Notices by Bich Nguyen :verified: (bicmay@med-mastodon.com), page 6

"At least four cases of measles, including two involving school-aged children, have been reported in Texas in less than two weeks, putting state health agencies on alert.

For some communities, this is the first case of measles in more than 20 years."

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/01/30/texas-measles-vaccinations-schools/

#PublicHealth #measles #vaccines #immunizations #texas #txlege #houston #HarrisCounty #lubbock

"ICE agents almost never carry judicial warrants giving them the authority to enter private homes or businesses without permission, so they often wait to make an arrest when the person they’re looking for leaves their home or car. And in every case we worked on, when the agents realized they were being watched, they abandoned their stakeout."

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/ice-watch-programs-immigrants-how-to-start

#neighborhoods #NeighborhoodWatch #immigrant #immigration #ICE #ICEraids #surveillance #deportation #racism #USpol #resist

"Americans’ health has long been unequal, but a new study shows that the disparity between the life expectancies of different populations has nearly doubled since 2000. 'This is like comparing very different countries,' said Tom Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations and an author of the study."

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/growing-disparity-life-expectancy-racial-ethnic-groups-study/

#PublicHealth #disparities #inequality #race #Indigenous #NativeAmerican #BlackMastodon #latinos #aapi #aanhpi

A few years ago, some Texas Doctors for America colleagues and I were critical about a physician who was spreading misinformation about hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness against COVID: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/2020/12/06/letters-to-the-editor-doctors-for-america-offers-advice-the-us-election-system-klyde-warren-park-fountain-supreme-court-decision-on-church-attendance/

He struck back: https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/2020/12/12/letters-to-the-editor-doctors-defend-the-use-of-hcq-oak-cliff-log-cabin-male-aggression-freedom-to-worship-ut-coach-fred-akers/

Fast forward to present day. Guess who lost his board certification? https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/features/113624

#healthcare #covid #hydroxychloroquine #PrescriptionDrugs #misinformation #disinformation #texas #physicians #boards #BoardCertification

"It’s another industry undermining my people, targeting them with predation. Why do I think that? Because we arrived at this era by way of a law that’s been used to harm Black people and marginalized groups. Because Big Gambling resembles Big Tobacco in troubling ways. Because the industry must know that its efforts intersect with a culture, maybe the most influential culture in the Black community..."

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a63162380/how-legal-sports-betting-targets-black-individuals/

#PopCulture #sports #gambling #betting #marketing #race

"It’s the first time in recorded history that the planet was above a hoped-for limit to warming for an entire year, according to measurements from four of the six teams. Scientists say if Earth stays above the threshold long-term, it will mean increased deaths, destruction, species loss and sea level rise from the extreme weather that accompanies warming."

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-warming-hot-record-2024-disasters-12f899f071fcdbd051ad49a872611e92

#PublicHealth #climate #ClimateChange #environment #weather #disasters

"More than 900 incarcerated people are among the more than 7,500 personnel helping fight the historic, and destructive, Southern California wildfires...This is not a new practice. California has relied on incarcerated firefighters since 1915. And prison labor has been used to respond to emergencies and disasters nationwide for centuries, said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a criminal justice advocacy organization."

https://www.npr.org/2025/01/10/nx-s1-5254122/inmate-firefighters-california-wildfires

#PublicHealth #labor #CriminalJustice

"At the University of Pennsylvania Health System, doctors are nudged to talk about a patient’s treatment and end-of-life preferences by an artificially intelligent algorithm that predicts the chances of death.

But it’s far from being a set-it-and-forget-it tool. A routine tech checkup revealed the algorithm decayed during the covid-19 pandemic, getting 7 percentage points worse at predicting who would die, according to a 2022 study."

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithms-software-health-care/ #healthcare #hospitals #AI #healthIT

"A new paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit economic research organization,...found that since the 2022 fall of Roe v. Wade, the states with near-total abortion bans — 13 at the time of the analysis — appear to have lost 36,000 people per quarter. Single-person households, which typically skew younger, were more likely to move out of states with bans."

https://19thnews.org/2025/01/abortion-bans-young-people-moving-analysis/

#healthcare #ReproductiveJustice #pregnancy #abortion #business #economics

"Medical students at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston are developing artificial intelligence tools to help them learn how to provide all-options pregnancy counseling without putting themselves or their patients at risk of prosecution under the state’s abortion ban."

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/future-pulse/2025/01/07/texas-turns-to-ai-abortion-training-00196787

#healthcare #ReproductiveJustice #pregnancy #MedEd #MedSchools #MedStudents #OptionsCounseling

"I had to scrub out mid-surgery to call United, only to find that the person on the line didn't even have access to the patient's full medical information, despite the procedure already being pre-approved. It's beyond frustrating and, frankly, unacceptable. Patients and providers deserve better than this. We should be focused on care, not bureaucracy."

https://www.newsweek.com/doctor-says-unitedhealthcare-stopped-cancer-surgery-ask-if-necessary-2012069

#healthcare #insurance #UnitedHealthcare #PriorAuth #PriorAuthorization #surgery #cancer

"Starting this month, pregnant Iowans on Medicaid have 12 months of coverage after giving birth, a significant increase from the previous cutoff of 60 days.

Iowa lawmakers approved the change in the last legislative session, making the state one of the last to approve the extension after the federal government started offering permanent matching funds in 2021 to states that extended coverage to 12 months."

https://www.iowapublicradio.org/state-government-news/2025-01-02/iowa-extends-postpartum-medicaid-coverage-12-months

#healthcare #medicaid #ReproductiveJustice #postpartum

"Employees could not send out press releases, give interviews, hold vaccine events, give presentations or create social media posts encouraging the public to get the vaccines. They also could not put up signs at the department's clinics that COVID, flu or mpox vaccines were available on site."

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/20/nx-s1-5223440/louisiana-ban-public-health-promoting-covid-flu-mpox-vaccines-landry-rfk-jr-anti-vaccine

#PublicHealth #vaccines #immunizations #covid #flu #mpox #louisiana #USpol #government #transparency #accountability

"Nearly a year into the first outbreak of the bird flu among cattle, the virus shows no sign of slowing. The U.S. government failed to eliminate the virus on dairy farms when it was confined to a handful of states, by quickly identifying infected cows and taking measures to keep their infections from spreading. Now at least 845 herds across 16 states have tested positive."

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/bird-flu-spread-cattle-poultry-pandemic-cdc/

#PublicHealth #BirdFlu #cows #outbreak #labor #OccupationalHealth #RuralHealth #CDC #FDA

"The election of Donald J. Trump, with his mistrust of international institutions and his history of proposing deep cuts to foreign aid, has complicated a perilous landscape for global health organizations that were already in a frantic competition for sharply reduced funds."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/health/global-health-funding-us-trump.html

#GlobalHealth #USpol #vaccines #immunizations #PublicHealth #WHO #PEPFAR

"We spoke to women who survived terrifying experiences, and we interviewed family members of those who died without care. They all felt unprepared as they entered emergency rooms, unaware of how abortion laws were reaching into pregnancy care.

They wished they had known what to expect and how to advocate for themselves and their loved ones.

We created this guide for them and anyone who finds themselves in the same position."

https://www.propublica.org/article/miscarriage-abortion-bans-dilation-and-curettage-dilation-and-evacuation

#healthcare #ReproductiveJustice #pregnancy

@dalias @Benhm3

Let me test out "thou" IRL and see how that goes! What's the plural version? 🤔

"The 62-year-old physician who once cajoled colleagues to receive the COVID vaccine is now advocating against it as a leader of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), an increasingly powerful physician group that sows doubt on COVID vaccine safety while pushing COVID medications that have been discredited by public health agencies."

🎁: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/investigations/article/joseph-varon-covid-vaccine-rfk-19822203.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuaG91c3RvbmNocm9uaWNsZS5jb20vbmV3cy9pbnZlc3RpZ2F0aW9ucy9hcnRpY2xlL2pvc2VwaC12YXJvbi1jb3ZpZC12YWNjaW5lLXJmay0xOTgyMjIwMy5waHA%3D&time=MTczNDI4MDE4OTc3NA%3D%3D&rid=MDcyMjg5MTAtNzRlYS00OGUyLTlmODQtNjI5ZTE0Zjg0MzRi&sharecount=MQ%3D%3D

#healthcare #PublicHealth #covid #vaccines #immunizations #hospitals #medicare #fraud #MedEd #houston #texas

"English speakers have spent much of the past several decades transforming 'you guys' into a gender-neutral term to fill the void. It’s an interesting linguistic analysis—and one that is entirely unnecessary in Texas, or throughout the South. We’ve long had a word that serves this exact purpose, with no gender implications and a (if we do say so ourselves) mellifluous cadence. We’re talking about 'y’all,' y’all."

https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/in-defense-of-yall-nyt-columnist/

#english #language #words #inclusive #YallMeansAll

@dgodon @ProPublica

I suspect that part of their business model is to hope people pay their bills without contesting them. Everyone should contest their bills and make sure they billing is accurate! Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are juggling multiple responsibilities to survive and don't have the bandwidth to do this.