U.S. investments in global health research have saved millions of lives and prevented immeasurable suffering. And by working to detect, treat and eventually eliminate infectious diseases worldwide, we’re protecting our own country too. That cliché about diseases knowing no borders is unfortunately very true. All that alone should be enough to remain committed to the cause.
Government
Study: Small drop in measles vaccination rate could cost public sector millions of dollars
Another day, another study that underscores the societal benefits of vaccines and the consequences we’d face without them.
His “tooth fairy” research with school teachers led to decades of instrumental research on the relationship between lead exposure and intellectual impairment, school performance, and behavior disorders.
With so many threats to public health arising each month, it can be hard to catch all of them. The Union of Concerned Scientists has performed a tremendous service by producing the report Sidelining Science from Day One: How the Trump Administration Has Harmed Public Health and Safety in Its First Six Months.
Affordable Care Act
Study: ACA-backed efforts to reduce hospital readmissions also reduced mortality
With the future of the Affordable Care Act still up in the air, most of the news coverage has gone to insurance coverage, premiums and Medicaid. And rightly so. But also included in the massive health reform law were a number of innovative measures to improve the quality and value of the medical care we actually get in the doctor’s office. With repeal still on the table, those measures are at risk too.
OxyChem imports about 300,000 pounds of asbestos annually. Health groups allege the company failed to report to EPA their significant use of asbestos.
Affordable Care Act
Zika remains a serious threat. Federal funding cuts will make the problem even worse.
Last year’s emergency Zika funding is about to run out and there’s no new money in the pipeline. It’s emblematic of the kind of short-term, reactive policymaking that public health officials have been warning us about for years. Now, as we head into summer, public health again faces a dangerous, highly complex threat along with an enormous funding gap.
Affordable Care Act
More research that defunding Planned Parenthood simply leaves women without needed health care
To the surprise of literally no one, President Trump’s 2018 budget proposed stripping all federal funds, including Medicaid dollars, from Planned Parenthood. Proponents of this argue that if Planned Parenthood clinics end up shuttered, women can simply access care elsewhere. But growing research shows that’s the opposite of what actually happens.
Environmental Health
The PRIDE Study is open for enrollment: People are ‘hungry to be heard and represented’
Last week, researchers officially opened enrollment in the nation’s first decades-long study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer health — an effort they hope will transform our understanding of the health challenges LGBTQ people face and begin narrowing a giant data gap on their physical, mental and social well-being.
A Zika attack rate of just 1 percent across the six states most at risk for the mosquito-borne disease could result in $1.2 billion in medical costs and lost productivity, a new study finds. That’s more than the $1.1 billion in emergency Zika funding that Congress approved last year after months of delay and which is expected to run out this summer.