Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
How Do You Live With Cancer When Its Recurrence Is A 'When' Instead Of An 'If'?
Adam and Whitney Hayden waited for the doctor, both sitting with their right legs crossed over their left. They fidgeted their feet. They flicked them, bounced them, circled them. Whitney, 38, twisted a ring on her right hand. Adam, 36, locked his fingers around his cane. Every so often, he ran a hand over the scar on his head, where the baseball-sized tumor was pulled out two years ago. They waited to find out if today was the day they would learn that the cancer had started growing again.鈥淚t鈥檚 a slow-motion freight train coming toward me,鈥 Adam said as Whitney drove them to the appointment. (Joseph, 9/5)
New children's concussion guidelines from the U.S. government recommend against routine X-rays and blood tests for diagnosis and reassure parents that most kids' symptoms clear up within one to three months. Signs of potentially more serious injuries that may warrant CT imaging scans include vomiting, unconsciousness and severe, worsening headaches, according to the guidelines released Tuesday. (Tanner, 9/4)
As deaths of new and expectant moms multiplied in the United States, the picture in California and the rest of the developed world has veered in the opposite direction. ...A study out Tuesday in the journal Health Affairs, by the Stanford University medical team that started the initiative, seeks to explain why. (Veklerov, 9/4)
A few months ago, my biggest sources of anxiety were politics, my finances, and whether I鈥檇 make my next work deadline. Then one afternoon my mother called to tell me she had leukemia. Suddenly, my fear went beyond the kind that鈥檚 inevitable when you have aging parents, to a more urgent worry about her current state of health and well-being. (Yuko, 9/4)
Playing tennis and other sports that are social might add years to your life, according to a new epidemiological study of Danish men and women. The study found that adults who reported frequently participating in tennis or other racket and team sports lived longer than people who were sedentary. But they also lived longer than people who took part in reliably healthy but often solitary activities such as jogging, swimming and cycling. (Reynolds, 9/5)
More than a quarter of the world's adults - or 1.4 billion people - take too little exercise, putting them at higher risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia and cancers, according to a World Health Organization-led study. In 2016, around one in three women and one in four men worldwide were not reaching the recommended levels of physical activity to stay healthy 鈥 at least 150 minutes of moderate, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. (Kelland, 9/4)
Most U.S. and Canadian fraternities have one year to ban vodka, tequila and other hard alcohol under a rule adopted during the recent annual meeting of their trade association, the group announced Tuesday. In "a near-unanimous vote" on Aug. 27, the 66 international and national men's fraternities of the North-American Interfraternity Conference adopted the rule prohibiting hard alcohol with more than 15 percent alcohol by volume from fraternity chapters and events unless served by licensed third-party vendors, the group said. The member fraternities have until Sept. 1, 2019, to implement the rule across their more than 6,100 chapters on 800 campuses. (9/4)
About 30 more people have been sickened by a salmonella outbreak that forced Kellogg Co. (K) to recall more than 11 million boxes of Honey Smacks cereal, health officials said Tuesday. That brings the total to 130 people believed to have been infected in 36 states since March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. (Armental, 9/5)
