How mothers supporting mothers can help fill the health care worker shortage gap and other barriers to care
By: Sona Dimidjian, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder, Anahi Collado, Assistant Research Professor of Psychology, University of Colorado Boulder For generations, women have relied on informal networks of friends, family and neighbors to navigate the complexities of birth and motherhood. Today, research is finally catching up to what generations of women […]
Employers are failing to insure the working class – Medicaid cuts will leave them even more vulnerable
By: Sumit Agarwal, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.8 million Americans across the U.S. will lose their coverage through Medicaid – the public program that provides health insurance to low-income families and individuals – under the multitrillion-dollar domestic policy package that President Donald Trump signed into law on […]
Chatbots can help clinicians become better communicators, and this could boost vaccine uptake
By: Reshma Ramachandran, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Yale University Mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services are continuing as the agency makes good on its intention, announced on March 27, 2025, to shrink its workforce by 20,000 people. Among workers dismissed in early April were several teams responsible for fulfilling requests for […]
The sudden dismissal of public records staff at health agencies threatens government accountability
By: Reshma Ramachandran, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Yale University Mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services are continuing as the agency makes good on its intention, announced on March 27, 2025, to shrink its workforce by 20,000 people. Among workers dismissed in early April were several teams responsible for fulfilling requests for […]
23andMe is potentially selling more than just genetic data – the personal survey info it collected is just as much a privacy problem
By: Kayte Spector-Bagdady, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Michigan As soon as the genetic testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy on March 23, 2025, concerns about what would happen to the personal information contained in its massive genetic and health information database were swift and widespread. A few days after, a U.S. judge ruled […]
Lowering the cost of insurance in Colorado – a new analysis of the Peak Health Alliance
By: Mark Meiselbach, Assistant Professor of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University and Matthew Eisenberg, Associate Professor of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University A community-led partnership in Colorado designed to negotiate health care prices lowered health care premiums in 2020 and 2021, we find in our new paper in the Journal of Risk and Insurance. The nonprofit […]
From anecdotes to AI tools, how doctors make medical decisions is evolving with technology
By: Aaron J. Masino, Associate Professor of Computing, Clemson University The practice of medicine has undergone an incredible, albeit incomplete, transformation over the past 50 years, moving steadily from a field informed primarily by expert opinion and the anecdotal experience of individual clinicians toward a formal scientific discipline. The advent of evidence-based medicine meant clinicians identified the […]
Some people love to scare themselves in an already scary world − here’s the psychology of why
By: Sarah Kollat, Teaching Professor of Psychology, Penn State Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles with (chainless) chain saws as we […]
Preventive care is free by law, but many Americans get incorrectly billed − especially if you’re poor, a person of color or don’t have a college degree
By: Alex Hoagland, Assistant Professor of Health Economics, University of Toronto and Michal Horný, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, UMass Amherst Even though preventive care is supposed to be free by law for millions of Americans thanks to the Affordable Care Act, many don’t receive recommended preventive services, especially racial and ethnic minorities and other at-risk patient […]