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EVERYTHING
Women Rank Health Care Dead Last Among Sector Meeting Their Needs
What: BCG surveyed 15,000 people around the world, of which 75% were women, and found just 41% agreed that there were “sufficient services to address their specific health concerns. Ratings of medical treatment or interactions with health insurers are similarly low: 44% and 37% respectively.” Health care ranked dead last among sectors meeting women’s needs–at the top were groceries and personal care/beauty, at 66% and 64% respectively.
Key line: “Women manage an estimated $31.8 trillion of global spending, according to Nielsen, and are expected to control 75% of discretionary spending worldwide in the next five years. Companies that don’t develop products explicitly tailored for women and their needs are leaving significant money on the table…Health care organizations have the most work to do. Women worldwide report responsibility for a majority of household health care decisions, from 66% in India to 83% in Germany and France.”
Source: BCG
Women Report More Chronic Pain Than Men
What: Just over 24% of American adults said they had chronic pain in 2023, up from 20% in 2019. Women were more likely to report chronic pain than men, at 25% versus 23%. Women were also more likely to report “high-impact” pain, meaning it interfered with their daily lives, at nearly 10% versus 7%.
Key line: “‘Chronic pain and pain that often restricts life or work activities, referred to in this report as high-impact chronic pain are the most common reasons adults seek medical care, and are associated with decreased quality of life, opioid misuse, increased anxiety and depression, and unmet mental health needs,’ co-authors Jacqueline W. Lucas and Inderbir Sohi wrote in a data brief on the numbers.”
Source: Washington Post, CDC
The Vaccines Threats Posed by RFK, Jr.
What: RFK, Jr. started meeting with senators this week, in an effort to convince them to make him the top health official in the country. KFF Health News has a detailed accounting of all the ways measles, whooping cough, and more could come “roaring back” under his leadership – from delaying vaccine approvals to pulling DOJ support for vaccine laws.
Key line: “’It is a fantasy to think we can lower vaccination rates and herd immunity in the U.S. and not suffer recurrence of these diseases,’ said Gregory Poland, co-director of the Atria Academy of Science & Medicine. ‘One in 3,000 kids who gets measles is going to die. There’s no treatment for it. They are going to die.’”
Source: KFF Health News
PREGNANCY + POSTPARTUM
Dating Pregnancies With AI
What: JAMA interviews a doctor who spent a decade studying prenatal care in Zambia and helped develop a battery-powered probe that uses AI to date pregnancies without the help of a sonographer.
Key line: “And obviously you can’t entirely replace the specialized expertise of a sonographer, but we’ve ‘replaced’ that need by implementing a protocol of blindly obtained sweeps of the abdomen. So instead of having to have someone who has a really sophisticated knowledge of fetal anatomy, we defined a protocol of sweeps that are in the up-and-down and crossways directions to cover the entire maternal abdomen. I’ve heard it described by a layperson as “mowing the lawn.” And then the videos that are collected in that way are fed into these AI models, which is what we’re using to jump over the need for the expert interpreter that takes the videos and makes the diagnoses.”
Source: JAMA
ABORTION ACCESS
New York Doctor Sued by Texas
What: Law professor Mary Ziegler breaks down the latest abortion case, this time brought by Texas AG Ken Paxton against a New York doctor for mailing abortion pills to patients in the state. Ziegler explains how it will test New York state’s “shield law”, which was designed to allow health professionals to file “clawback” lawsuits against cases brought from people in other states. But a case from another state *itself* may be more of a challenge.
Key line: “Texas Right to Life and other anti-abortion groups looking for plaintiffs to bring lawsuits in the new year have focused on male partners of abortion seekers, who they hope will bring suits for wrongful death. These suits will target not just medical providers like Carpenter but a wide array of actors—including abortion funds, friends, family, websites, internet service providers, and others who help abortion patients find services or information.”
Source: Slate
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