Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: We Can Still Get Control of Antimicrobial Resistance; Latinos Are Only Group With Rising HIV Numbers
Most Americans could probably guess that heart disease, diabetes and cancer are among the world鈥檚 fastest-growing causes of death. Yet one rapidly accelerating health threat now lurks under the radar, despite its devastating consequences. The threat comes from antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, the evolved immunity of dangerous microbes to lifesaving drugs. (Howard Dean, 11/13)
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published data in May of this year that showed overall progress in reducing new HIV infections, everyone breathed a sigh of relief 鈥 and had the sense that the light at the end of the tunnel in a 40-year epidemic was getting brighter. Of course, the paradox of progress is that it reveals how much further we must go. Case in point: The same CDC data also revealed a largely invisible crisis facing Latinos. (Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, 11/13)
You鈥檙e probably not worried about the role that Strava is playing in the teen mental health crisis. But you should be. Strava seems extremely benign 鈥 especially compared to an app like Instagram or TikTok. It simply 鈥渓ets you track your running and riding with GPS, join Challenges, share photos from your activities, and follow friends,鈥 in the company鈥檚 own words. Yet we recently heard a high school track coach point to Strava as an example of how tech can contribute to the pressure teens face. Even during the off-season, teens see how their runs compare with those of their peers three towns over or three states away. Competition isn鈥檛 confined to competitions; it鈥檚 accessible and quantifiable all year long. (Emily Weinstein and Sara Konrath, 11/14)
During the closing weeks of the election, Republican campaigns spent over $65 million on ads ridiculing, among several candidates, Kamala Harris for supporting 鈥渢axpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners鈥 and 鈥渋llegal aliens,鈥 all ending with variations on the tagline: 鈥淜amala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.鈥 (Pamela Paul, 11/14)
As a medical intern in the late 1980s, I鈥檇 occasionally see priests and rabbis on hospital wards, but we basically ignored one another.聽When we doctors walked into a patient鈥檚 room, they鈥檇 quickly leave, and when we exited, they鈥檇 enter. They seemed to operate in a wholly different realm. After all, we were scientific. They weren鈥檛. But in recent years, as patients鈥 and their families鈥 religious, spiritual, and existential attitudes and needs have shifted, so, too, have chaplains. (Robert Klitzman, 11/14)