Public health

Public health

The hidden cost behind newly cleaned streets is an increase in health risks. People lose vital medical devices-wheelchairs, canes, and oxygen tanks. Many end up farther from the clinics and treatment programs they rely on. That can mean missed appointments, lapsed prescriptions, or untreated wounds - crises that drive people to the emergency room. For people using illicit drugs, it can mean losing contact with street medicine teams-or using alone, which is especially dangerous when trusted friends aren't nearby to administer Narcan.

"The new ACIP members bring a wealth of real-world public health experience to the job of making immunization recommendations," said Jim O'Neill, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Acting Director of the CDC in a media statement. "We are grateful for their service in helping restore the public confidence in vaccines that was lost during the Biden era."

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to questions seeking details to a newly posted agenda. But some public health experts are worried that the votes will at a minimum raise unwarranted new questions about vaccines in the minds of parents. Perhaps even more consequential would be a vote that restricts a government program from paying for vaccines for low-income families.

The shift comes as California state officials and mainstream medical organizations are breaking from the Trump administration's recent revisions to federal vaccine guidelines. The changes, made under the leadership of vaccine-skeptic Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have been so dramatic that a number of medical experts and officials now express little to no confidence in two key agencies within that department - the CDC and Food and Drug Administration.

Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist who is a senior fellow at the Independent Medical Alliance (formerly Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance), which promotes misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and touts unproven and dubious COVID-19 treatments. Those include the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the de-worming drug ivermectin, and various concoctions of vitamins and other drugs. Milhoan has stated that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines should be removed from the market, telling KFF in March: "We should stop it and test it more before we move forward."

Noel Williamson from Meath is encouraging others to get their hearts checked

The makings of a midnight mouse snack were left in the middle of the living room floor of our vacation rental in Lake Tahoe: shredded paper and bits of granola, taken from an open backpack. The evidence was enough to lead some of my family to believe we weren't the only ones in the house. I'd seen similar rodent leftovers before, and my mind was made up.

Parents are worried not just about getting food on the table, but whether that food is good for their kids. That's partly why Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again campaign resonates with so many people: If the American food supply can be purged of its unhealthiest elements, surely it will be easier for parents to feel good about feeding their children. But instead, MAHA may be piling on the stress.

The football-style table has been brought back after they were scrapped by the government 15 years ago, with the purpose of beginning a 'new era of transparency and accountability in the NHS' and to 'drive up standards'. Each trust has been assessed on 30 different metrics, including ambulance wait times, finances, A&E wait times, cancer treatment and waits for diagnostic tests - the lower their score, the better their performance.

The triatomine insect, commonly known as the "kissing bug," has been linked to Chagas disease, a potentially severe illness gaining attention due to increasing cases in the U.S. Understanding where these bugs thrive, how to prevent infestations, and what to do if exposed is crucial for homeowners. The CDC reports show the spread of kissing bugs and Chagas disease, with the disease becoming endemic in certain states due to environmental changes and migration patterns.

It never once mentioned substance usage. Specifically: nicotine.

Mexico is one of the world's top consumers of sugary drinks, with Mexicans consuming on average 166 litres of soda per year. This has had a devastating impact on the country's health: one in three Mexican children are overweight or obese while, at 100,000 deaths a year, diabetes is the nation's second-leading cause of death. 'It's deadlier than the drugs trade,' said Viri Rios, a Mexican public policy analyst.

The tour is the only park-authorized commercial operator and offers a respectful, accurate and personal perspective of Kalaupapa's history,

It got worse, she says, when she tried to leave. "You just don't know if you can sustain living that way," said Dosanjh, who then chose to get an order of protection against her then-husband. The toll on her health started to show. "I had abnormal stress tests," Dosanjh said. "I had to have a cardiac catheterization." And she's not alone according to a study released last month by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

When I walk into the emergency ward of al-Shifa Hospital, I feel like I am back in October 2023, when the shocking number of wounded and dead brought in would overwhelm us every day. I see daily dozens of children, elderly, women and men rushed into the hospital with horrific injuries; many would be missing a limb or an eye.

This isn't just about bureaucratic language. These amendments directly impact your right to privacy, freedom of movement, and control over your personal health decisions. The updated rules include vague but far-reaching terms that would allow the WHO to interfere with national emergency response measures, compel governments to implement digital health surveillance tools, and facilitate narrative control under the guise of risk communication.

In 2022, the medical establishment and public health world nixed the name "monkeypox" for two key reasons. Animal-to-human transmission comes from rodents. And the name "monkeypox" was seen as racist and stigmatizing language. To replace it, World Health Organization (WHO) officials decided to call the disease that causes painful lesions "mpox." Now, the U.S. is reverting to the old term "monkeypox."

Kaiser Permanente, the largest private health insurer in California, has announced it will make Covid-19 vaccinations available for free to all of its members over 6 months of age. The provider expects to have the new 2025-2026 vaccine in stock starting on September 15. The decision, the insurer said in a statement to The Oaklandside, "is based on the latest scientific evidence and clinical guidance from our physician experts and many other sources, including leading medical societies."

Daily walking - even at a leisurely pace - significantly lowers the risk of chronic back pain. The study confirms that volume of walking is more important than intensity. Credit: Shutterstock A major study has investigated the relationship between walking and the risk of developing chronic lower back problems. The findings could save the healthcare system significant amounts of money while also alleviating many people's back pain - if we just follow the simple advice provided.

"Online pharmacies are advertising drugs with only upsides mentioned, contributing to America's culture of overreliance on pharmaceuticals for health," Makary wrote in a JAMA Network Open article focused on how the agency is overdue for a "crackdown on misleading pharmaceutical advertisements."

Amid the uncertainty surrounding eligibility for and access to the latest Covid-19 vaccine, a new study has found that a common nasal spray could help prevent infection. This randomized placebo-controlled trial examined the effectiveness of the nasal spray azelastine in preventing Covid-19 infection, as published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on September 2. Researchers concluded that the chance of developing Covid-19 was about three times lower in the azelastine group compared with the placebo group.

The evidence from this study can help clinical practices justify and move forward with offering remote pain coping skills training that is based on recommended cognitive behavioral therapy interventions. We hope to see that more people with chronic pain will have access to pain coping skills training in the future, and perhaps a choice of whether they would like to complete it on their own, at home, or by phone or video conference with a health coach,

Winning attention and establishing authority as a brand is about ensuring your brand resonates with the algorithms that power large language models (LLMs)-the backbone of generative AI (GenAI) engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot or DeepSeek. A Forrester Buyers' Journey Survey revealed that a vast majority of B2B buyers have begun using GenAI- as many as 89%. This once-emergent technology is quickly becoming mainstream, being utilized at every stage of the buying process.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

Four unnamed sources close to the situation told the Post that Trump administration health officials appear to be using information from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) to make the claim that COVID-19 vaccines have killed children. VAERS is a system in which anyone can report anything they think is an adverse event related to a vaccination.

When I did eventually get the test, I found out what was really happening to me. I learned that a build-up of earwax ( don't use Q-tips!) had immobilized one of my eardrums completely. After the somewhat uncomfortable removal, the test was rerun. I do have some hearing loss, which isn't unusual at 72, but the audiologist feels I'm years away from needing hearing aids.

When it comes to healthcare, these conversations have a real impact: helping people make better decisions, build deeper understanding, and find meaningful support from their trusted communities. In fact, every minute, a user makes 1 post in Reddit's wellness communities asking for a recommendation.

As an assemblymember representing the west side of Manhattan and the CEO of one of the city's largest homeless services organizations, we grapple with this complexity daily-how mental health and substance use disorders often interact to push stable housing further out of reach, creating a vicious cycle that plays out in our streets and subways. Project Renewal has quietly developed and tested occupational therapy programs that address the daily living skills essential for housing stability, from medication management to emotional regulation and job interview preparation.

The CDC just launched a campaign, "Free Mind," to teach youth about the connections between substance use and mental health. Allison Arwady, MD, MPH, director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention, said, "The goal is to prevent drug overdose by addressing this connection." Education for prevention campaigns and ads work best when integrated with cessation or help resources like quitlines or treatment finders.

Using data collected from calls made to U.S. poison centers, researchers found that there were over 1.5 million substance exposures reported in kids ages 6 to 12 from 2000 to 2023. Almost half of the exposures in this study were associated with therapeutic errors - think, the child took two doses of a medication by accident or was given it twice by parents who hadn't realized the other had already done so.