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EVERYTHING
Federal Office Tasked with Health Civil Rights Cases Rarely Finds Discrimination
What: Bloomberg has a deep dive on women who are failed by doctors and hospitals, and then face delays getting justice via the federal government’s HHS Office for Civil Rights.
Why it matters: “Overworked and underfunded, the office rarely holds doctors and hospitals accountable for discrimination, Bloomberg Law found after reviewing hundreds of documents released by the agency in response to a public records request and the office’s public settlement agreements from the past five years. ‘It’s costing lives,’ Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean of George Washington University’s law school, said of the office. She is the author of two books on racism in health care. ‘Discrimination in health care disproportionately affects the sickest among us who don’t have access to justice.’”
Source: Bloomberg
Yoga Isn’t the Only Way to Beat Urinary Incontinence
What: Researchers at UCSF thought longstanding recommendations to practice yoga to treat or prevent urinary incontinence in older women lacked data. They ran a study looking at yoga compared to “general muscle stretching and strengthening” and found “both groups experienced a clinically meaningful improvement in their incontinence, and that yoga was not clearly better, although it resulted in modestly greater improvement in some more specialized types of urinary symptoms.”
Why it matters: “’The results may provide support for a shift in thinking about treatment approaches for incontinence in older adults,’ said [lead author Alison] Huang, who is also director of research in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UCSF Health. ‘Rather than focusing primarily on treatments that target the bladder or pelvic floor, perhaps we should focus on strategies that improve our overall physical function as we age.’”
Source: Annals of Internal Medicine
BIRTH CONTROL
Over Eight Percent of Women With Tubes Tied Get Pregnant Over 10 Years
What: An analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth found that between 2013 and 2015 an estimated 3% of women who had their tubes tied still got pregnant (!!!) within a year.
Why it matters: “…an estimated 8.4% had become pregnant within 10 years of the procedure. The results indicate “nontrivial” rates of pregnancy after the purportedly permanent procedure, the authors write. It’s good to know, as data from the same survey show that about a third of women receive the surgery by the age of 44.”
Source: Stat News and NEJM
ABORTION ACCESS
Alabama Health Providers Fear Even Telling Patients About Out-of-State Abortions
What: USA Today looks at a test case in Alabama, where a federal judge is considering the state attorney general’s threats of criminal conspiracy charges “against organizations that help Alabamians get the procedure out of state.” That means women’s health clinics in the state are afraid to even tell patients they can travel out of state to get an abortion.
Why it matters: “If [the attorney general] is successful, other anti-abortion states could follow his lead as out-of-state abortions have significantly increased since the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion.”
Source: USA Today
MENTAL HEALTH
US Surgeon General: Parents are in Trouble
What: US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has issued an advisory specifically for parents and caregivers, who he says are facing unprecedented stress and mental health challenges.
Why it matters: Murthy writes in an New York Times op-ed that “parents who feel pushed to the brink deserve more than platitudes. They need tangible support. That’s why I am issuing a surgeon general’s advisory to call attention to the stress and mental health concerns facing parents and caregivers and to lay out what we can do to address them. …Something has to change. It begins with fundamentally shifting how we value parenting, recognizing that the work of raising a child is crucial to the health and well-being of all society.”
Source: New York Times
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