Closer Look
Political vitriol — and violence — put doctors in harm's way
M. Scott Brauer for STAT
Remember when people stood on their balconies to applaud health care providers for their sacrifices early in the pandemic? That's hard to imagine now, when doctors are being been doxxed or threatened or otherwise attacked for their views not just on Covid or vaccines, but also on abortion, gender-affirming care, gun control, or diversity initiatives. This divisive political environment exacts a toll not just on individuals but the medical profession as a whole, physicians and advocates told STAT's Sarah Owermohle, lessening the appeal of careers in health care with record retirements on the horizon.
"There's this broad trend of disdain for medicine, science, evidence, expertise," said Kellan Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Institute, a network of LGBTQ-focused providers. "It's no accident that the same governors that are going after trans kids have also gone after mask mandates, have also gone after vaccines, are also peddling lies about what good medicine and good science look like." Read more.
health tech
Analyzing risk and marshaling data to move past 'one device at a time'
Madris Kinard has long thought about calculating risks and eliminating threats, from her FDA job as a public health analyst to building a device recall database for Avalere to launching her own business, Device Events, to consolidate adverse event reports. She talked recently with STAT's Lizzy Lawrence:
There was public outcry about regulating medical devices after the 2018 documentary "The Bleeding Edge." Has anything changed?
There's been no overnight "Wow, we need to do everything like this now." It's one device at a time or one process at a time.
What are your hopes for the Medical Device Recall Improvement Act, if it passes?
The FDA is going to work through how to improve the communications. This device was recalled, what do I do now? It's supposed to shorten the time it takes to find out so that you don't have doctors still implanting devices that are recalled. That does happen a lot.
Read the full interview.
health
Loneliness tied to higher risk of Parkinson's
The case is getting stronger for loneliness being a powerful psychosocial determinant of health. A large new study in JAMA Neurology found a link between loneliness and the risk of Parkinson's disease, even after accounting for such confounders as physical and mental health (including depression), genetic risk, and sociodemographic differences. It was the loneliness people felt, not social isolation, that mattered the most in the analysis of U.K. Biobank participants over age 50 who were followed for 15 years.
Loneliness has been implicated before in Alzheimer's and other dementias, but the mechanism driving the association isn't known. The authors suggest metabolic, inflammatory, and neuroendocrine pathways might be involved, based on diabetes and visits to a psychiatrist weakening (but not eliminating) the association with Parkinson's the most. "This study adds evidence on the detrimental health impact of loneliness and supports recent calls for the protective and healing effects of personally meaningful social connection," they write.
No comments