From Marketplace: It actually started off on January first very early on in the government’s history. In 1842, President Tyler actually shifted it to July 1 to June 30. And then in the 1970s, when Nixon was withholding funds to try and get the budget under control, they shifted it to October 1. The idea…
This brief provides an overview of racial disparities for selected measures of maternal and infant health, discusses the factors that drive these disparities, and gives an overview of recent efforts to address them.
A paper by Kowal et al. (2023) does in fact measure the disparities in health outcomes. To do this, they use data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) and the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) to estimate differences in life expectancy (LY), quality-adjusted life expectancy (QALE), and disability-free life…
By KIM BELLARD You may have heard about the microbiome, that collection of microorganisms that fill the world around, and in, us. You may have had some digestive tract issues after a round of antibiotics wreaked havoc with your gut microbiome. You may have read about the rafts of research that are making it clearer…
When George Lai of Portland, Oregon, took his toddler son to a pediatrician last summer for a checkup, the doctor noticed a little splinter in the child’s palm. “He must have gotten it between the front door and the car,” Lai later recalled, and the child wasn’t complaining. The doctor grabbed a pair of forceps…
By KIM BELLARD I must admit, last week’s election took me by surprise. I knew all the polls predicted a close race, but I kept telling myself that the American I believed in would not elect such a man, again, knowing full well all the things he has said and done – in his personal,…
This analysis examines the extent to which large private and non-federal public employers that offer retiree health benefits are turning to Medicare Advantage and why they are making this shift, using data from the 2024 Employer Health Benefits Survey. We find that slightly more than half (56%) of large employers offering retiree health benefits to…
In the past, patient comfort often came at the cost of medical testing. However, the future of sleep monitoring doesn’t have to forgo either, with radar monitoring systems allowing for both a comfortable testing environment and a more accurate reading of sleep health. The post Redefining Sleep Health: From PSG Limitations to Next-Generation Solutions appeared…
Anna Goldman, a primary care physician at Boston Medical Center, got tired of hearing that her patients couldn’t afford the electricity needed to run breathing assistance machines, recharge wheelchairs, turn on air conditioning, or keep their refrigerators plugged in. So she worked with her hospital on a solution. The result is a pilot effort called…