Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
With Spotlight On Physical Devastation Football Causes, Question Becomes -- Why Do Kids Still Play?
The Washington Post: Damaged Bodies, Healing Hearts
Highway 52 curls around town and unspools around the rippling farmland. It is easy to miss the house tucked on a gravelly side road called Forgotten Lane, where Ty Bustamante often wakes before dawn. If it’s a bad day, he needs more time than usual to get dressed. Bending to tie his shoes, his body resists the last few inches until he wills his fingers to the laces. Ty turned 17 in October. A lineman for the Eldon High School Mustangs, he is in pain from old football injuries — a stress fracture to a lower vertebra, a bulging disk, a hard hit to his left hip. Ty recently started having seizures, as well as extreme anxiety, and the combination has kept him from playing this season. Still, he wears his No. 65 jersey at practice, trailing teammates around the field, handing them water bottles when they need a drink. (Nutt, 11/14)
The Associated Press: Scientists Try To Edit Faulty DNA Inside A Patient’s Body To Cure A Genetic Disease
Scientists for the first time have tried editing a gene inside the body in a bold attempt to permanently change a person’s DNA to try to cure a disease. The experiment was done Monday in California on 44-year-old Brian Madeux. Through an IV, he received billions of copies of a corrective gene and a genetic tool to cut his DNA in a precise spot. (11/15)
Minnesota Public Radio: What Are We Learning About How To Treat PTSD?
While the majority of men and women who were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq returned to their lives feeling physically and emotionally fit, as many as 20 percent of all veterans who served in those war zones experience some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Why do some people experience PTSD, but not others? And what are we learning about how to treat it? MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke with Brian Engdahl, a neuroscience professor at the University of Minnesota, and the Anderson Chair in PTSD Research at the University of Minnesota Medical School. (Miller, 11/13)
CNN: Childbirth Is Killing Black Women In The US, And Here's Why
It remains complicated to answer why there has been a rise in deaths and why black women are more affected than women of other races, said Dr. Michael Lindsay, associate professor at the Emory University School of Medicine and chief of service for gynecology and obstetrics at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. (Howard, 11/15)
The New York Times: Peter Sands Named Head Of Global Disease-Fighting Agency
A former British banker was named executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Tuesday, taking over an international disease-fighting partnership that has struggled since its inception 15 years ago to raise enough money to fulfill its mission. (McNeil, 11/14)
NPR: Increased Hours Online Correlate With An Uptick In Teen Depression, Suicidal Thoughts
A study published Tuesday in the journal Clinical Psychological Science finds that increased time spent with popular electronic devices — whether a computer, cell phone or tablet — might have contributed to an uptick in symptoms of depression and suicidal thoughts over the last several years among teens, especially among girls. (Neighmond, 11/14)
The New York Times: Americans Are Putting Down The Soda Pop
Sugar-sweetened drinks are not as popular as they once were. According to a new study based on a continuing national health survey, 60.7 percent of children and 50 percent of adults drank a sugary beverage on any given day in 2014, down from 79.7 percent of children and 61.5 percent of adults in 2003. (Bakalar, 11/14)
Kaiser Health News: The Power Of #MeToo: Why Hashtag Sparks ‘Groundswell’ Of Sharing — And Healing
As a Ph.D. candidate in the social sciences more than 20 years ago, Duana Welch, 49, had done enough research to know the consequences she’d face by reporting sexual harassment in the workplace. “When women came forward with allegations of sexual abuse and sexual harassment, the woman was the person blamed and the woman was not believed,” she said. “I was very angry that I would pay the price for coming forward. I knew what would happen.” (Jayson, 11/15)
