Viewpoints: Why Is Birth So Traumatic For Many Mothers?; Medical Workers Are Burnt Out By Short Staffing
Editorial writers delve into these public health topics.
The shouting began soon after my son was born. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got an inversion!鈥 the doctor yelled to his team. Moments earlier, a nurse had pressed my newborn son against my chest. I bent to kiss his dark curls through my surgical mask, then he and my husband were escorted out of the operating room. (Lisa Rab, 2/23)
Front-line workers at HCA hospitals from California to Florida have experienced聽the same struggles, while the corporation made more than $16 billion in profits聽in the past three years. (Erika Watanabe, 2/23)
I鈥檒l never forget my parents鈥 reaction when I was accepted to the University of California at San Francisco鈥檚 medical school. Having attended segregated schools, my mother and father were thrilled that their daughter would attend a fully integrated, top-tier institution. (Marilyn Singleton, 2/22)
A recent study published in JAMA Network Open found that people with long COVID are more likely to be unemployed, particularly if they suffer from cognitive symptoms that make holding on to full-time employment difficult if not impossible. (Kimberly Atkins Stohr, 2/22)
Our collective response to the COVID-19 pandemic constituted history's biggest public health mistake. We did not properly protect older high-risk Americans, while many ineffective COVID restrictions have generated long-term collateral public health damage that is now upon us. Both have yielded excess deaths. Public health crashed. (Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya, 2/22)
Also 鈥
The silence from corporate America amid new attacks on women鈥檚 reproductive health care has been deafening. As the federal courts consider whether to override the FDA鈥檚 judgment on first-trimester abortion pills, it鈥檚 time for health care leaders to speak out about the repercussions of taking away medical sovereignty from 40 million women. (Paul J. Hastings, 2/23)
Minnesota's state legislators are considering a pair of bills that could inadvertently restrict patients' access to new medicines and drive high-paying biotech jobs out of the state. (John Stanford, 2/22)
When Kris Kobach is your attorney general, you can count on him to do Kobach things. But it鈥檚 a little unusual for someone as large and sophisticated as pharmacy titan Walgreens to roll over for him like the company did on Mifepristone, a drug commonly used to induce abortion. Over the past couple of weeks, Kobach threatened Walgreens with prosecution if the company tries to distribute the drug through its pharmacies in Kansas 鈥 and Walgreens blinked. (Dion Lefler, 2/22)
Hospitals annually discard an estimated $3 billion a year in unused prescription medications nationwide. The value of unused drugs thrown away by long-term care facilities: another $2 billion annually. (2/22)