Poorer communities of color in the region around the nation’s capital are inching toward getting more equitable hospital care — with new facilities slowly coming online to replace decrepit and risky institutions. Politicians and public leaders in Maryland celebrated a decade-long fight to see the opening in Largo of a new hospital, a “620,000-square-foot, glass-paneled….
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U.S. will ban targeted health menace of menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars
The Biden Administration will ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars with new regulations to be issued within the next year — actions that Big Tobacco is expected to battle but which proponents say could have big health benefits for those who have been targeted to buy and use these products. Smoking is a leading cause….
Continue ReadingPanicked over prediabetes? For older patients, more evidence to say: Not to worry
It’s not an invitation to pile on the ice cream, cake, and candy. But older adults may get to say pshaw to the finger-wagging they may have endured from doctors and loved ones about their raised blood sugar levels and the condition that specialists ginned up to caution them about it: prediabetes. As the New….
Continue ReadingWith half of a terrible ’20 now done, can federal torpor on pandemic change?
The nation shudders into the second half of 2020, months deep into an unchecked Covid-19 pandemic that has infected 2.8 million Americans and killed roughly 130,000 of us. America has become the coronavirus’s outbreak epicenter, its would-be travelers shunned by leading nations around the world as too risky to allow without quarantines or outright bans…..
Continue ReadingResearchers digging in to discover how novel coronavirus affects youngsters
Federal officials have launched what may be an aptly named, important, and reassuring study for kids, parents, families, and communities — the large-scale “Heros” investigation on Covid-19 and youngsters. As the National Institutes of Health explains the “Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2” work: “[It will] help determine the rate of novel coronavirus infection in children….
Continue ReadingFor doctors and patients, worries are rising about pandemic-delayed treatments for other conditions
The public health restrictions put on much of the nation to battle the Covid-19 pandemic also have created complications for patients’ receiving other kinds of health care — a reality that the nation will need to deal with in the weeks ahead. Doctors and hospitals will need to see whether their coronavirus case loads are….
Continue ReadingGlobal vaping snub suggests other nations are learning from United States’ bad example
Here’s a glimmer of good health news: It seems that nations around the world may be avoiding what, just a blink ago, was one of the United States’ significant public health concerns — vaping and e-cigarettes. Juul, the San Francisco-based company at the heart of this controversy, has seen doors shut in its face as….
Continue ReadingHere’s why the U.S. surgeon general and WHO want smokers to quit, asap
Cigarette smokers got yet more chiding from public health officials about why and how they should quit an addictive and destructive habit. To do so isn’t easy, and a “shocking” number of doctors aren’t helping enough, the Surgeon General of the United States conceded. But there are big reasons to give up the nasty vice,….
Continue ReadingYes, you may suffer heart disease, even in the most fitness-fanatical state of the union
Sure, it can be fun to watch two East Coasters take a long, sharp pin and pop the fantasy bubble that Westerners, especially Coloradans, like to float around in. Mountain state residents may like to tell themselves how the people on the Front Range skew young, educated, and active. How blue skies and open spaces….
Continue ReadingOn MLK Day, never forget his view: ‘Injustice in health is the most shocking …’
With the nation taking a holiday to celebrate the remarkable life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and his pioneering push for Americans’ civil rights, it may be worth remembering that his far-reaching visions of equality and social justice were deeply unpopular in their time, as was he. King infuriated many, including in medicine….
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