“the number of people who reject all vaccines is quite small — so small that they are unlikely to compromise public health. The greater issue, the one we don’t discuss often enough, is the many parents who don’t identify as being opposed to vaccines but don’t always consent to them. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, one-quarter to one-third of American parents were delaying vaccines or picking and choosing them cafeteria-style, deciding certain vaccines weren’t relevant to their family because they believed the risk for the disease was low. Some parents design their own vaccine schedules, often customizing for each child based on their perceptions … Read More
All posts in Equity
More than a thousand dentists have set up shop in Los Algodones. Their patients are mostly Americans who can’t afford the U.S.’s dental care. “According to Roberto Díaz and Paula Hahn, who run a website about medical tourism called Border CRxing, Los Algodones now has the highest per-capita concentration of dentists in the world: well over a thousand in a population of fifty-five hundred. It’s known as Molar City. [..] technology has its downsides. The more advanced the imaging system, the more expensive the visit, and the more problems it can find with your teeth. Last year, at a routine … Read More
Excerpt – The global total fertility rate has more than halved since 1950, with those of most countries already below replacement level. The population pyramid is increasingly inverted, not just in the wealthiest Western nations but also in most places outside Africa. [..] If birthrates do not recover — and at present, they show no real signs of doing so — eventually we will be forced to revert to the system that prevailed for all of human history up until recently: Older people will be cared for privately, typically by their children and grandchildren, and those without families will have to rely … Read More
“The largest health care companies in the US are no longer just health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), physician practices, home health agencies, hospices, data warehouses, data analytics firms, or hospitals. They are increasingly all of the above. A small number of unavoidable health care intermediaries are incorporating these services into essential platforms that simultaneously serve as payers, providers, and everything in between. While these companies claim to rationalize health care and realize the promise of coordinated, integrated care, the reality may be quite different. The creation of “big health care” platforms risks worsening the already serious problem of monopoly … Read More
“Two major, interconnected problems afflict organ transplantation today: the widening gap between the demand for organs and their supply and the illegal, exploitative organ trade. [..] Organ trade profits from this gap by preying upon both patients waiting for and willing to buy an organ and potential donors living in poverty and willing to sell one. In particular, the principle of financial neutrality has been questioned. This principle states that a donor or their related family should not lose, but also not gain, monetarily as a result of donation, implying that the organ does not become a commodity and money … Read More
“[Introduction] Despite spending more than any country in the world on health care, life expectancy in the US is comparably worse than that of most other high-income countries and declining both in absolute value and relative rank. However, life expectancy across US states varies just as markedly as it does across high-income countries, from 81.8 years in Hawaiʻi to 74.7 years in Mississippi in 2019—a divergence that has been increasing over time. US states vary considerably on policy decisions related to the spending, regulation, and provision of health care; reproductive health; tax policy; social welfare programs; and in relation to … Read More
“Opioid overdose continues to be the leading cause of death due to injury in the US. Recent data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network estimated 882 000 emergency department (ED) opioid-related visits in 2023, a rate of 263 per 100 000 visits, with the highest rates among Black individuals (425 per 100 000). Access to treatment with medications for opioid use disorder, specifically buprenorphine, continues to be challenging for patients in active addiction, and these disparities by race are widening. [..] In many states, rural patients with opioid use disorder have worse outcomes than urban patients. Rural hospitals are also less likely to … Read More
“The COLONPREV trial—published online in The Lancet—is, therefore, a landmark study. It is the first randomised controlled trial to compare colorectal cancer deaths in people screened with the two most commonly used methods: colonoscopy and faecal immunochemical test (FIT), an antibody-based test for haemoglobin, indicative of blood in the stool. The study finds that invitation to biennial FIT-based screening is non-inferior to invitation to one-time colonoscopy in terms of colorectal cancer mortality at 10 years. These results build on the NordICC trial, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which showed that invitation to colonoscopy reduced colorectal cancer risk … Read More
“The tobacco and ultra-processed food industries exemplify the detrimental effects of corporate influence on public health. For decades, tobacco companies lobbied aggressively against health regulations, contributing to millions of preventable deaths worldwide. Despite still causing more than 8 million tobacco-related deaths annually, the tobacco industry now claims through its public-relations campaigns and selective science that it focuses on “harm reduction”, particularly by selling new products such as e-cigarettes. These tactics allow the industry to argue that it deserves a seat at the policy table, all while shifting to new types of addictive and harmful products, targeting youth, and continuing to oppose tobacco … Read More
“We compared public-access naloxone strategies using more than 14 000 cases of opioid poisoning in Metro Vancouver over a 6-year period. We found that the 647 take-home naloxone sites were within a 3-minute walk to more than one-third of all opioid poisonings and had high coverage efficiency (Table 2) [the top five location categories for coverage efficiency were: government office, take-home naloxone site, convenience store, retail store and pharmacy]. In addition to existing operations that distribute take-home naloxone kits, which are likely taken elsewhere, take-home naloxone site locations appear generally well-aligned with where opioid poisonings occur, so they are also … Read More