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A Food and Drug Administration expert panel on Friday is set to resume the pandemic-driven debate over how to make pulse oximeters more accurate for people with darker skin. There's growing evidence that the devices don't reliably detect low oxygen levels in Black patients, resulting in delayed care, missed diagnoses of hypoxemia and possibly worse outcomes. (Bettelheim and Reed, 2/2)

Black women who develop high blood pressure before age 35 may have triple the risk of having a stroke by middle age, new data suggests. The findings come as the medical community has noted with concern that the rates of stroke are increasing among middle-aged adults, while stroke rates in older individuals have been steadily decreasing over decades, according to lead study author Dr. Hugo Aparicio, an associate professor of neurology at Boston University. The study will be presented next week at the American Stroke Association’s international conference in Phoenix. (Bellamy, 2/1)

More than 80 percent of Black adults in the U.S. said they were at least somewhat happy, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Thursday.  Black Americans regardless of income find the most joy in spending time with friends and family as well as practicing their faith and traveling, according to the survey’s findings from 4,736 Black adults.  But overall, Black Americans with higher family incomes are more likely to be happy with 54 percent reporting to be happy compared to 26 percent of Black Americans with low family incomes, the survey found.  (O'Connell-Domenech, 2/1)

Dr. John H. Gladney rose to prominence in the 1950s. In 1956, he opened his private practice, becoming the first Black ear, nose and throat specialist in St. Louis. He was later tapped as the first Black doctor in the country to head a department of otolaryngology, holding the post at St. Louis University School of Medicine. In his field, he’s known for his research efforts making the link between hearing loss and diabetes. That work led to his induction into the American Triological Society in 1962 as its first Black fellow. (Lewis-Thompson, 2/2)

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apologized on Thursday over his handling of his prostate-cancer surgery and two-week hospital stay, saying he should have informed President Joe Biden and the American public. “I did not handle this right,” Austin said during a briefing at the Pentagon, where he returned to work earlier this week. “I should have told the president about my cancer diagnosis,” he said, adding that he had apologized directly to Biden and that he didn’t want to burden the president with his personal problems. (Marlow, 2/1)

Whether prostate cancer is, in fact, more common in Black men than other groups remains an open question, said Dr. Abhinav Khanna, a urologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. But it is sometimes more aggressive in Black men, he said. Black men in the U.S., Khanna said, are two times more likely to die from prostate cancer than white men. “Not all prostate cancer is lethal, but we have seen that black men do have a higher risk of dying from prostate cancer,” he said. One potential reason is that Black men — depending on their socioeconomic status — may not get screened as vigilantly as white and Asian men do in the U.S. (Lovelace Jr., Martin and Dunn, 2/1)