Public health

Public health

Australia recently decided to try something ambitious. Starting late last year, all children under 16 have been banned from having accounts on social-media sites such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Because no country has attempted such a ban before, knowing the effects in advance is impossible-and they may be hard to assess even years after implementation. That said, the long experience of governments trying to restrict young people's access to temptation goods of other kinds-drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, pornography-justifies cautious optimism.

Sue Higgins says her breast cancer diagnosis was a shock and after time off for treatment she was nervous about her return to work. An online programme run by Trinity College Dublin proved an invaluable support system

Parents who shove tablets or phones in their kids' faces. Kids nowadays need to learn how to entertain themselves and regulate their emotions rather than mindlessly scroll at 2 years old. I personally think parents who do this are taking the lazy way out and are just allowing the tablet to parent for them; there is no discussion or creativity taking place. When I was a kid, I always had books, coloring books, sudoku, crosswords, and word searches with me everywhere I went as entertainment, and I think these options are a better alternative.

Dr Susan Gilby took over as chief executive at the Countess of Chester hospital in 2018 after it was rocked by the Lucy Letby case. She was awarded the payout one of the biggest in NHS history last month after a tribunal ruled she had been unfairly dismissed after raising concerns about alleged bullying and harassment by the chair of the hospital board.

The ad begins with a family posing for photos while a fast-moving piano riff plays, reminiscent of the title sequence of the hit HBO show Succession,

The trial is taking place in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, where jury selection started on January 27. It's testing out a new legal theory intended to spur greater regulation of social media platforms like TikTok, Snap, YouTube, and Meta's Facebook and Instagram: Lawyers are gearing up to argue that the companies behind these platforms are designing their sites to be deliberately addictive, resulting in direct personal injury to users, especially children.

New analysis has identified 25 chemicals linked to cancer that the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) still allows in American food production. The findings come from scientists at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, who determined that eight of the chemicals are classified as known human carcinogens and 17 are reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens.

The cartel said it was seizing the store, which would only be allowed to sell online outside the state. That was in early 2022, when vapes were still legal in Mexico, a market worth $1.5 billion. But earlier this month, the country banned the sale - although not the use - of electronic cigarettes. Experts believe organized crime will now consolidate its control over the sale of the devices.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents initially claimed Alberto Castañeda Mondragón had tried to flee while handcuffed and "purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall," according to court documents filed by a lawyer seeking his release. But staff members at Hennepin County Medical Center determined that could not possibly account for the fractures and bleeding throughout the 31-year-old's brain, said three nurses familiar with the case. "It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about," said one of the nurses, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care. "There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall."

Those who apply have to undergo an interview and are then assessed on a number of criteria and they are required to work in Singapore for more than two years. Once named an ambassador, they are then trained to educate about problematic gambling behaviors. They also share crime prevention advisories with the CCIB's guidance and help guide peers towards available support, including casino self-exclusion. The people selected must participate in at least one outreach session at dormitories or recreational centers during their two-year term.

Medical negligence in the NHS keeps harming and killing patients because governments and health service bosses have not acted on 24 years' worth of warnings, MPs have said. In a scathing report published on Friday, the public accounts committee (PAC) excoriates the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England for allowing the cost of mistakes to balloon to 3.6bn a year.

Record numbers of women who were abused and controlled through technology were referred to Refuge's specialist services during the last three months of 2025, including a 62% increase in the most complex cases to total 829 women. There was also a 24% increase in referrals of under-30s. Recent cases included perpetrators using wearable tech such as smartwatches, Oura rings and Fitbits to track and stalk women, disrupting their lives through smart home devices that control lights and heating, and using AI spoofing apps to impersonate people.

I think this is a fairly recognized phenomenon,

It's almost zero - that's phenomenal,

Today's data, from NHSE's latest weekly winter situation report, covers the week ending 25 January. It showed that bed occupancy in English hospitals remains dangerously high, at 94.6%, while more than 14,000 people medically fit to be discharged from hospital were still stuck in beds. On a given day, there were on average 50,368 patients who had been in a hospital bed for seven days or longer, showing problems lie at the 'back door' of hospitals.

New findings on cancer survival rates offer hope for the more than 2 million Americans diagnosed each year. Seven out of 10 Americans diagnosed with cancer now survive five years or more, according to the American Cancer Society, a 7 percent increase since the mid-1990s, when the rate stood at 63 percent. The survival rate data - from patients diagnosed with cancer between 2015 and 2021 - showed, significantly, that those with high-mortality cancers and advanced diagnoses had the largest gains.

Wind chill is a measure of how quickly bodies lose heat when you combine low temperatures with high winds. And wind chill conditions can be dangerous. "The stronger the winds [and] the colder it is, the more likely you are to develop frostbite in a short amount of time or hypothermia," says Jessica Lee of the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center.

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- BART officials say there is a major delay at West Oakland in all directions due to a "major medical emergency" on Friday.

The Vallejo Fire Department have removed hazardous materials, including a five-gallon bucket of methamphetamine, at the Vallejo Inn on Wednesday afternoon. At approximately 1:40 p.m., the department arrived at the venue located at 444 Tennessee Street and found the unidentified hazardous material inside the five-gallon bucket, which warranted a full HazMat response. The property was then evacuated to ensure the safety of occupants and roads were closed off nearby soon after.

Common Sense Media's new report, "Betting on Boys: Understanding Gambling Among Adolescent Boys," finds teen boys are largely exposed to gambling through sports betting and video games "in loot boxes, skin cases, and other reward systems that blur the line between playing and paying." More than a third of the boys surveyed, ages 11-17, admitted to gambling in the past year, with that number rising to nearly half of the 17-year-olds. Additionally, 60% reported seeing ads for gambling on YouTube and social media.

I was considering retiring after I turned 80, but the cost of geriatric care is high. My sister and ex-wife both require care. My sister is in full-time memory care, and my ex-wife has needed more care over the past two years after a dementia diagnosis, so I decided to keep working. I'm trying to help support them, whether it's paying the care facility directly or paying them to provide some support or outside nurses.

including shifting it from late-night to a morning count, in the hope of avoiding the undercounting problem that critics typically point to. As advocate Del Seymour, a member of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board, tells the Chronicle, the morning count, conducted between 5 am and 10 am on Thursday, will hopefully be a more accurate picture, because unhoused individuals tend to hide themselves at night to keep from being robbed, and that could lead to them being missed.

Health authorities in Spain's Basque Country have launched an investigation after expired doses of the childhood hexavalent vaccine were administered to 253 patients, mostly infants. Osakidetza, the Basque public health service responsible for delivering healthcare across the region, began contacting the affected families this week. The issue was detected on January 15, the agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

While life expectancy is growing, the average American can expect to spend nearly 12 years in poor health, and lifestyle diseases including heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes are now leading causes of death, driving unprecedented expense and tremendous strain on individuals and their families. In 2024, 90% of the nation's $4.9 trillion in annual healthcare spending was attributable to chronic and mental health conditions, and projections suggest that by 2030, more than 80 million Americans will live with three or more chronic diseases.

One might ask why an epidemiologist like me would be interested in Latin American history at this moment. What drew me to that era was the key role that clinicians and public health workers played in the resistance against the dictatorship; their simultaneous push for a national healthcare program; and the ways in which this sector organized, even as more conservative physicians sided with the putschists, happy to see their more progressive colleagues jailed and persecuted.