It’s Black Maternal Health Week. Actions in Congress and state Medicaid programs can help address the awful racial disparities in maternal mortality, but we also need comprehensive solutions to racism and inequity.
A proposed new inspection system for pork facilities will shift the responsibility for identifying diseased and contaminated carcasses away from USDA inspectors toward pork plant employees, Kimberly Kindy reports in the Washington Post.
Tuesday, April 2 is the last day to comment on the USDA’s cruel and short-sighted proposal to limit access to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps) benefits.
Scientific Integrity & Ethics
The Scientific Integrity Act: Much-needed protections for federal science
Last week, Representative Paul Tonko (D-New York) and Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) introduced the Scientific Integrity Act in the House and Senate. By codifying safeguards for science at federal agencies, the bill would better position our nation to use science to solve problems from pandemics to climate change.
Public Health Practice
Worth reading: Title X gag rule, Time’s Up Healthcare, and cutting child poverty
Recent pieces address the Title X gag rule, the debut of Time’s Up Healthcare, Medicaid work requirements, and more.
What connects the opioid crisis, football players’ concussion risks, and climate change? A playbook created by the tobacco industry that relies on denying evidence of harms to public health.
Last week, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) reintroduced the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, or FAMILY Act, which would create a social insurance system so workers could keep getting paid when they have to take time off to care for family members or deal with a serious medical condition of their own.
Scientific Integrity & Ethics
Two years into the Trump era, “a pervasive pattern of sidelining science”
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists documents how the Trump administration has sidelined science, and shows how science supporters and Congress can push back.
Recent pieces address the ways climate change is already disrupting lives, the “white flight” from football, advice to legislators on science, and more.
The annual “March for Life” this year tries to claim science is on their side, but it isn’t. Commentators are calling them on the contradiction between this claim and the anti-science policies pushed by organizations that aim to ban abortion.