public health
Health care workers behind on Covid boosters
Flu season is upon us, and with it reminders to get your flu — and, as of 2021, Covid — shots. Yet new survey data published by the CDC shows vaccine uptake has been low even among the people who should be most up to date with their seasonal jabs.
In the 2022-2023 respiratory virus season, only 20% of health care personnel were up to date with Covid shots. Flu vaccination rates among health care workers were behind pre-pandemic levels, and often insufficient. In acute care hospitals, 81% of workers were vaccinated against the flu in 2022-2023, compared to 86% in 2020-2021 and 90% in 2018-2019. Among nursing home workers, only a minority (47%) had received a flu shot last fall and winter, compared to 66% in 2020-2021 and 69% in 2019.
academia
When pre-med requirements deter future doctors
With the end of affirmative action, medical schools have to look at other ways to promote diversity among their student body. One option may be changing current pre-med requirements, writes David Velasquez, a medical student and pre-med tutor at Harvard, in STAT's First Opinion.
Less than one in six of students who start college hoping to become doctors go on to do so. Velasquez writes that pre-medical studies, with their focus on rote repetition and subjects (think organic chemistry or biology) that have little direct application in medical school, end up deterring prospective doctors from pursuing their studies. He suggests reforming the requirements to include more pertinent classes — anatomy, for instance, or learning about socio-economic and commercial determinants of health. This could help retain students who, often because they don't have doctors in their immediate circle, conflate dull or discouraging pre-med courses with actual clinical work. Read more.
mental health
Most U.S. counties lack maternal mental health support
Mental health issues are the most common complication of pregnancy, occurring both before and after childbirth. Yet a new report from the Policy Center for Maternal Health shows 70% U.S. counties don't have sufficient resources to support new mothers' mental health, and as many as 150 fall into what the report's authors call "maternal mental health dark zone," where the risk is especially high and the resources insufficient.
The states with the largest presence of such dark zones were Texas, Michigan, Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Indiana. But counties lacking resources are everywhere in the U.S.: Los Angeles is the county with the largest gap in specialized maternity mental health providers.
Overwhelmingly, high risk factors — such as domestic violence, unemployment, and high teen pregnancy rates — tend to be more common in rural areas, which are more often lacking in resources and are more likely to be home to non-white and/or Latino women of reproductive age.
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