Closer Look
One year in, the 988 crisis line also needs help
Molly Ferguson for STAT
In the year since the new, easy-to-remember 988 number went live, call center staff have worked hard to keep up with increasing calls while also building new infrastructure to grow. There's more to do, STAT's Theresa Gaffney reports.
- Staffing: "You have absolutely no idea if people are going to sit idly by or they're going to be overtaxed and know how to support both of those scenarios," said Eileen Davis at Call2Talk in Massachusetts.
- Funding: "We can handle these huge national disasters in crisis," said Rachelle Pellissier at Crisis Support Services of Nevada, "[but] dealing with not having the right funding or funding withheld or the loss of funding? Now there is some frickin' stress."
- Responding: "There are instances where, unfortunately, the call with 911 ends with them saying, 'unless you get more information [from the caller], we can't really help you,'" said Danielle Silverstein at the Long Island Crisis Center.
health
Cancer in kids is rare, but rates have ticked up
Cancer in children is sometimes called a rare disease because it is so uncommon. It's still the leading cause of death from disease under age 20, so any increase attracts attention. A new CDC report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute says cases rose from 13,327 in 2003 to 14,381 in 2019, peaking at 15,624 in 2015. The reasons why could be more electronic pathology reporting to cancer registries or changing risk factors, such as assisted reproductive technology and maternal age.
"It's a small increase of 0.5% per year on average," David Siegel, a pediatric oncologist and epidemiologist at the CDC, told STAT's Angus Chen. "The main message is that pediatric cancer is very rare. As a parent, I take comfort knowing that these changes are relatively small and it's unlikely for any child to develop these cancers, but it's important to keep track of cancer trends going forward."
Global health
Opinion: New sickle cell therapies must go where they're needed the most
A milestone for sickle cell disease treatment is nearly here, with two gene-based treatments expected to win regulatory approval this year. Yet for people enduring the debilitating blood disorder in sub-Saharan Africa, it will be a hollow victory. More than 60% of the 120 million people worldwide with this disease live in Africa, where 1,000 babies are born every day with two copies of the sickle hemoglobin gene that causes the disorder.
For them, the gene therapy's expected multimillion-dollar price tag will be far out of reach. Prices of this magnitude are unsustainable if gene therapy is to move beyond treating just a handful of patients, Jayasree Iyer, CEO of the Access to Medicine Foundation, writes in a STAT First Opinion. "Rolling out a new generation of sickle cell cures without a strategy to get them to those populations with the greatest need is not acceptable." Read more.
On this week's episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," STAT's Torie Bosch chats about a new gene therapy with Hawken Miller, a journalist and a content strategist for Cure Duchenne, an organization started by Miller's mother when he was diagnosed with Duchenne at a young age. Listen here.
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