Closer Look
Herpes patients push government for action
CDC
It's a disease with only a temporary treatment, no reliable test, little hope of a vaccine, but plenty of stigma. Herpes can be a lifelong infection, one affecting two-thirds of the world in oral or genital form. Its psychological toll is significant, it can raise the risk of acquiring HIV, and in rare cases it can be passed from mother to infant, causing neurological harm. Some studies link it to Alzheimer's.
Advocates are demanding more action and more information, beyond sites suggesting abstinence. HHS recently held listening sessions for people to say what they'd like the agency to do. "I have not been given any guidance," a Wyoming public health worker said. "I feel like I'm at a dead end. I give people a lot of printout information on it, and send them to their primary care providers where I know that they are also not well-informed." STAT's Jason Mast has more.
health
How new cancer cases vary among people from specific Asian groups
You've seen it here in this newsletter: Reports that analyze health by race and ethnicity often group together people who may be quite diverse in geographic origin, culture, and language. Breaking down populations by race, ethnicity, or gender has advanced from when studies didn't include more than white men (or provide a breakdown if they did), but yesterday the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report took a step further. The study describes new cancer cases among 25 Asian and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations, groups often combined under the term "Asian." Here's some of what they found from 2015 through 2019:
- The percentage of cancer cases in people younger than 40 was highest among Hmong, Micronesian, and Melanesian people.
- Lung cancer was the most common cancer among Chamoru, Micronesian, and Vietnamese people.
- Colorectal cancer was the most common cancer among Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Papua New Guinean people.
medicine
Opinion: Two medical residents, two different takes on unionization
There's a union drive in progress at Mass General Brigham, the Harvard-affiliated hospital system where trainees are seeking better pay and working conditions. "The care I was providing for patients was not always what I would want for my own family members," Minali Nigam, a third-year neurology resident, writes in a STAT First Opinion. "I was suffering from moral injury as health care systems forced me to provide inadequate and at times inequitable medical care. And I'm not alone."
In another First Opinion essay, David N. Bernstein, a third-year orthopedic surgery resident, writes, "Overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated in an era of skyrocketing paperwork requirements and historic inflation, trainees sometimes struggle to make ends meet, care for themselves and loved ones, and even find joy in the day-to-day grind of learning to be an independent physician."
Yet they disagree on what to do next, after Mass General Brigham increased their benefits. Nigam believes residents need a union to care better for themselves and their patients, But Bernstein says it's time for a pause to examine what tradeoffs any union gains might mean.
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