Another study, another support beam in the argument that access to insurance coverage matters — a lot.
The public health community needs to break its silence about the CIA’s sham vaccination program that’s being used as a cover for spying operations in Pakistan.
Injury Control & Violence
A different kind of Texas-style justice: Two nights at Austin’s Workers Defense Project
It’s Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin’s eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I’ve arrived well before the night’s activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.
Public Health Practice
Worth reading: NIH superbug, Nebraska’s child welfare system, and Paul Ryan’s convention speech
A few recent pieces worth a look.
Education
‘An issue that affects all of us’: Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months. On his last day of work, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday.
Drug Safety
Medical marijuana progress under Obama not what advocates had hoped; recent crackdown puts patients in the middle
For years, Peter Rosenfeld was looking for an effective way to treat what doctors had diagnosed as severe and intractable migraines. He’d heard of medical marijuana, but thought it was a joke — that it was just a way for people to justify their marijuana use. Today, he’s a passionate advocate for medicinal marijuana and one of many advocates disappointed at recent federal actions.
Here’s an important public health fact: women with dense breast tissue are at least four times more likely to develop breast cancer. I wish I’d known about that risk factor before learning last month that I have Stage IIIB breast cancer.
To the long list of hard-to-pronounce bacteria and viruses that threaten people’s health can now be added one more threat: sequestration. Except sequestration isn’t a disease — well, unless you’d call Congress’ chronic inability to deal with the national debt in a fair and balanced way a disease.
Reform of the medical malpractice system is frequently mentioned as a way to control U.S. health care costs. A study of health care spending following a cap on damage awards in Texas shows no effect on spending levels or trends.
In the fall of 2011, a new Texas statute took effect against employers who engage in wage theft, putting in place real consequences for employers found guilty of stealing wages from workers. It was a big step forward in a state where wage theft has become as common as cowboy boots and pick-up trucks. It was especially good news for workers in El Paso, where wage theft has become so rampant that workers rights advocates have dubbed it an “epidemic.”