College campuses are at risk of becoming COVID-19 superspreaders for their entire county, according to a new vast study which shows the striking danger of the first two weeks of school in particular. Looking at 30 campuses across the nation with the highest amount of reported cases, experts saw that over half of the institutions...
Health
Feeling Left Out: Private Practice Doctors, Patients Wonder When It’s Their Turn for Vaccine
Dr. Andrew Carroll — a family doctor in Chandler, Arizona — wants to help his patients get immunized against covid, so he paid more than $4,000 to buy an ultra-low-temperature freezer from eBay needed to store the Pfizer vaccine. But he’s not sure he’ll get a chance to use it, given health officials have so...
Hospitals’ Rocky Rollout of Covid Vaccine Sparks Questions of Fairness
Last week, after finishing inoculations of some front-line hospital staff, Jupiter Medical Center was left with 40 doses of precious covid vaccine. So, officials offered shots to the South Florida hospital’s board of directors and their spouses over age 65. But that decision sparked outrage among workers left unvaccinated, including those at one of the...
Latina Mothers, Often Essential Workers, Report COVID-19 Took Toll
More than half of Latina mothers surveyed in Yolo and Sacramento counties reported making economic cutbacks in response to the pandemic shutdown last spring — saying they bought less food and missed rent payments. Even for mothers who reported receiving the federal stimulus payment during this time, these hardships were not reduced, University of California,...
COVID Forced Psychiatric Care Online. Many Patients Want It to Stay There, Study Finds
A year ago, trying to find patients who would agree to see their University of Michigan mental health provider through a video screen felt like pulling teeth. Only 26 video visits with a few early-adopters had happened in nearly six months, compared with more than 30,000 in-person visits. But Jennifer Severe, M.D., one of the...
U.S. Mental Health System Needs Broad Changes to Improve Access and Quality
Conditions are ripe for transforming the U.S. mental health care system, with scientific advances, the growth of Medicaid and political consensus on the importance of improving mental health creating the possibility that goals once thought out of reach may be possible, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Broad changes will be needed to improve...
Marijuana Use Typically Drops at the Beginning of the Year, Then Climbs in Summer and Fall
Marijuana use increases throughout the calendar year, with use up 13 percent on average at the end of each year (2015-2019) compared to the beginning, according to a new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. “We found that marijuana use is consistently higher among those surveyed later in the year, peaking during...
Study Finds New Evidence of Health Threat from Chemicals in Marijuana and Tobacco Smoke
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have uncovered new evidence of the potential health risks of chemicals in tobacco and marijuana smoke. In a study published online today by EClinicalMedicine, the researchers report that people who smoked only marijuana had several smoke-related toxic chemicals in their blood and urine,...
A Third of U.S. Families Face a Different Kind of Poverty
Before the pandemic, one-third of U.S. households with children were already “net worth poor,” lacking enough financial resources to sustain their families for three months at a poverty level, finds new research from Duke University. In 2019, 57 percent of Black families and 50 percent of Latino families with children were poor in terms of...
Noncognitive Skills — Distinct from Cognitive Abilities — Are Important to Success Across the Life
Noncognitive skills and cognitive abilities are both important contributors to educational attainment — the number of years of formal schooling that a person completes — and lead to success across the life course, according to a new study from an international team led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the University...