Tuesday, May 21

Tag: health

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

To stop police shootings of people with mental health disabilities, I asked them what cops – and everyone – could do to help

When Joe Prude called the police on his brother, he was asking for help: Daniel Prude, who suffered from mental health problems, had run almost naked out of his Rochester, New York, house into the snow. When officers arrived, new video footage shows, the March 23 encounter quickly turned violent, and Prude died from asphyxiation under a hood officers had put over his head. Two years prior, in 2018, Shukri Ali Said of Georgia also wound up dead after leaving her house during a mental health crisis on April 23, 2018. Police, called in to help, found Said standing at an intersection holding a knife. Officers shot her five times in the neck and chest, killing her. That same month, in New York, officers answered a 911 call about a black man waving something that looked like a gun. In fact, it...
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While the US is reeling from COVID-19, the Trump administration is trying to take away health care
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

While the US is reeling from COVID-19, the Trump administration is trying to take away health care

The death toll from COVID-19 keeps rising, creating grief, fear, loss and confusion. Unfortunately for us all, the pain only begins there. Other important health policy news that would ordinarily make headlines is buried under the crushing weight of the coronavirus. Many have not had time to notice or understand the Trump administration’s efforts to wreck health care coverage. We are both professors at Boston University School of Public Health who study health insurance, one using economics and statistics and the other focusing on law and policy. We have researched the big picture of COVID-19’s impact on the safety net and the details of how our federalist system, with states having considerable control over policy, has made a coordinated response to the pandemic more difficult. Here, w...
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Enslaved people’s health was ignored from the country’s beginning, laying the groundwork for today’s health disparities
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Enslaved people’s health was ignored from the country’s beginning, laying the groundwork for today’s health disparities

Some critics of Black Lives Matter say the movement itself is racist. Their frequent counterargument: All lives matter. Lost in that view, however, is a historical perspective. Look back to the late 18th century, to the very beginnings of the U.S., and you will see Black lives in this country did not seem to matter at all. Foremost among the unrelenting cruelties heaped upon enslaved people was the lack of health care for them. Infants and children fared especially poorly. After childbirth, mothers were forced to return to the fields as soon as possible, often having to leave their infants without care or food. The infant mortality rate was estimated at one time to be as high as 50%. Adult people who were enslaved who showed signs of exhaustion or depression were often beaten. As a profe...
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African American teens face mental health crisis but are less likely than whites to get treatment
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

African American teens face mental health crisis but are less likely than whites to get treatment

Black youth in the U.S. experience more illness, poverty, and discrimination than their white counterparts. These issues put them at higher risk for depression and other mental health problems. Yet Black youth are less likely to seek treatment. About 9% of them reported an episode of major depression in the past year, but less than half of those – about 40% – received treatment. By comparison, about 46% of white youth who reported an episode were treated for depressive symptoms. Instead, some turn to suicide, now the second leading cause of death among Black children ages 10 to 19. That rate is rising faster for them than any other racial or ethnic group. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show the rate of suicide attempts for Black adolescents rose 73% from 1991 to ...
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Is telehealth as good as in-person care? A telehealth researcher explains how to get the most out of remote health care
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

Is telehealth as good as in-person care? A telehealth researcher explains how to get the most out of remote health care

COVID-19 has led to a boom in telehealth, with some health care facilities seeing an increase in its use by as much as 8,000%. This shift happened quickly and unexpectedly and has left many people asking whether telehealth is really as good as in-person care. Over the last decade, I’ve studied telehealth as a Ph.D. researcher while using it as a registered nurse and advanced practice nurse. Telehealth is the use of phone, video, internet and technology to perform health care, and when done right, it can be just as effective as in-person health care. But as many patients and health care professionals switch to telehealth for the first time, there will inevitably be a learning curve as people adapt to this new system. So how does a patient or a provider make sure they are using telehealth...
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4 things students should know about their health insurance and COVID-19 before heading to college this fall
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COVID-19, Journalism

4 things students should know about their health insurance and COVID-19 before heading to college this fall

As colleges and universities decide whether or not to reopen their campuses this fall, much of the discussion has focused on the ethics behind the decision and the associated health risks of in-person instruction. As a researcher who studies health insurance policy, I see two important gaps in this discussion: 1) Who should pay the cost of treating the inevitable COVID-19 cases that will occur; and 2) What do college students need to know about their coverage? Here are four things I think every college student – and those who care about them – should know about health insurance coverage when it comes to COVID-19. 1. Weigh coverage options If you’re covered under a student health insurance plan through your school, it may be worth considering whether that is still your best option. The Af...
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Biases in algorithms hurt those looking for information on health
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VIDEO REELS

Biases in algorithms hurt those looking for information on health

YouTube hosts millions of videos related to health care. The Health Information National Trends Survey reports that 75% of Americans go to the internet first when looking for information about health or medical topics. YouTube is one of the most popular online platforms, with billions of views every day, and has emerged as a significant source of health information. Several public health agencies, such as state health departments, have invested resources in YouTube as a channel for health communication. Patients with chronic health conditions especially rely on social media, including YouTube videos, to learn more about how to manage their conditions. But video recommendations on such sites could exacerbate preexisting disparities in health. A significant fraction of the U.S. populatio...
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How Racism Hinders Care And Costs Lives Of African Americans In US Health System
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

How Racism Hinders Care And Costs Lives Of African Americans In US Health System

As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the U.S., the virus hit African Americans disproportionately hard. African Americans are still contracting the illness – and dying from it – at rates twice as high as would be expected based on their share of the population. In Michigan, African Americans are only 14% of the population, but account for one-third of the state’s COVID-19 cases and 40% of its deaths. In some states the disparities are even more stark. Wisconsin and Missouri have infection and mortality rates three or more times greater than expected based on their share of the population. Speculation has suggested these disproportions are due to several factors: African Americans are more likely to live in poor neighborhoods, work at riskier occupations, and have more underlying health...
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We’re measuring online conversation to track the social and mental health issues surfacing during the coronavirus pandemic
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SOCIAL MEDIA

We’re measuring online conversation to track the social and mental health issues surfacing during the coronavirus pandemic

The big idea Social media posts and news reports are rich sources of data about people’s attitudes and behaviors. Using artificial intelligence techniques, it’s possible to sift through billions of words to discern trends in a population’s well-being, or social quality. Performing this analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic is revealing the damage the pandemic is doing to the social and psychological well-being of the U.S. At the AI Institute of the University of South Carolina, my colleagues and I have processed more than 700 million social media posts since the beginning of March and more than 700,000 news articles about the COVID-19 pandemic. We are monitoring these information sources to capture the evolving human experience in the U.S. during the pandemic. We have found troubling indi...
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High School Health Workers A Medical School And Georgia Students
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HEALTH & WELLNESS

High School Health Workers A Medical School And Georgia Students

As part of his training to become a certified community health worker, 10th-grader Malachi Ward needed to monitor family or community members—checking their vital signs and setting health goals. When Ward first asked his mother, Fayron Epps, if he could monitor her, she expressed ambivalence. Epps considered herself to be in good health. Although she didn’t have a primary care physician, she always attended her annual women’s health checkup and, despite the occasional headache, felt fine. She agreed to be a study participant because Ward needed five people to monitor. “I was like ‘OK, you can monitor me, but you’re not going to find anything’,” she recalls. Except Ward did find something. “I was really taken aback,” Epps admitted. Her blood pressure was dangerously high. Over the course...
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