Closer Look
Students at the forefront of a nascent climate movement in medical education
Chantal Heijnen for STAT
When Cecilia Sorensen (above) was an emergency medicine resident practicing at Denver Health in Colorado a few years ago, summer was known as "trauma season." She realized there was a clear connection between patients' experiences and climate change. "How did I hear nothing, nothing, about this during my entire medical training?" Sorensen asked herself. Now, she's one of a growing number of committed young doctors and medical students across the country who aim to address that glaring oversight in their training, working to incorporate climate change into medical education.
The movement is still nascent, but it has already made an impact. In January, Harvard University's medical school committed to embedding climate and health in its curriculum. At George Washington University, students this year finally managed to get the school to adopt a "climate theme" that will weave learning objectives into all four years of medical school. STAT's Karen Pennar has more.
coronavirus
Fauci reflects on pandemic missteps, vaccine mistrust, and 'Monday-morning quarterbacking'
In a new interview with the New York Times, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases head Anthony Fauci reflects on the way the U.S. initially responded to the pandemic, three years after the world-changing virus began to spread. While a production crew for a PBS documentary may dispute that it's his "most extensive interview yet," Fauci was candid about how he thinks about the early pandemic days with the benefit of hindsight during a chat that he called "serious Monday-morning quarterbacking."
On mistrust of science and vaccine mandates: "Man, I think, almost paradoxically, you had people who were on the fence about getting vaccinated thinking, why are they forcing me to do this? And that sometimes-beautiful independent streak in our country becomes counterproductive."
On if he should have emphasized more the urgent threat that Covid-19 posed when speaking to STAT's Helen Branswell in February 2020: "Yeah, I think, retrospectively, we certainly should have done that. ... We were not fully appreciative of the fact that we were dealing with a highly, highly transmissible virus that was clearly spread by ways that were unprecedented and unexperienced by us."
On what this pandemic can teach us about public health in the future: "I could say, well, hey, we tried our best, and we still got screwed, so we're going to get screwed no matter what happens in the next one. I don't think that's an appropriate response. I think we can still improve significantly."
patients
How transportation barriers affect cancer survivors' health
Adults who delay care due to a lack of transportation are more likely to use the emergency room and have a higher mortality risk compared to those with and without cancer who don't delay, according to a new study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Cancer survivors facing transportation barriers are almost three times as likely to visit the emergency room and face more than twice the mortality risk as those without cancer history or transportation barriers.
By analyzing nationally representative survey data and mortality files, researchers found that 2.8% of cancer survivors and 1.7% of adults without a cancer history reported transportation barriers from 2000-2018, with direct implications for patient care. Cancer survivors are already at higher risk for comorbidities, meaning a lack of access to transportation can turn otherwise manageable conditions into emergency situations. More comprehensive solutions to transportation barriers are needed to ensure patients can receive timely care, according to the researchers.
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