Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Cell and gene therapies have the potential to produce dramatic improvements in quality of life and survival for severe and often rare diseases. Currently, however, the cost of these treatments is high and access is sometimes limited. To identify some of these challenges in Europe EURODIS conducted an evaluation of country-specific challenges with respect to…
I will be on a panel tomorrow for the Wall Street Journal‘s Global Food Forum. My panel will include and Hakim Bouzamondo (Divisional VP, Global Research and Development, Nutrition at Abbott) and Dr. Leah Gramlich, (Gastroenterologist and Physician Nutrition Specialist at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Alberta Canada) as well as myself. This discussion will…
That is one approach being explored in Philadelphia according to an article in Kaiser Health News. Using funding from Temple University, two Pennsylvania Medicaid health plans, and some grant funding, the Template University Health System: …launched a two-year program last year to help 25 homeless Medicaid patients who frequently use its emergency room and other…
There has been a lot of hype about patient-centeredness, but what concrete steps can be taken to make sure the end user–the patient–has significant input into today’s health care system? A recent paper by Oehrlein et al. (2020) provides 18 concrete recommendations to follow. Below, I highlight just a few of these. Plain language communication:…
That is the question by a recent paper in by Baugh et al. (2020) in JAMA Open. The authors surveyed nearly 300 current college football players from 4 teams in the 5 most competitive NCAA football conferences. They found that: Of the 265 participants for whom all relevant data were available, 111 (42%) underestimated their…
‘If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?’ This is a common parenting phrase is meant to motivate kids to reject peer’s actions that are bad behaviors. While this blogger will not comment how effective this parenting phrase is, peer effects are real. Consider the recent NBER working paper by Finkelstein, Gentzkow, and…
Don’t expect any turkey recipes from the CDC, but the do advise a fair amount of caution during this Thanksgiving holiday. More than 1 million COVID-19 cases were reported in the United States over the last 7 days.As cases continue to increase rapidly across the United States, the safest way to celebrate Thanksgiving is to…
Some people use opioids as a recreational drug. If people choose to ruin their own life, that is their problem. Others take opioids when prescribed from physicians and unwittingly become addicted. In either case, there is one scourge that may not fully be appreciated: parents who take opioids risk having their kids go into their…
RAND has an interesting report titled “The Future of Fentanyl and Other Synthetic Opioids.” What is truly startling is the rise in deaths due to synthetic opioids like fentanyl in the last 5 years: from 3,000 in 2013 to approximately 30,000 in 2018. In fact, synthetic opioids are now involved in twice as many deaths…
A paper by Basu et al. (2020) argue that banning soda sales would be cost effective for employers. Employers largely bear the cost of adverse health impacts of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB, aka soda); they also may lose revenue if drinks that are sold on site (e.g., at their cafeteria) decrease. The researchers create a simulation…