will or won’t get a shot and how many are in the ‘maybe’ box. No account is complete without a particular focus on Black Americans who--despite contracting, being made severely ill and dying from coronavirus at higher rates than other racial and ethnic groups-- express the most reluctance to being injected with something developed to save their lives. When asked to explain why so many Black people simply don’t trust the Federal government with their health, the most common answer is “because of what happened at Tuskegee.” Reference to that seminal event has become shorthand for past medical betrayal, abuse and exploitation at the highest levels. (Melba Newsome, 3/31)
Los Angeles Times:
Access To Autopsy Reports Protects Public Health And Safety
Today’s intense social justice and political climate has made access more important than ever, particularly in communities of color where trust in our institutions is running low. When we can’t tell readers what’s going on, confidence slips even more. Yet there is a disturbing trend in California — and elsewhere — to keep public information from reporters. The latest battleground involves autopsy reports. Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) has introduced a bill — AB 268 — that would severely restrict news media access to public records created by medical examiners and coroners. The bill, which seeks to ensure the privacy of the deceased and their families at the expense of the public’s right to know, is problematic on several levels. (Regina Brown Wilson, 4/1)
Stat:
MAPGuide: A Tool To Help Improve Health-Related Public-Private Partnership Agreements
Whenever a new infectious outbreak threatens global health, pharmaceutical companies, governments, international organizations, and philanthropies scramble to develop new vaccines. But intellectual property, price, and other access provisions can get in the way. Building on the lessons of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa and propelled by the urgent need for Covid-19 vaccines, the private and public sectors have made enormous progress in responding to pressing public health needs. New partnerships such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and COVAX have advanced the development and procurement of vaccines for the greater global good. ( Julia Barnes-Weise and Kendall Hoyt, 4/1)
