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Section: Health

Researchers Double Effort to Enroll Women in Breast-Disease Study

Leaders of a landmark study aimed at heightening the focus on family medical history and genetic drivers that put some women at higher risks than others for developing breast disease are ramping up efforts to add Black females to their hoped-for pool of 100,000 participants. So far, Black women, who tend to be diagnosed later […]

April 2, 2018

esserman with diverse health 4 3 18

Speak Up!

Kudos to tennis superstar extraordinaire Serena Williams for insisting on being heard relative to her recent medical needs. Though she has reached celebrity status and money is no object, she was forced to insist that her medical team listen to her and act accordingly. In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was quoted as stating, “Of all the […]

March 28, 2018

Canadian Experts Say Ibuprofen Could Stall Alzheimer’s

A Vancouver-based research team led by Canada’s most cited neuroscientist, Dr. Patrick McGeer, has successfully carried out studies suggesting that, if started early enough, a daily regimen of the non-prescription NSAID (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug) ibuprofen can prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. This means that by taking an over-the-counter medication, people can ward off a […]

March 28, 2018

Institute Supports Conscience Rules in Healthcare

First Liberty Institute attorneys today submitted public comments on behalf of several religious ministries in support of new United States Health and Human Services (“HHS”) guidelines that ensure the protection of conscience rights for health care professionals. “Without conscience protections, health care professionals across America risk discrimination for refusing to perform, facilitate, or refer for procedures that […]

March 28, 2018

First Liberty Institute

Why Take the Risk of Skipping Insurance?

In tiny Marion, North Carolina, the Buchanans decided that $1,800 a month was too much to pay for health insurance, and are going without it for the first time in their lives. In Harahan, one bend of the Mississippi river up from New Orleans, the Owenses looked at their doubling insurance premiums and decided no […]

March 28, 2018

Skipping Insurance

Learning Native Traditions Helps Soldiers Transition

Michael Carroll served 18 months in Iraq for the United States Army. After coming home in 2004, doctors found that he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Mental health experts say the disorder develops in some people who have experienced a shocking or dangerous event. Such persons may feel frightened even when they are […]

March 28, 2018

Native Traditions Help Transition

Insurance Spurs Increase in Sex-Change Surgery

When Gaines Blasdel decided in 2012 that he wanted surgery so his physical identity would match the male character he’d long had in his head, his health insurance wouldn’t cover it — not even student coverage at Hampshire College, which he admits with a laugh is the “social justice warrior capital of the world.” Blasdel […]

March 28, 2018

Sex Change Surgery

Mental Health Experts Condemn Transgender Ban

On Friday night, President Trump announced that he would once again attempt to ban transgender people from serving in the military, based on recommendations that their health concerns undermine military readiness. Since then, the nation’s two biggest mental health organizations have come forward to condemn that decision. The American Psychiatric Association responded Saturday with a statement from APA CEO […]

March 28, 2018

Transgender Ban

Kids With Autism Less Likely to Be Vaccinated

Doctors say that there is no scientific evidence suggesting a link between vaccines that infants and young children receive in the first few years of life and the risk of autism, but that has not stopped parents from questioning the connection — and in some cases, forgoing vaccinations for their kids. In the latest study published in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers led […]

March 28, 2018

Hand holding syringe in plain pink background

Executing Dealers

Vengeance is not a public health policy. But it’s implicit in a policy measure coming out of the White House, which would attempt to solve the opioid crisis with a plan that includes sentencing some high-intensity traffickers to death. It may feel good, and for some segment of the population, vengeance may even look good. […]

March 27, 2018

Executing Dealers

Analysis Reveals Why Asthma Inhalers Fail Minority Children

The largest-ever whole-genome sequencing study of drug response in minority children has revealed new clues about why the front-line asthma drug albuterol does not work as well for African-American and Puerto Rican children as it does for European American or Mexican children. Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease in the world, according to World […]

March 27, 2018

Kids With Asthma

R.I. Foundation Offers $28 M for Work on Disparities

The Rhode Island Foundation is offering $2.8 million in grants to nonprofit organizations to address heath disparities in communities around the state. The deadline to apply is April 2. “The foundation will give priority to proposals that bring together clinical organizations, community-based organizations and residents to improve the health of communities with high rates of illness, chronic […]

March 27, 2018

Rhode Island Foundation

2-Year-Old Has Rare ‘Vanishing Bone’ Disease

An Ottawa County boy is battling a disease so rare, less than 300 cases have been reported in the entire world. Two-year-old Leo Aguillon went to the doctor for pneumonia a couple weeks ago, but a chest x-ray and CT scan showed the unimaginable: half of the bones in his chest were gone. “They found […]

March 27, 2018

Vanishing Bone Disease

Restricting Calories May Offer Benefits for Elderly

One of the first studies to explore the effects of calorie restriction on humans showed that cutting caloric intake by 15 percent for two years slowed aging and metabolism and protected against age-related disease. The study, which appears March 22 in the journal Cell Metabolism, found that calorie restriction decreased systemic oxidative stress, which has been […]

March 27, 2018

Counting Calories

AP: Promise for Vets’ Private Care Deadlocked

President Donald Trump is holding out the promise of better health care for veterans through an imminent expansion of private-sector services outside the Department of Veterans Affairs system. The problem: His campaign priority remains deadlocked in Congress as his VA secretary struggles with rebellion inside the agency. During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to […]

March 27, 2018

VA Secretary David Shulkin

HHS Website Drops Lesbian, Bisexual Resources

The Department of Health and Human Services quietly removed lesbian and bisexual content from its women’s health website last fall, according to a new report from the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit government watchdog group. The findings, released on Wednesday, noted that the HHS-operated Office of Women’s Health (OWH) “removed a webpage with extensive information about lesbian and bisexual health, […]

March 27, 2018

HHS Headquarters

Democrats See Chance to Improve Obamacare

President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law on March 23, 2010 ― eight years ago Friday. But this anniversary feels different from the ones that came before it. In the past, Democrats have been preoccupied with implementing the law and fending off efforts to destroy it. That was especially true last year, when […]

March 27, 2018

Religious Refusals

During the Obama administration, I was the director of the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. There, I was privileged to spearhead the issuance of regulations implementing Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, the groundbreaking civil rights provision that — among other things — was […]

March 21, 2018

Religious Refusuals