Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Women Often Don't Get Quick, Proper Treatment For Heart Attacks
Each year more than 15,000 women under the age of 55 die of heart disease in the United States. And younger women are twice as likely to die after being hospitalized for a heart attack as are men in the same age group. Studies show that women tend to wait much longer than men to get emergency care for heart attacks. So Judith Lichtman, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, tried to figure out why. In a recent study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, Lichtman and her colleagues conducted in-depth interviews with 30 women, ages 30 to 55, who had been hospitalized after a heart attack. It turned out that many of them didn't really know what a heart attack is supposed to feel like. (Singh, 4/6)
It’s a warm afternoon in Miami, and 35-year-old Emanuel Vega has come to Baptist Health Primary Care for a physical exam. Dr. Mark Caruso shakes his hand with a welcoming smile. ... Vega is one of more than 44 million Americans who is taking part in a medical ritual: visiting the doctor for an annual physical exam. But there’s little evidence that those visits actually do any good for healthy adults. (Gold, 4/6)
After overdosing 19 times, William Head Williams was finally ready to enter a detoxification program for his heroin addiction. But he was turned away from a New York hospital after his insurer deemed his admission not medically necessary, said his father, Bill Williams, who drove him there Oct. 16, 2012. (Cohn, 4/3)
F.B.I. agents are on the front lines of the fight to protect the United States from Islamic terrorists, Russian hackers and Chinese spies. Now they have something far more personal to worry about: their waists. For the first time in 16 years, the F.B.I. is requiring that its agents pass a fitness test. ... The fitness tests, which started at the end of last year, are a return to a tradition begun by the F.B.I.’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover, who obsessed about his agents’ weight, as well his own considerable girth. More significant, the tests are a response to concerns throughout the bureau about how its transformation after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, has put more stress on the agents and given them less time for fitness. (Schmidt, 4/5)
