Public Health & Policy

It's a Sunday evening in a local South Texas emergency room with the expected ER traffic for a weekend evening. Lots of simple traumas: ankle sprains, abrasions, lacerations, falls, common URI symptoms, and fevers. The EMS radios in with a call of a five-year-old male who has altered mental status. The patient is brought in around five minutes later and placed in an open emergency room. The patient is accompanied by ...

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You are a child of Thanos. "Hear me and rejoice!” “You have had the privilege of being saved by the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. (Yeah, I know we said the same thing when we prescribed low-fat diets to decrease the risk of heart disease, but you gotta give us a pass on that one.”) “Based on our research, we have found 100,000,000 of you are ill.” “But we can ...

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Signing the divorce papers was probably Charlie’s lowest point.  His wife sitting by his side, occasionally she would swat at the air at some invisible fly buzzing around the room.  There was no fly.  Just the acrid smell of the nursing home, a horrifying mix of sweat, shit, and desperation.  He tried to focus his aged eyes on the legal papers as the tears swirled past his nose and losing traction, fell ...

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A new study confirms something we here at HealthNewsReview.org have been emphasizing for many years: Health news stories often overstate the evidence from a new study, inaccurately claiming that one thing causes another — as in drinking alcohol might help you live longer, facial exercises may keep your cheeks perky, and that diet soda might be a direct line to dementia. The researchers looked at the 50 ...

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When I hear pundits going on about the Medicaid work requirements, I think of my father. He has worked in the United States for twenty-four years, taking on the role of a handyman, migrant farmer, truck driver, construction roofer, dialysis patient transporter, and elder transporter. His limited English and third-grade education land him in low-paying jobs with limited hours and an oversupply of workers — resulting in frequent periods of unemployment. For ...

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Absent a last-minute, lifesaving intervention, after 20 years of reviewing and summarizing clinical practice guidelines in a continuously updated database, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) will go offline on July 16th. Prior to its untimely death due to budget cuts, the NGC not only served as a one-of-a-kind online resource for clinicians, researchers, and educators, but raised the bar on guideline ...

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Most physicians are increasingly forced to grapple with the problem of shortages in generic drugs. These are drugs for which the patent has expired and any company can make them. Certainly for those of us in the PICU it is a chronic problem because the majority of drugs we use are injectable medications that have been generic for many years. Hardly a week goes by I don’t receive a notification ...

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We’ve all heard the excuse or explanation that "it’s society’s fault," to explain someone’s failure.  We hear expressions like this often when an individual has committed a crime or simply failed to succeed.  Personal accountability is diluted as we are told that this person came from an imperfect home, had no role models or ample education. These arguments are often wielded by those who have been favored with society’s blessings and ...

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Dr. Eugene Gu. He is -- was -- a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University. His resume exemplifies academic perfection: valedictorian in high school, undergraduate degree from Stanford, medical degree from Duke, surgical residency at Vanderbilt. He also founded his own research company. Not once throughout the span of his academic or professional career would one have any reason question his capability or competency. But several weeks ago Vanderbilt fired him, citing “performance” issues. Why? Because ...

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