Viewpoints: Drugmaker’s Link To The Opioid Epidemic; Social Justice And Health Education
A collection of public health opinions from around the country.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
The Mallinckrodt Connection To America's Opioid Epidemic
Understanding how America’s opioid addiction problem turned into an epidemic requires connecting a lot of dots between addicts and their corporate suppliers. Some of those dots lead to the doorstep of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals in Hazelwood. (4/10)
KevinMD:
How Micropractices Can Help The Opioid Crisis
A confluence of events has occurred in the United States that could help to save the lives of many patients as well as the lives and careers of many physicians. The solution is to apply the use of micropractices to address the current opioid addiction crisis. A micropractice is a small medical practice that is run efficiently to keep overhead low and put the patient first. The patient is given more time and attention than is traditionally given in a big box, assembly line clinic. ... The size of the patient panel is kept small so that each patient has access to the doctor and is treated like a human being, not a number. ... Micropractices also happen to be ideal settings for patients who need treatment for opioid dependence and addiction. (Mark Leeds, 4/9)
Stat:
Social Justice Should Be A Key Part Of Educating Health Professionals
Here’s a sad fact about the United States, the country with the highest per-capita spending on health care in the world: Wealthy people are significantly healthier than poor people. That gap exists in part because the rich can afford better health care than the poor. But there’s much more to it than that. As leaders in medical education, health care delivery, and social equity in medicine, we were deeply distressed by the fortunately derailed Republican health care proposal that would have left 14 million currently insured Americans without health coverage by next year. Five million of those individuals would have lost coverage through Medicaid. (Michael Westerhaus, Amy Finnegan, Jennifer Goldsmith, Evan Lyon, Casey Fox and Michelle Morse, 4/7)
Sacramento Bee:
Concerns About Women’s Health As Lawmakers Curb Legal Access To Abortion
If abortion becomes illegal nationwide – if a conservative majority on the Supreme Court determines that a zygote has Fourteenth Amendment rights or the “heartbeat bill” now before Congress barring abortion after about six weeks becomes law – what will doctors do when women ask for help? (Molly Selvin, 4/7)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Paul Ryan Needs To Hear My Planned Parenthood Story
Last month, I traveled to Washington, D.C., along with other women from around the country, to tell our stories to members of Congress. The stories were so diverse, but all had the same theme. Without Planned Parenthood, my life would be so different, or, in my case, over. (Christy Miceli, 4/7)
San Antonio Press Express:
Defunding Planned Parenthood A Disaster In Texas
The Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress are pushing to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds to pay for contraception, and cervical and breast cancer screenings. Funding for the federal Title X program, which provides infrastructure support to a network of nearly 4,000 clinics across the country, could also be in jeopardy. Five years ago, we learned in Texas what can happen when efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are carried out: The network of health care providers falls apart, and women lose access to essential preventive services. (Joseph E. Potter and Kari White, 4/8)
The Washington Post:
PEPFAR Saves Millions Of Lives In Africa. Keep It Fully Funded.
Last week in Gaborone, Botswana, Laura and I sat in a small room in Tlokweng Main Clinic, a facility that recently started screening and treating women for cervical cancer. Seated with us was Leithailwe Wale, a 40-year-old woman who was diagnosed with the disease. Thanks to early detection and access to treatment, she told us, today she is alive, healthy and able to raise her son. (Former President George W. Bush, 4/7)
Stat:
NIH Budget Cuts Will Jeopardize America's Leadership In Medical Research
In the last 10 years, remarkable advances have been made in how we fight cancer, work that was made possible by our nation’s support of biomedical research, largely through the National Institutes of Health. One of the most powerful new tools in our arsenal is cancer immunotherapy, which reawakens the body’s own immune system. Immunotherapy drugs have produced stunning results for many people suffering from advanced cancer. ... Federal funding for biomedical research has generally been declining. The budget for the NIH has eroded by nearly 20 percent since 2003. (Ronald DePinho, 4/7)
Richmond Times-Dispatch:
NIH Funding Cuts Threaten Local And National Economic Health
Newly released federal budget proposals would cut $1.2 billion from this year’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget and almost $6 billion from next year’s NIH budget. If approved, these cuts will not only make it harder to find new cures and provide better patient care, it will make it tougher to create new jobs. For research centers like the University of Virginia School of Medicine, NIH funding is crucial to supporting medical research that provides the scientific understanding needed to develop new and better treatments for patients. (David S. Wilkes, 4/8)
Lexington Herald Leader:
Animals In Medicine Cared For Like The Heroes They Are
The animal research industry has a history of silence that we are beginning to understand must be broken. The public doesn’t have the information needed to understand what happens in our facilities. They’ve been inundated by propaganda that, at best, misrepresents us and at worst, spreads hate and fear. The public is almost exclusively exposed to this nearly always false, fantastical, fanatical misleading information. This isn’t fair to the public, to those of us who work in this industry, or to our animals. (Meagan Shetler, 4/7)
