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Stay Well
breaking health news & updates
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Stranded In The ER, Seniors Await Hospital Care And Suffer Avoidable Harm | |
Every day, the scene plays out in hospitals across America: Older men and women lie on gurneys in emergency room corridors moaning or suffering silently as harried medical staff attend to crises.
Even when physicians determine these patients need to be admitted to the hospital, they often wait for hours — sometimes more than a day — in the ER in pain and discomfort, not getting enough food or water, not moving around, not being helped to the bathroom, and not getting the kind of care doctors deem necessary.
“You walk through ER hallways, and they’re lined from end to end with patients on stretchers in various states of distress calling out for help, including a number of older patients,” said Hashem Zikry, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health. KFF Health News Read more
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“The patient who tends to get the better care is usually one that is more vocal and asks informed questions about things based on what they’ve read and based on symptoms that they are feeling.”
Dr. Benita Petri-Pickstone, family physician
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How To Advocate For Yourself At Doctor’s Visits, According To Doctors
With a limited amount of allotted time and a pressing health matter to discuss, a trip to the doctor’s office can sometimes feel like a high-stakes event. Even the most routine visits can leave you feeling dissatisfied if there’s a communication barrier, too many items on the agenda, or a personality clash.
Research shows that people who are able to vocalize their medical needs tend to be happier with their health care experiences and are even more likely to see improvements in symptoms and other important outcomes. So how can patients become better advocates for themselves and help take charge of their health in the process? We asked physicians for their best tips and strategic advice to help ensure your next doctor’s appointment goes as smoothly as possible. Time Read more
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E. Coli Outbreak Linked To Organic Bulk Walnuts Sold In Some Bay Area Stores
At least a dozen people in California and Washington have been sickened with E. coli food poisoning linked to organic walnuts sold in bulk in 19 states, U.S. health officials said Tuesday. Natural food and co-op stores like Whole Foods and Market of Choice sold the nuts. Seven people have been hospitalized and two have developed a dangerous kidney disease known as hemolytic uremic syndrome, officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Gibson Farms Inc. of Hollister, California, has recalled potentially affected walnuts with expiration dates between May 21, 2025, and June 7, 2025, the Food and Drug Administration said. Some stores may have repackaged bulk walnut pieces into clamshells or bags. KQED Read more
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Can AI Accurately Triage ER Patients? UCSF Study Suggests Yes, 89% Of The Time
In one of the first studies to test whether artificial intelligence can help triage real-world emergency room patients, new UCSF research suggests AI could one day help doctors make one of the most critical decisions in medicine: who to give urgent medical care to first. The study, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, found that an AI model can accurately prioritize the sickest patients 89% of the time. Previous studies have examined whether AI models can accurately triage simulated patient scenarios or a small number of patient cases, but this is one of the first studies looking at patient data for thousands of real emergency patients, UCSF said. SF Chronicle Read more
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U.C. Medical School Graduates Take On Central Valley’s Health Care Crisis
Vanessa Mora Molina learned about California’s doctor shortage the hard way. As a kid growing up in Fowler, a farming town of seven thousand people in California’s San Joaquin Valley, she was prone to strep throat. A quick trip to the doctor and a prescription for antibiotics could have had her feeling better in a day or two. But in Fowler, there wasn’t really such a thing as a “quick trip to the doctor”: Mora sometimes waited weeks to get an appointment. “Sometimes we’d go to the emergency room just so we could be seen by a doctor, and even that could entail an eight-hour wait,” Mora said. Her parents were reluctant to ask for time off from their jobs as farm laborers for fear of getting fired. Determined to make life easier for families like hers, Mora started the long journey to a career in medicine. She enrolled in UC San Francisco’s San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education in 2020. University of California Read more
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New COVID Variants Could Mean Possible Summer Surge
Two new COVID-19 variants are circulating, and they have the potential to evade immunity that could lead to a summer surge. The new strains are subvariants of the omicron variant, scientifically known as KP.2 and KP.1.1, but which have been nicknamed “FLiRT” due to the mutations on the strain. The FLiRT strains follow the same pattern as previous mutations, with the virus continuing to change to evade immunity and spread. Here’s what scientists know so far about the latest strains. Early evidence suggests the FLiRT variants may be more contagious and they may be better at infecting those who have immunity from vaccines or prior infection.
Natural and vaccine-induced immunity also fade over time, so people who haven’t kept up with boosters or who had COVID during the early days of the pandemic may also be more at risk. KRON4 Read more
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Study Finds U.S. COVID-19 Vaccine Promotion Campaign Saved 50,000 Lives
The "We Can Do This" COVID-19 public education campaign launched by the White House in 2021 to increase confidence in vaccines succeeded in saving more than 50,000 lives, according to a study published Monday. Researchers from the communications strategy firm Fors Marsh found that the campaign also prevented hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and millions of COVID-19 cases, benefiting the nation to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in less than one year. "Findings suggest that public education campaigns are a cost-effective approach to reducing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality," the authors concluded in the study published in the Journal of Health Communications. UPI Read more
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State/National/International News | | |
Bird Flu Is Bad For Poultry And Dairy Cows. It’s Not A Dire Threat For Most Of Us — Yet
Headlines are flying after the Department of Agriculture confirmed that the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected dairy cows around the country. Tests have detected the virus among cattle in nine states, mainly in Texas and New Mexico, and most recently in Colorado, said Nirav Shah, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at a May 1 event held by the Council on Foreign Relations. A menagerie of other animals have been infected by H5N1, and at least one person in Texas. But what scientists fear most is if the virus were to spread efficiently from person to person. That hasn’t happened and might not. Shah said the CDC considers the H5N1 outbreak “a low risk to the general public at this time.”
KFF Health News Read more
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Some 100,000 "Dreamers" Expected To Sign Up For Obamacare Under New Rule, White House Says
Roughly 100,000 immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children are expected to enroll in the Affordable Care Act's health insurance next year under a new directive the Biden administration released Friday. The move took longer than promised to finalize and fell short of President Biden's initial proposal to allow those migrants to sign up for Medicaid, the health insurance program that provides nearly free coverage for the nation's poorest people. But it will allow thousands of migrants to access lucrative tax breaks when they sign up for coverage after the Affordable Care Act's marketplace enrollment opens Nov. 1, just days ahead of the presidential election. CBS News Read more
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Cancer Supertests Are Here
It takes a certain amount of confidence to call your biotech company Grail. According to its website, the Menlo Park–based firm got its name because its “co-founders believed a simple blood test could be the ‘holy GRAIL’ of cancer detection.” Now the company claims that its “first-of-its-kind” screening tool, called Galleri, “redefines what’s possible.” At the cost of a needle stick and $949, the company can check your blood for more than 50 forms of cancer all at once. The Galleri test, as well as many others of its type that are in development, is meant to sniff out malignant DNA floating in a person’s veins, including bits of tumors that otherwise might not be identified until they’ve spread. The Atlantic Read more
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Our Brains Are Growing. Will That Help Prevent Dementia?
Starting about 3 million years ago, our brains got bigger, helping us master everything from cave painting to particle physics. Now we’re in a modern-day growth spurt. A new study by researchers at UC Davis Health found that the brains of people born in the 1970s had 6.6% larger volumes and almost 15% greater brain surface area than those of people born in the 1930s. “We found that brains got larger with each 10 years,” said neurologist Dr. Charles DeCarli, principal investigator of the study, published in a recent issue of the journal JAMA Neurology. It was based on an analysis of thousands of volunteers in the famed Framingham Heart Study. East Bay Times Read more
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Exercising In Midlife May "Reverse" Years Of Inactivity, Large Study Finds
As the world's aging population grows, and dementia, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis reach epidemic levels, people of all ages want to know how they can live healthier, not just longer, lives. For women in their 40s and 50s, it's not too late to take action. A study that tracked more than 11,000 women in Australia has found that midlife is a crucial time to meet physical activity guidelines of at least 150 minutes a week. Science Alert Read more
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Elevator Or Stairs? Your Choice Could Boost Longevity, Study Finds
At a time when less than half of adults in the U.S. get the recommended amount
of exercise, there is new evidence that climbing stairs can reduce the risk of heart disease and help people live longer.
A new meta-analysis presented at a European Society of Cardiology conference finds that people in the habit of climbing stairs had about a 39% lower likelihood of death from heart disease, compared to those who didn't climb stairs. They also had a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes. NPR Read more
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Affordable Housing Breaks Ground By Lake Merritt After A Decade Of "Twists And Turns"
Relief and excitement reverberated at the groundbreaking for an affordable housing project near Lake Merritt on Tuesday. Nonprofit developer East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, or EBALDC, is beginning construction on a 91-unit building for low-income residents, including 23 apartments reserved for formerly homeless residents. Officials plunged ceremonial shovels into the ground, marking the end of a political rollercoaster and the final outcome for a long-vacant piece of land. “I’m elated,” Oakland City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas told The Oaklandside. “Some of us thought that this day would never come.” Oaklandside Read more
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Did California’s Massive COVID Homeless Shelter Program Work? A New Evaluation Probes The Results
California’s massive effort to shelter homeless residents during the COVID-19 pandemic was a success, according to a new report that says the effort changed the state’s homeless services system for the better. But at the same time, the researchers pointed out a troubling dearth of available data on the program. With the little information they were able to access, they found that people who left the program had at least a 40% chance of returning to homelessness. Project Roomkey, one of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature pandemic initiatives, temporarily moved about 62,000 homeless Californians into hotel rooms in an effort to prevent them from catching COVID. The model, which provided residents with their own private room and bathroom, as well as (in some cases) healthcare and other services, was a world apart from traditional shelters where dozens of people sleep together in a room and services are limited. CalMatters Read more
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Antioch Mental Health Crisis Team Touts Positive Results, No In-Custody Deaths After 1 Year
Across the Bay Area, communities are looking for ways to deal with mental health crises without involving police. Antioch created it's own private crisis response team, and after 12 months the city's mayor says results have been positive. It's been exactly one year since the city of Antioch launched its "Community Response Team." While it may be difficult to measure success on such a thing, the numbers are looking good. One number stands out from the rest. Zero. That's how many people have died while in police custody since the community response team was created. Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe said that's exactly the result he was hoping for. "The first month of my time as mayor of city of Antioch, I had an in-custody death that led to this. A month after that we had another in-custody death. And so, we haven't had an in-custody death since we launched this," Hernandez-Thorpe said. "That's a mark of success for me." CBS News Read more
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3 In 4 Americans Feel That Mental Health Takes A Back Seat To Physical Health
Even though one in five Americans lives with a mental illness, many feel it is not adequately addressed, with a new survey from West Health and Gallup suggesting that three in four Americans believe mental health conditions are not identified and treated in the same way as physical health conditions. Roughly 60% of Americans give a poor or failing grade to how mental health conditions are treated, according to the survey. “The magnitude [of the problem] really surprised me,” said Tim Lash, President of West Health. He states that the U.S. is not just underperforming - it is failing on a systemic level and in terms of the number of people with unmet needs. ABC News Read more
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Here’s What Sociologists Want You To Know About Teen Suicide
Between 2000 and 2015 in an affluent, predominately white community in the US, 19 young people died by suicide through what’s known as suicide clusters. These clusters refer to an unusually high rate of suicide for a community over a short period of time, often at least two deaths and one suicide attempt, or three deaths. Suicide clusters are an extreme example of youth mental health struggles — an issue that’s been getting more attention since the pandemic and one that’s at the center of an increasingly charged national conversation around social media and phones. Anna Mueller, a sociologist at Indiana University Bloomington, and Seth Abrutyn, a sociologist at the University of British Columbia, recently published Life Under Pressure: The Social Roots of Youth Suicide and What to Do About Them, which explores why these clusters happened and how to prevent more. The researchers embedded themselves within the community (which goes by the pseudonym Poplar Grove) to understand the social conditions that preceded and followed the teenagers’ deaths. Vox Read more
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Fentanyl Crisis/Drug Trends | | |
Nearly 100,000 Children In The U.S. Lost A Parent To A Drug Overdose Or Gun Violence In 2020, Study Finds
Deaths from drug overdoses and firearm-related injuries have reached record levels in the United States in recent years, and it’s created a “double burden” for children who face an increased risk of losing their parents and of dying themselves, according to the authors of a new study. Overall, more than 1 million children have lost a parent to a fatal drug overdose or gun violence over the past two decades, according to the study, published Saturday in the medical journal JAMA – and the burden has increased significantly over time. Nearly 100,000 children lost parents to a drug overdose or gun violence in 2020 alone – almost three times more than in 1999, the study found. These two causes of death accounted for 23% of all parental loss in 2020, nearly double the share from 1999. CNN Read more
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As the U.S. Moves To Reclassify Marijuana As Less Dangerous, Could More States Legalize It?
As the U.S. government moves toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug, there may be little immediate impact in the dozen states that have not already legalized cannabis for widespread medical or recreational use by adults. But advocates for marijuana legalization hope a federal regulatory shift could eventually change the minds — and votes — of some state policymakers who have been reluctant to embrace weed. “It is very common for a state legislator to tell me, ‘Well, I might be able to support this, but … I’m not going to vote for something that’s illegal under federal law,’” said Matthew Schweich, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates for cannabis legalization. PBS Read more
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About Eden Health District | | |
The Eden Health District Board of Directors are Chair Pam Russo, Vice Chair Ed Hernandez, Secretary/Treasurer Roxann Lewis, Mariellen Faria and Surlene Grant. The Chief Executive Officer is Mark Friedman.
The Eden Health District is committed to ensuring that policy makers and community members receive accurate and timely information to help make the best policy and personal choices to meet and overcome the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other health issues.
We welcome your feedback on our bulletin. Please contact editor Lisa Mahoney.
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