Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Tough Path Through Middle School Ensues For Tween Boys. Sweetness Fades And 'Manhood' Emerges.
The Washington Post: Boyhood At 11 And 12: Navigating A Social Ecosystem That Prizes Alpha Males Over Quirky Kids
At the height of summer, a trio of tween boys walk away from the muggy heat and into the chilled air of their favorite place, the hockey rink. This is where their friendship was formed. It’s where they unleash their aggressions, test their abilities and confront disappointment, and where they saw one of their own through tragedy. It’s where they learned that the claw game is totally rigged but still beg their parents for quarters to see if they can beat it. (McCarthy and Joyce, 12/18)
Politico: Training The EHR To Speak When A Child Can’t
At the UPMC Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, scores of babies and older children with head trauma are admitted each year and abuse is the leading cause of death in the ICU. These injured patients are often too young to explain their bruises and fractures, whether accidental or inflicted. If caretakers are responsible, they may not admit it to clinicians, who usually must flag young patients for screening based on their own intuition. (Ravindranath, 12/18)
The New York Times: How Exercise May Make Us Healthier
People who exercise have different proteins moving through their bloodstreams than people who do not, according to an interesting new study of the inner landscapes of sedentary and active people. The proteins in question affect many different aspects of our bodies, from immune response and blood-sugar levels to wound healing, so the new findings may bring us closer to understanding just how exercise enhances our health at a deep, molecular level. (Reynolds, 12/19)
NPR: A Partnership Between Hospital And Campus Helps Students Through A Breakdown
Sometimes a psychiatric crisis can be triggered by something small. For Alexia Phillips, 21, it was a heated argument with a close family member in February 2017. She remembers the fight blew up before she left the house to go to classes at Queens College in Flushing, New York. By midday, Phillips, then a sophomore, says she began to cry loudly and uncontrollably. (Weinstock, 12/18)
San Jose Mercury News: Shampoo, Soap May Play A Role In Early Puberty
Many parents already worry about the chemicals in the personal care products that their kids use but now a new study takes that fear to the next level: the exposure starts even before a child is born. Girls exposed to chemicals commonly found in shampoo, toothpaste and soap may hit puberty earlier, even if their only exposure is through the products their moms used while were pregnant, according to a new longitudinal study led by researchers at UC Berkeley. (D'Souza, 12/18)
Stat: Sales Of Antibiotics Used In Food-Producing Livestock Dropped Last Year
After years of concern over the use of medically important antibiotics given to food-producing livestock, sales of these medicines fell 33 percent in the U.S. in 2017, according to a new report by the Food and Drug Administration. Notably, the results are the first to include sales and distribution data that was gathered after these medicines were no longer allowed to be used for promoting growth in food-producing livestock and could only be obtained through a veterinarian. Bulking up the animals makes them better suited for increased production, but can also encourage unnecessary antibiotic use. (Silverman, 12/18)
CNN: Nearly Two-Thirds Of US Women Use Contraception, CDC Reports
The most common methods for preventing pregnancy, according to a new government report are female sterilization, oral contraception, long-acting reversible contraception such as IUDs and implants and male condoms. To help understand fertility patterns across demographics, researchers combed through the latest data from the National Survey of Family Growth to study contraceptive use among women. (Ravitz, 12/19)
The New York Times: Breast-Feeding Tied To Smaller Waist Size In Mother
Breast-feeding for longer than six months may lead to a smaller waist size for the mother, researchers report, and the effect persists for as long as a decade. Their analysis, in The Journal of Women’s Health, used data on 678 women enrolled in two studies who were followed for an average of 11 years after giving birth. (Bakalar, 12/18)
CNN: Loneliness Peaks At Three Key Ages, Study Finds
Rising rates of loneliness may not be news, but the three periods when it peaks may come as a surprise: More people reported feeling moderate to severe loneliness during their late 20s, their mid-50s and their late 80s than in other life periods, according to research published Tuesday in the journal International Psychogeriatrics. The general sense of isolation was also more prevalent than the researchers expected. A full three-quarters of all study participants reported moderate to high levels of loneliness, said Dr. Dilip Jeste, senior author of the study and a professor of psychiatry and neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego. (Scutti, 12/19)
The New York Times: The Hospital’s Gift Of Downtime
Christmas week is a strange time in the hospital. There’s an added melancholy for patients who spend the holidays hospitalized — a sense that their illness, whatever it might be, is so bad they must lie in bed while the world hangs ornaments and roasts chestnuts on open fires. It’s a time when the doctors and nurses on call start to feel the weight of jobs that too often keep them close to computers and far from their families. (Khullar, 12/19)
