Â鶹ŮÓÅ

Doctors hold people’s lives in their hands, and they need to be well-trained. At the same time, the traditional four-year medical school can leave doctors with significant student debt, making it hard for them to enter less lucrative specialties, like family medicine, where there is currently a physician shortage. A growing number of medical schools are experimenting with a provocative solution to that problem: shaving a year off of medical school and letting qualified students graduate after three years. (5/4)

Extreme weather is now a common part of American life — and the associated health risks are impossible to ignore. During heat waves, babies are more likely to be born prematurely or at a lower birth weight. Wildfire smoke can worsen asthma and lung disease. Air pollution and heat exacerbate the effects of heart, lung, and kidney disease. The list is endless and devastating. (Alonzo Plough, 5/5)

The United States has been the largest funder of global health since at least 2000 and is a key source of research and development and technical expertise. As a former adviser to the W.H.O.’s director general, I’ve seen how vital these contributions are. (Peter A. Singer, 5/5)

Demographic decline has been inevitable since the mid-1970s. That was when the nation’s fertility rate (the average number of children born to American women over their lifetime) dropped below 2.1, the number required, all other things being equal, to keep a population from shrinking. (Jeff Jacoby, 5/4)

It’s no secret that the new administration has upset normal operations at the Food and Drug Administration: Thousands of employees have been terminated, more than three dozen senior officials are gone, day-to-day operations ranging from communicating product recalls to the public to inspections of food and drug facilities have been upended, and approvals of new products and technologies have been delayed and shelved. Yet amid all the challenges of today, an under-the-radar court ruling may be among the most significant harbingers of the crises to come for the agency and public health. (Kushal T. Kadakia, Joseph S. Ross and Reshma Ramachandran, 5/5)

Like every psychiatrist, I have patients for whom antidepressants are transformative, even lifesaving. But I also see a messier, less advertised side of these medications. (Awais Aftab, 5/3)

It’s bad enough that less than six months after Missouri voters amended their state constitution to enshrine reproductive rights, the Legislature is now barreling toward creating a do-over referendum that would attempt to roll back those rights. As usual, our state’s politicians are shameless about trashing the expressed will of the public when it doesn’t go the way they want. And now we see that it’s actually worse than that. (5/4)