Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Opioids And America's Backward Slide; Remaining Vigilant Against Zika
The New York Times: Opioids, A Mass Killer We’re Meeting With A Shrug
About as many Americans are expected to die this year of drug overdoses as died in the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. For more than 100 years, death rates have been dropping for Americans — but now, because of opioids, death rates are rising again. We as a nation are going backward, and drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. (Nicholas Kristof, 6/22)
USA Today: Addiction Crisis Will Worsen With Advent Of ACHA
America’s addiction crisis is the defining public health challenge of our time. In 2015, more than 52,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, the majority related to opioids — far more than died from car accidents. More than 20 million Americans live with substance use disorders, leading to immeasurable suffering for individuals and families and costing our nation a staggering $442 billion in health care costs, lost productivity, and criminal justice expenses. (Vivek Murthy, 6/22)
Miami Herald: Pregnant Women Must Remain Vigilant Against Zika
Summer officially is here and, in Florida, we are already feeling record-breaking temperatures. The heat and humidity common to our region is bringing back the threat of Zika. Cases of the disease continue to be reported regularly, and because of that we urge pregnant women to stay vigilant and get tested for this life-altering virus. There is currently no vaccine to prevent Zika virus infection. (Manuel Fermin, 6/21)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Fighting Hunger Requires A Community Commitment
Statistics from the 2016 Hunger Atlas, published by the University of Missouri’s Interdisciplinary Center for Food Security, paint a bleak landscape. They show Missouri ranks among the top 10 states with the highest percentage of households classified as food insecure or having very low food security. Almost half a million Missourians experience hunger at some point over the calendar year, the report found. We have to do better. (Todd Schnuck, 6/22)
JAMA: Speak Up
Recently I attended ... a weekly symposium that affords members of the faculty, house staff, nursing, pharmacy, and technical staff the opportunity to empathize and support one another in discussions of the “social and emotional” and ethical issues encountered in providing care to patients, their families, and each other. The topic was a complaint by a patient who stated she “could not understand” her physician “because of her accent” and that the doctor was late because “she is from Iran” and “doesn’t know the rules of this society.” ... These stories stimulated several attendees to describe many similar experiences and the emotions they have elicited. It became apparent that rude and racist behaviors by our patients and their family members are increasing in frequency and ruthlessness. Our staff have been subjected to slurs by patients and families, targeting their gender, ethnicity, place of birth, apparel, speech characteristics, or skin color. (Douglas G. Merrill, 6/20)
JAMA: Losing Weight During The Postpartum Period
The postpartum period is one of the critical time points in a woman’s life that often places her at risk for obesity and obesity-related health conditions. Postpartum weight retention (defined as a retained weight of 4.5 kg at 6-12 months after delivery) affects an estimated 25% of the 4 million women in the United States who give birth each year. ... Effective interventions are needed for these at-risk patient populations to stop the cycle of weight gain and adverse maternal and child outcomes. (Adam Gilden Tsai and Wanda K. Nicholson, 6/20)
JAMA: Putting The US Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation For Childhood Obesity Screening In Context
In this issue of JAMA, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends that clinicians screen for obesity in children and adolescents aged 6 to 18 years and refer those with an age- and sex-specific body mass index at the 95th percentile or greater to comprehensive, intensive behavioral interventions (B grade). This recommendation confirms what pediatric primary care clinicians and others do in the everyday care of children: monitor growth, counsel on healthy lifestyles, and refer when appropriate. Well-child care began with maternal education and use of child weighing stations in the late 1800s to address malnutrition. Today, many overweight and obese children and adolescents have a different type of malnutrition, and assessing growth and development has become increasingly important. (Rachel L. J. Thornton, Raquel G. Hernandez, Tina L. Cheng, 6/20)
The Columbus Dispatch: Doctor Tended To City’s Health
The city’s doctor is retiring at the end of the year. Dr. Teresa Long was on the front lines fighting to protect the health of Columbus residents against threats such as bioterrorism, flu, measles or mumps outbreaks, poor food sanitation, HIV, tobacco use, obesity or crib death. And that’s just a sampling of the critical efforts that the good doctor has tackled in her 30 years at Columbus Public Health. (6/22)
Miami Herald: The U.N. Owes Haiti Relief From Cholera Epidemic It Introduced
Seven years after its soldiers sparked the world’s worst cholera epidemic in Haiti, the United Nations is finally preparing to close its MINUSTAH peacekeeping mission there. As Nobel Peace laureates committed to the U.N.’s ideal of universal human rights, we are deeply concerned that the victims of MINUSTAH’s catastrophic actions remain without justice and reparations, despite U.N. promises to repair the harm it has caused. (Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Betty Williams, 6/21)
The Health Care Blog: Overdiagnosing Trump
When I first read about neurosyphilis in medical school, I became convinced that Mrs. Thatcher, who I detested intensely because it was fashionable detesting her, had General Paralysis of the Insane. The condition, marked by episodic bouts of temporary insanity, which indicated that the spirochetes were feasting on expensive real estate in the brain, seemed a plausible explanation why she had introduced the retarded Poll Tax. (Saurabh Jha, 6/19)
