Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: CDC Shooting Shows The Dark Side Of Disinformation; United States' Scientific Loss Is France's Gain
Bloomberg: The CDC Shooting Proves How Dangerous Misinformation Can Be
The horrifying attack on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Atlanta headquarters felt like the grimly predictable result of years of pandemic-related misinformation and disinformation — much of it propagated by the very people now leading US health agencies. (Lisa Jarvis, 8/13)
KFF Health News: 'Alternative Facts' Aren't A Reason To Skip Vaccines
President Donald Trump’s administrations have been notorious for an array of “alternative facts” — ranging from the relatively minor (the size of inaugural crowds) to threats to U.S. democracy, such as who really won the 2020 election. And over the past six months, the stakes have been life or death: Trump’s health officials have been endorsing alternative facts in science to impose policies that contradict modern medical knowledge. (Rosenthal, 8/14)
The Washington Post: U.S. Scientists Are Under Attack. France Wants To Give Them Refuge.
For many American scientists, the second Trump administration has instilled a sense of fear and futility. Billions of dollars in federal grants to universities have been frozen or slashed. Thousands of scientists across federal agencies have been terminated. Entire research initiatives have been defunded for containing politically inconvenient keywords such as “health disparities,” “climate change” and “coronavirus.” The administration’s budget proposal seeks to cut the nation’s scientific infrastructure even further — the National Institutes of Health by 40 percent and the National Science Foundation by more than half. (Leana S. Wen, 8/13)
Stat: Screening For Depression Must Include Asking About Suicide
Two or three days before an outpatient appointment, many health care organizations send out questionnaires. One such questionnaire is the PHQ-9, a nine-item depression screen in which patients report how often they have experienced symptoms of depression over the previous two weeks. The ninth item assesses whether or not patients have had “thoughts that [they] would be better off dead or of hurting [themselves] in some way.” (Kyle Fitzpatrick, Geoffrey Engel and J. Wesley Boyd, 8/14)
Chicago Tribune: I Studied The High Male Suicide Rate. Then I Lost My Friend To It.
When I think of my friend Andre, my mind drifts back 50 years to our times in grade school delivering papers together during frigid upstate New York winters. Then my mind drifts back 45 years to the thousands of conversations we had with our friends at our public high school cafeteria lunch table. Or my mind drifts 35 years, to our time as apartment mates, when Andre showed me how to drive our U-Haul moving truck, all the while ignoring the glances of admiring young women drawn to his movie-star good looks. (Harold Pollack, 8/13)
Stat: Cellphones Should Be Allowed In Rehab
The fluorescent lights of the detox unit hummed, a sterile counterpoint to the chaos that had been my life just days before. Every fiber of my being screamed for escape, for the familiar oblivion that had become my twisted comfort. My hands trembled, not from withdrawal alone, but from the phantom weight of a smartphone I didn’t have. (Ryan Hampton, 8/14)
