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Why Warning Pregnant Women Not to Drink Can Backfire

August 19, 2019

Harsh measures, or even threats of them, can lead to the avoidance of prenatal care entirely

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Why Warning Pregnant Women Not to Drink Can Backfire

Monday, August 19th, 2019

In many areas of health policy, the best of intentions can lead to more harm than good. Such is the case with America’s approach to alcohol and pregnancy.

The best evidence shows that punitive policies — such as equating drinking while pregnant as child abuse and threatening to involve child protective services — can dissuade women from getting prenatal care.

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders refer to a collection of problems in babies and children. These include low birth weight; impaired growth; and problems in the heart, kidneys and brain. Children can have developmental delays, communication difficulties, learning disabilities and lower I.Q. Some of these last a lifetime.

…continue reading ‘Why Warning Pregnant Women Not to Drink Can Backfire’

Thumb image via article: Joe Fornabaio for The New York Times

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NYT: The Upshot

No Mercy

August 19, 2019

After the hospital closes, how do people get emergency care?

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No Mercy

Monday, August 19th, 2019

For more than 30 minutes on a frigid February morning, Robert Findley lay unconscious in the back of an ambulance as paramedics hand-pumped oxygen into his lungs.

They were waiting for a helicopter to land at a helipad just across the icy parking lot next to Mercy Hospital Fort Scott, which closed in December. The night before, Findley had fallen on the slick driveway outside his home while checking the mail. He had laughed it off, ate dinner and went to bed.

In the morning, he wouldn’t wake up. Linda, his wife, called 911.

…continue reading ‘No Mercy’

Thumb image via article – Sarah Jane Tribble for Kaiser Health News

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NPR Shots

The Ethical Mess of Our Health Care System

August 19, 2019

Amy Gutmann and Jonathan Moreno write: It is a patchwork that covers some people and some diseases but not others. We can improve it by bolstering Obamacare

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The Ethical Mess of Our Health Care System

Monday, August 19th, 2019

The recent Democratic primary debates in Detroit made at least one thing clear: The party exclusively responsible for passing the Affordable Care Act is now waging political warfare over whether to reform it or eliminate it. Senator Bernie Sanders was loud but not lonely in advocating “Medicare for all,” which would supplant the A.C.A. with a single-payer system and virtually abolish private employer-based health insurance. His predictable answer to who will fund its high price is apparently the 1 percent who need to pay their fair share.

But there is another 1 percent, and they are not the privileged ones you’re thinking of. They are the roughly 1 percent of Medicare patients who have end-stage renal disease and cost the system $34 billion every year. No matter how rich or poor, young or old, Medicare kidney patients are guaranteed treatment mostly paidfor by American taxpayers.

The product of vigorous lobbying and minimal deliberation, this one-disease carve-out that Congress passed in 1972 exemplifies the highly politicized patchwork design of the American health care system and its scandalous lack of universal coverage and adequate cost controls.

…continue reading ‘The Ethical Mess of Our Health Care System’

Thumb image via article -Erik McGregor/Pacific Press, via LightRocket, and Getty Images

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NY Times

New Look For Cigarettes? FDA Proposes Graphic Warnings On Packages And Ads

August 16, 2019

For years, American smokers have been spared the unpleasant images of gangrene infected feet, swollen tongues overtaken by cancerous tumors and blackened lungs that are often plastered onto packs of cigarettes sold around the world. But that momentary reprieve before lighting up may only last a few more years

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New Look For Cigarettes? FDA Proposes Graphic Warnings On Packages And Ads

Friday, August 16th, 2019

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday rolled out a proposed rule to require tobacco companies to include graphic warnings on cigarette packages and tobacco ads with the aim of promoting “greater public understanding of the negative health consequences of smoking,” the agency said in a statement.

The photo-realistic images and detailed health risk warnings, which would replace the standard Surgeon General’s warnings, were mandated under a 2009 law that requires the agency to include new warning labels about smoking’s negative health effects. But the tobacco industry successfully blocked the FDA’s rule intended to require such labeling in court. They won a lawsuit that claimed the proposed labels were scare tactics. In the end, a federal court determined that the agency’s rule violated the First Amendment.

…continue reading ‘New Look For Cigarettes? FDA Proposes Graphic Warnings On Packages And Ads’

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NPR Shots

Football May Take a Toll on the Brain, Even Without Concussions

August 14, 2019

The brains of college football players showed signs of “fraying” after a season of play

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Football May Take a Toll on the Brain, Even Without Concussions

Wednesday, August 14th, 2019

After a season of college football, portions of players’ brains can show worrying signs of damage, even if they did not experience a concussion, according to a timely new study of contact sports and brain health. The study, which concentrated on changes to white matter in players’ brains, amplifies growing concerns about the effects of repeated, subconcussive hits to the head and whether we are doing enough to protect athletes from knocks that once might have seemed minor.

Few athletes, parents, coaches, fans or researchers involved with football — and other contact sports, including soccer, lacrosse and hockey — are unaware of the evidence linking sports-related concussions and later cognitive problems, including, at the extreme, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a form of degenerative dementia.

But many sports-related hits to the head do not cause concussions, a condition that, by definition, is a cluster of symptoms. Someone with a concussion might lose consciousness, have a headache, feel dizzy or disoriented, be unable to follow a moving finger with his or her eyes, and hear ringing in the ears after a resounding hit to the head.

…continue reading ‘Football May Take a Toll on the Brain, Even Without Concussions’

Image: By U.S. Navy photo by Damon J. Moritz. (RELEASED) – navy.mil, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4074997

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New York Times

Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts

August 14, 2019

But new insights are at last accumulating

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Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts

Wednesday, August 14th, 2019

In the fall of 1997, after I graduated from college, I began experiencing what I called “electric shocks”—tiny stabbing sensations that flickered over my legs and arms every morning. They were so extreme that as I walked to work from my East Village basement apartment, I often had to stop on Ninth Street and rub my legs against a parking meter, or else my muscles would begin twitching and spasming. My doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong—dry skin, he proposed—and eventually the shocks went away. A year later, they returned for a few months, only to go away again just when I couldn’t bear it anymore.

Over the years, the shocks and other strange symptoms—vertigo, fatigue, joint pain, memory problems, tremors—came and went. In 2002, I began waking up every night drenched in sweat, with hives covering my legs. A doctor I consulted thought, based on a test result, that I might have lupus, but I had few other markers of the autoimmune disease. In 2008, when I was 32, doctors identified arthritis in my hips and neck, for which I had surgery and physical therapy. I was also bizarrely exhausted. Nothing was really wrong, the doctors I visited told me; my tests looked fine.

…continue reading ‘Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts’

Thumb image via Flickr Some rights reserved by National Institutes of Health (NIH)

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The Atlantic

The Impact of Racism on Children’s Health

August 12, 2019

A new statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics looks at the effects of racism on children’s development, starting in the womb

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The Impact of Racism on Children’s Health

Monday, August 12th, 2019

This month the American Academy of Pediatrics put out its first policy statement on how racism affects the health and development of children and adolescents.

“Racism is a significant social determinant of health clearly prevalent in our society now,” said Dr. Maria Trent, a professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was one of the co-authors of the statement.

Racism has an impact on children and families who are targeted, she said, but also on those who witness it. “We call it a socially transmitted disease: It’s taught, it’s passed down, but the impacts on children and families are significant from a health perspective,” said Dr. Trent, who is the chairwoman of the A.A.P. section on adolescent health. Social transmission makes sense here, because race itself is a social construct, she said: “Genetically, we’re very much the same.”

…continue reading ‘The Impact of Racism on Children’s Health’

Thumb image via article, Edwin J Torres for New York Times

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New York Times

American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died

August 12, 2019

Ten years ago, Renee Bach left her home in Virginia to set up a charity to help children in Uganda

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American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died

Monday, August 12th, 2019

…One of her first moves was to start a blog chronicling her experiences.

Among the most momentous: On a Sunday morning in October 2011, a couple from a village some distance away showed up at Bach’s center carrying a small bundle.

“When I pulled the covering back my eyes widened,” Bach wrote in the blog. “For under the blanket lay a small, but very, very swollen, pale baby girl. Her breaths were frighteningly slow. … The baby’s name is Patricia. She is 9 months old.”

Bach went on to write that Patricia had fallen sick three weeks earlier. But her parents had been unable to find anyone closer to home who could cure her.

…continue reading ‘American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died’

Thumb image via article – Julia Redleman for NPR

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NPR

Page 4 of 111« First «...2 345 6...10 20 30...»Last »

Why Warning Pregnant Women Not to Drink Can Backfire

Why Warning Pregnant Women Not to Drink Can Backfire

No Mercy

No Mercy

The Ethical Mess of Our Health Care System

The Ethical Mess of Our Health Care System

New Look For Cigarettes? FDA Proposes Graphic Warnings On Packages And Ads

New Look For Cigarettes? FDA Proposes Graphic Warnings On Packages And Ads

Football May Take a Toll on the Brain, Even Without Concussions

Football May Take a Toll on the Brain, Even Without Concussions

Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts

Lyme Disease Is Baffling, Even to Experts

The Impact of Racism on Children’s Health

The Impact of Racism on Children’s Health

American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died

American With No Medical Training Ran Center For Malnourished Ugandan Kids. 105 Died

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