Imaging a Different Future
By KIM BELLARD
Two articles have me thinking this week. One sets up the problem healthcare has (although healthcare is not explicitly mentioned), while the other illustrates it. They share being about how we view the future.
The two articles are Ezra Klein’s Can Democrats See What’s Coming? in The New York Times Opinion pages and Derek Thompson’s Why Does America Make It So Hard to Be a Doctor? in The Atlantic. Both are well worth a read.
Mr. Klein struck a nerve for me by asking why, when it comes to social insurance programs, Democrats seem so insistent on replicating what has been do...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 15, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Public Health Kim Bellard Medical Education Medicare For All supply-side agenda Source Type: blogs
Will Microbes Finally Force Modernization of the American Health Care System?
Mike Magee MD
Science has a way of punishing humans for their arrogance.
In 1996, Dr. Michael Osterholm found himself rather lonely and isolated in medical research circles. This was the adrenaline-infused decade of blockbuster pharmaceuticals focused squarely on chronic debilitating diseases of aging.
And yet, there was Osterholm, in Congressional testimony delivering this message: “I am here to bring you the sobering and unfortunate news that our ability to detect and monitor infectious disease threats to health in this country is in serious jeopardy…For 12 of the States or territories, there is no one w...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 14, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Public Health Healthcare system infectious diseases microbes Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
Exploring links between hearing loss, dementia and the ‘cognitive reserve’ — plus the role of hearing aids
How does your hearing affect dementia risk? (Alzheimer’s Research UK):
With around 1 million people affected by dementia in the UK, and 12 million people estimated to have a type of hearing loss, it’s never been more important to understand this link.
One way that hearing loss and dementia could be linked is through our blood system.
Certain types of dementia, particularly vascular dementia, are caused when there is less blood flow reaching the brain. This can damage our brain cells. Recent studies have also shown that the parts of our brain that process sounds (our auditory system) have many blood vessels and are vuln...
Source: SharpBrains - February 10, 2022 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health Alzheimer’s cognitive-reserve dementia hearing aids hearing loss vascular dementia Source Type: blogs
The Social Science of Covid
By MIKE MAGEE
As we enter the third year of the Covid pandemic, with perhaps a partial end in sight, the weight of the debate shows signs of shifting away from genetically engineered therapies, and toward a social science search for historic context.
Renowned historian, Charles E. Rosenberg, envisioned a similar transition for the AIDS epidemic in 1989. He described its likely future course then as a “social phenomenon” with these words, “Epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, follow a plot line of increasing and revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 31, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy COVID-19 COVID-19 vaccine Mike Magee vaccines Source Type: blogs
Caregiver and Elder-Friendly Products, Services, and Technology
Photo credit Timothy Muza
Dear Readers: While I occasionally mention outstanding products or services in my regular Q&A columns, the recent changes to caregiving due to COVID triggered a more serious look at some of the tech and services I’ve noted through my work. So, here’s the next installment of new and/or not yet mentioned ideas for you to consider. Unless I say otherwise, these mentions are not meant as an endorsement.
Adaptive clothing and aids: General clothing...
Continue reading on Inforum for more technology and services that have come my way:
Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories...
Source: Minding Our Elders - January 2, 2022 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Carol Bradley Bursack Source Type: blogs
Epidemics and pandemics (2): AIDS
Just over 40 years ago, in June 1981, a paper appeared in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describing an opportunistic lung infection in otherwise healthy gay men. The lung condition was pneumocystis pneumonia, and this was the first description of what came to be known as AIDS. That first description, first article, was a case series, of five people, and therefore not evidence from particularly high up the traditional evidence pyramid. I may have pointed this out to students when discussing evidence based practice and that pyramid.There is more about this inthis post from Circulatin...
Source: Browsing - December 29, 2021 Category: Databases & Libraries Tags: AIDS Source Type: blogs
More on social and historical perspectives
When the HIV epidemic was first discovered in the U.S., as we have seen, it mostly afflicted stigmatized groups. President Ronald Reagan largely ignored it, as did his successor George Bush the First. The plague devastated gay communities across the country. But pervasive grief and loss turned into anger, and then action. AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power -- ACT UP -- was founded in New York in 1987 and went on to become a national and then an international organization, using direct action tactics to demand action to combat the epidemic, and counteracting false information and bigotry. ACT UP founder Larry ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 10, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The HIV epidemic: social and historical perspectives
Because I have lectured about this subject I have a lot of graphics, but I ' ll try to keep it reasonable. The first report of what turned out to be AIDS was published in CDC ' s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on June 5, 1981. It reported on five cases ofPneumocystiscariniipneumonia in young men in California. This is a microbe that only causes disease in people with weakened immune systems. After at first calling the mystery disease Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease, or GRID, epidemiologists quickly renamed it Acquired immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. It was particularly prevalent among gay men i...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 9, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Reflections on HIV
My post yesterday on the lunkhead senator from Wisconsin inspired some thoughts about Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and the disease it causes, called Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. The syndrome got its name before the viral cause was discovered, which is why it ' s called a syndrome, the word for a collection of symptoms when the cause is unknown or unspecified. It might be better to call the disease simply HIV disease, as it can have symptoms other than immunodeficiency, and many people nowadays do just that. I spent much of my career in public health, and then in academic research, focusing on HIV....
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 7, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Yep, it's the party of stupid
Really, there ' s just no other word for it. You may have seen this tweet from Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Green -- and keep in mind that she got a huge majority of votes in her district. And oh yeah, this already had nearly 4,000 likes when snipped. If I have to explain to you why this is stupider than an 80 pound bag of portland cement, there is no hope for you. Then there is Senator Ron Johnson, who won the majority of votes in the entire state of Wisconsin,who accuses Anthony Fauci of " overhyping " the AIDS epidemic.Discussing the omicron variant, Johnson accused individuals in the U.S. of try...
Source: Stayin' Alive - December 6, 2021 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The Esperanza Patient
This post describes the case of a woman who appears to have been naturally cured of her HIV infection. (Source: virology blog)
Source: virology blog - December 2, 2021 Category: Virology Authors: Gertrud U. Rey Tags: Basic virology Gertrud Rey AIDS AIDS cure Antiretroviral therapy APOBEC3F APOBEC3G Berlin patient ccr5 receptor CD4 elite controller HIV hiv reservoir HIV-1 infection London patient provirus replication sterilizing cure Source Type: blogs
Towards zero: an action plan towards ending HIV transmission, AIDS and HIV-related deaths in England - 2022 to 2025
Department of Health and Social Care -The HIV Action Plan sets out how partners across the health system and beyond maintain and intensify work around four core themes – prevent, test, treat and retain. It sets out how an 80 per cent reduction in new HIV infections will be achieved in England by 2025.Policy paperDepartment of Health and Social Care - publications (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - December 1, 2021 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Library Tags: Public health and health inequalities Source Type: blogs
Breaking Up is Good to Do
By KIM BELLARD
Last week General Electric announced it was breaking itself up. GE is an American icon, part of America’s industrial landscape for the last 129 years, but the 21st century has not been kind to it. The breakup didn’t come as a complete surprise. Then later in the week Johnson and Johnson, another longtime American icon, also announced it would split itself up, and I thought, well, that’s interesting. When on the same day Toshiba said it was splitting itself up, I thought, hmm, I may have to write about this.
Healthcare is still in the consolidation phase, but there may be some lessons here for it....
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 16, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Finance The Business of Health Care Aetna conglomerates CVS-Aetna General Electric Johnson & Johnson Kim Bellard Optum Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, October 25th 2021
This study confirmed that the PSI could be a quantitative index of vascular aging and has potential for use in inferring arterial stiffness with an advantage over the rAIx.
A Profile of Michael Greve and the Segment of the Longevity Industry that He Supports
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/10/a-profile-of-michael-greve-and-the-segment-of-the-longevity-industry-that-he-supports/
Would that the popular media produced more popular science articles about the longevity industry like this one. It is not just a profile of someone trying to make a difference in the world by advancing the state of medic...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 24, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Hearing Aids, the FDA, and Henry David Thoreau
David BoazThere ’s good news for people with impaired hearing: Hearing aids may soon be available over the counter, like reading glasses. But I was struck by something in this encouragingNew York Times report. The writer, Shira Ovide, is clearly enthusiastic about this new development. But notice her framing, first in the subhead of the article:Over ‐the‐counter hearing aids have the potential to showgovernment and tech companies at their best.And then throughout the article:These over ‐the‐counter hearing aids have the potential to prove that thebest efforts of government and technology companie...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 22, 2021 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
