closer look
Summertime and the livin' isn't easy
Ananya Rao-Middleton for STAT
Summertime heat is a big problem for people with disabilities — often in ways that are not obvious to able-bodied people.
"When you wear an artificial limb, it encases that residual limb with a sealed, air-tight material," said David Gissen, an amputee. "You don't wrap your arms or legs in plastic when it's hot outside. But when you're an amputee, that's how you wear a leg."
A longtime triathaloner, Patty Glatfelter saw her relationship with the outdoors change when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which disrupts the body's ability to send signals down nerves and is even worse above 80 degrees.
She has to know her limits. On a recent trip to Santa Fe, N.M., "we were just walking down the street, waiting at a stop light, and I could feel myself starting to get weaker, so I started looking for a shady spot," she said. "And then, all of the sudden, my legs just went kaput, and I was falling to the sidewalk."
Read more from STAT's Timmy Broderick about how the heat affects people in tangible and hard ways.
public health
Brat summer is ending, deer sausage fall is coming (along with renewed risks)
I grew up in an area where a few — but not all — kids got taken out of school when deer season started. Who isn't jealous of getting to skip school to do something fun with your family? New research in JAMA Network Open looks at shootings at the beginning of deer hunting season in rural counties to better understand the relationship between the prevalence of guns and gun violence — and the results may be surprising.
The analysis, which mapped shootings in the Gun Violence Archive to the weeks before and after deer hunting season started in each of 854 counties, showed that there was a statistically significant increase in shootings in the first and second weeks after deer season started, which held even if hunting accidents were excluded.
Given that the increase in shootings wasn't due to hunting accidents and also was more pronounced for short guns than the long guns typically used for hunting, the authors suggested that gun violence isn't just due to how many guns are in a certain place or population, but the increased influx of guns into public and private spaces.
HEALTH
How people with disabilities are locked out of clinical trials
Earlier this week, the National Council on Disability released a report describing how several federal agencies implicitly and explicitly exclude people with disabilities from clinical trials. For example, 90% of people with Down syndrome also develop Alzheimer's, but they are regularly excluded from drug trials.
"How can this population benefit from these potentially life-changing treatments if they're excluded from the trials? And how can anyone know what these therapeutics' efficacy and safety is on this population — and one of the populations most affected? Exclusion exacts too high a price," said NCD Vice Chair Emily Voorde in a press release.
Read more from STAT's Timmy Broderick, including the council's proposed fixes for the problem.
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