Tag: Association of American Medical Colleges

US affirmative action ruling may harm health equity

 8 July 2023
Volume 402, Issue 10396 

WORLD REPORT  Health and science groups warn the Supreme Court s decision threatens workforce diversity and patient care. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.

Leading medical and scientific organisations have criticised the June 29 US Supreme Court decision severely limiting how colleges and universities consider an applicant’s race in the admissions process. A 6 to 3 majority abandoned 45 years of legal precedent protecting affirmative action, which is widely expected not only to reduce the number of Black and Latinx college students but also roll back their representation in medicine, law, science, and other postgraduate programmes, diversity advocates say.  [Continued here.] 

US plan to shield science from “inappropriate influence”

Volume 401, Issue 10375
11 February 2023 

 

WORLD REPORT  The Biden administration is launching a new initiative on scientific integrity in federal agencies following multiple lapses. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.

Just a week after Joe Biden was sworn in as president in January, 2021, he created a multi-agency Task Force on Scientific Integrity to restore “trust in government through scientific integrity and evidence-based policy making”…Last month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released A Framework for Federal Scientific Integrity and Practice, a follow-up to the task force’s 2022 recommendations that provides a blueprint for implementation. [Continued here.] 

$6·5 billion proposed for new US health research agency

Volume 397, Issue 10288
22 May 2021

WORLD REPORT The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health would fund high-risk, high-reward medical research, but its short-term planning could stymie basic research. Susan Jaffe reports.

During his first address to a joint session of Congress last month, US President Joe Biden drew little applause from Republicans in the physically distanced, masked audience. A rare exception to their steadfast silence came when he unveiled an ambitious plan to eradicate cancer.

To help reach this goal, Biden would establish a new biomedical research agency within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The agency would provide a fast track for transforming basic science into real-world applications. [Continued here.]

 …

Home Health Care Providers Struggle With State Laws And Medicare Rules As Demand Rises

“We can send prescriptions to the pharmacy, including [for] narcotics,” says Marie Grosh, a geriatric advanced practice nurse practitioner and the owner of a medical house calls practice in a Cleveland suburb. “We can order lab work, x-rays, ultrasounds, EKGs [electrocardiagrams]; interpret them; and treat patients based on that. But we’re just not allowed to order home care—which is absurd.”

By SUSAN JAFFE  | Health Affairs | June 2019 | Volume 38, Number 8

When Christine Williams began working as a nurse practitioner some forty years ago in Detroit, Michigan, older adults who couldn’t manage on their own and had no family nearby and no doctor willing to make house calls had few options besides  winding up in a nursing home.

Not anymore.

Home check: Nurse practitioner Marie Grosh visits Leroy Zacharias at his home in a Cleveland suburb, He has Parkinson disease, and Grosh says he would be living in a nursing home if he couldn’t get medical care at home. (Photo by Lynn Ischay.)

“The move towards keeping seniors in their homes is a fast-galloping horse here,” says Williams, who settled in Cleveland, Ohio, more than a decade ago. “We don’t have space for them in long-term care [facilities], they don’t want to be in long-term care, and states don’t want to pay for long-term care. And everybody wants to live at home.”

But despite the growing desire for in-home medical care for older adults from nearly all quarters, seniors’ advocates and home health professionals claim that rules set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)  along with  state regulations have created an obstacle course for the very providers best positioned—and sometimes the only option—to offer that care.  [Continued here

Alex Azar’s controversial qualifications

Susan Jaffe | Washington Correspondent for The Lancet | 27th December 2017

When President Donald Trump nominated Alex Azar last month to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), supporters said his experience working in government and the pharmaceutical industry more than qualified him for the job. … the-lancet-usa-blog-logo1But critics say Azar has the wrong kind of experience. When he appeared before Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) last month, the committee’s senior Democrat Patty Murray of Washington said if Azar runs HHS then “the fox is guarding the hen house.” [Continued here]

End in sight for revision of US medical research rules

lancet cover 2Volume 386, Number  10000 
26 September 2015
WORLD REPORT   End in sight for revision of US medical research rules US health officials expect to update 25-year-old regulations on human participation in research by the end of next year.  Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.Lancet photo 092615
After proposing massive changes 4 years ago to rules first issued in 1991 protecting people participating  in research studies, federal health officials produced yet another revision earlier this month and say the effort to update the rules is on a fast track.
The revolution in science, technology, medicine, and public involvement that has transformed biomedical research over the past 25 years might be sufficient reason for the latest update, a daunting task that began in 2009, shortly after Barack Obama became president. But now there’s another factor driving the effort. [Continued  here]