Closer Look
Community health workers, experts in the 'in between,' seek recognition beyond Covid
Sarah Stacke for STAT
In the U.S., people may have heard about community health workers for the first time when they were enlisted to encourage people to get vaccinated against Covid. These human bridges between the health care system and patients have a long tradition in other countries, including the "accompaniment" model enlisted by Partners In Health, for example. Montefiore Comprehensive Health Care Center in the Bronx, N.Y., is unusual in seamlessly depending on these frontline public health workers to use their life experience and deep knowledge of communities to help patients.
For Hawa Abraham (above), the role means helping patients with social needs that are health needs, too. "I want to be that person on the front line to help the less privileged navigate the system," she said. With Covid fading from the general public's attention, Abraham's counterparts elsewhere may be left behind. STAT's Ambar Castillo explains.
global health
Opinion: Drugs along can't stop tuberculosis
In a win for advocates, the latest tuberculosis news involves a patent decision that makes TB pills more available in low- and middle-income countries with high rates of disease. That's not nearly enough, STAT's Abdullahi Tsanni writes in a First Opinion. And he would know. After earning an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, he volunteered for a year in a northern Nigerian hospital's TB DOT center, WHO's shorthand for "directly observed therapy," where active tuberculosis cases are managed.
He watched people swallow dozens of pills a day in regimens lasting months, weathering such side effects as nausea, headaches, and depression. And those were the people with the means to get there. "I tried to help, when I could, but on my own I couldn't transport everyone to and from the DOT," he writes. "The drugs alone aren't enough; they need social and economic support." Read more on how people are trying to help.
children's health
School program promoting water over sweet drinks linked to less growth in overweight prevalence
The name of the campaign says it all: Water First. In an effort to prevent unhealthy weight gain in children, researchers tested whether encouraging fourth-graders to drink water instead of sugar-sweetened milks and juices available at school or at home would help. Eighteen low-income, ethnically diverse elementary schools in the San Francisco Bay area and their more than 1,200 students were split into two groups: schools that promoted water and schools that didn't, serving as the control group.
After seven months, there was no difference in overweight or obesity prevalence between the groups, but after 15 months, there was a smaller (0.5% vs. 3.7%) increase in overweight prevalence in the Water First schools compared to the control schools. If that seems small, the authors note in their Pediatrics study published today that the Healthy People 2030 goal for reducing obesity prevalence in children is 2.3%.
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