Health Care Research
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Lake County News,California – For struggling older adults, support from paid peers may alleviate loneliness, depression
An initiative that paired paid visitors with racially diverse older adults, many of whom lived alone and struggled with taking care of their basic needs, resulted in reduced loneliness and plunging rates of depression. In a study led by UC San Francisco, researchers matched the visitors with 74 participants, ages 59 to 96, from the Tenderloin, a low-income neighborhood in downtown San Francisco. The participants had “histories of isolation,” some had faced periods of homelessness, and all were consumers of the city’s public mental health services. The eight peers, who were also older adults, had undergone two weeks of training … Read more
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Health system merger demands close scrutiny
Linda Katz, policy director of the Economic Progress Institute and chairperson of the Protect Our Healthcare Coalition, and Brenda Clement, director of HousingWorksRI, serve as their organizations’ representatives on the Protect Our Healthcare Coalition. Marjorie L. Waters, community organizer with the Rhode Island Organizing Project, contributed to this commentary. The proposed Lifespan and Care New England merger provides a tremendous opportunity for Rhode Islanders to examine and reshape health and health care in our state. However, to achieve positive change with improvements in health, equity, access, and quality we must include diverse voices and put the public’s health — and … Read more
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Research Integrity and Scholarly Excellence Lecture Series features health policy and medical decision-making expert | VTx
The Division of Scholarly Integrity and Research Compliance in the Office for Research and Innovation is hosting its fall lecture in the Research Integrity and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) Lecture Series: Reproducibility and Replicability in Science on Sept. 16 at noon. This year marks the second year of the RISE Lecture Series. Invited guest speaker Harvey V. Fineberg, president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, will discuss the importance of reproducibility and replicability in science. Fineberg, former president of the National Academy of Medicine, chaired the National Academies committee on this topic, which resulted in a widely referenced report … Read more
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Autoimmune diseases may be rising for 9/11 survivors. But the government hasn’t acknowledged a link.
Since then, six petitions to the World Trade Center Health Program have asked to add autoimmune diseases to the list, but federal health officials have denied all of them for insufficient evidence, most recently in 2017. A spokesperson for the health program, which is run by a division of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health, said in a statement that previous petitions to add autoimmune diseases to the list of covered conditions haven’t met the “threshold of being substantially likely to be causally associated with 9/11 exposures.” Wilkenfeld said: … Read more
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Black Opioid Overdose Deaths Are Increasing Faster Than Whites, Study Finds : Shots
New research shows racial disparities in opioid overdose rates, with the rate of deaths among Black people growing faster than in other groups. The researchers are calling for expanding access to drug treatment and to education on how to prevent overdoses using the antidote drug, naloxone. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Spencer Platt/Getty Images New research shows racial disparities in opioid overdose rates, with the rate of deaths among Black people growing faster than in other groups. The researchers are calling for expanding access to drug treatment and to education on how to prevent overdoses using the antidote … Read more
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Uneven Healthcare Access Stresses DACA Families, Study Finds
During four decades of caring for the children of immigrants who live in the U.S. without legal permission, Stanford pediatrician Fernando Mendoza, MD, often had to ask the parents of his patients a painful question: “Have you talked to your kids about what happens if you get picked up by immigration enforcement?” “That should not be a discussion a pediatrician needs to have in a routine check-up,” said Mendoza. Yet, he wanted to ensure that his patients knew who would look after them if their parents were detained or deported. “It was heartbreaking, but at the same time it … Read more
