I'm in denial that 2023 is coming to an end. I still haven't finished my holiday shopping! And my inbox is filling up with submissions from people who want to write predictions for 2024. I am not interested in prediction pieces unless the authors are also willing to look back on those articles at the end of the year, too — and people generally don't want to do that.
But I am interested in what works of health/medical writing you read and loved this past year. What was the best book? The best piece of opinion writing? Longform article? What was the best podcast you listened to? Heck, what's the best health care TikTok you watched? I'd love to hear from you and then share some of the responses in the First Opinion newsletter next week, which will be the last one of 2023.
This (very busy) week on First Opinion: Kate Cox is far from the first woman who wasn't helped by medical exceptions in states with abortion restrictions, Abigail Wilpers writes in a heartbreaking piece. Romila Santra, a first-year medical student, argues that medical schools are failing to teach future doctors about treating patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Jeffrey Millstein says it's time to rethink Medicare's annual wellness visit. American Society of Hematology President Robert Brodsky writes that there's a shortage of adult hematologists, which will make it harder for patients to access new gene therapies for sickle cell disease. Every community should have a sobering center where people can recover from intoxication and gain access to recovery support. The risk-taker behind the Dana Farber Cancer Institute's breakup with Brigham & Women's Hospital. ReproductiveRights.gov needs a complete overhaul. European countries' lessons for the U.S. on weight-loss drug coverage. The Supreme Court must affirm the FDA's authority in the upcoming case on mifepristone. The Biden administration's bad move on march-in rights. The World Health Organization's delay in declaring noma a neglected tropical disease is part of a long-time medical-dental disconnect. And on a particularly great episode of the "First Opinion Podcast," if I do say so myself, I spoke with Manil Suri and Daniel Morgan about their recent essay on the mathematical limits of diagnostic tests for rare diseases.
Recommendation of the week: Last weekend, I binged "Believe in Magic," a BBC podcast about a teenage girl with cancer who started a charity to give great experiences to other sick young people. It raised enormous amounts of money and received a great deal of attention from celebrities, particularly members of One Direction. And then everything went very wrong. Parts of the story are familiar, but the particulars are absolutely absorbing.
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