By Leah Pierson
Clinicians across medical settings commonly euphemize or understate pain — a practice that has concerning implications for patient trust, consent, and care quality.
Intrauterine device (IUD) placement offers an instructive case study, and highlights the need for transparency in describing painful medical procedures.
By Jack Becker
Distracted driving is deadly.
In 2019, 8.7% of all motor vehicle traffic fatalities involved a distracted driver, totaling 3,142 fatalities. And hundreds of thousands more are injured due to distracted drivers each year.
So, what are the solutions? Anti-drunk driving initiatives may provide some valuable insights.
The share of motor vehicle fatalities involving alcohol impairment has declined from 41% in 1985 to 28% in 2019.
Much of this decrease is attributable to laws and law enforcement. When the FY 2001 Transportation Appropriations bill included a provision setting the national impaired driving standard at .08 BAC, it was touted as saving an estimated 500 lives per year. Every state has some form of drunk driving law, and 38 states have open container laws, and these laws seem to impact fatalities.
By Leah Pierson
In my junior year of college, my pre-medical advisor instructed me to take time off after graduating and before applying to medical school.
I was caught off guard.
At 21, it had already occurred to me that completing four years of medical school, at least three years of residency, several more years of fellowship, and a PhD, would impact my ability to start a family.
I was wary of letting my training expand even further, but this worry felt so vague and distant that I feared expressing it would signal a lack of commitment to my career.
I now see that this worry was well-founded: the length of medical training unnecessarily compromises trainees’ ability to balance their careers with starting families.
We are so excited to welcome a new group of Student Fellows to the Petrie-Flom Center family. These six students are a fantastic cohort of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics scholars who join us from across Harvard.
They each will undertake a year-long research project with mentorship from Center faculty and affiliates, and also will blog here at Bill of Health regularly. Keep an eye out for their bylines!
What do a MacArthur Genius award winner, several health law professors at top schools, executive directors of leading health law centers, an associate chief counsel of the FDA, and partners and associates at top health care law firms all have in common? The Petrie-Flom Center Student Fellowship!
The Petrie-Flom Center Student Fellowship is a competitive one-year program designed to support Harvard graduate students interested in pursuing independent scholarly projects related to health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics.
By Vrushab Gowda
On September 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the establishment of a new initiative to regulate digital health products – the Digital Health Center of Excellence (DHCoE).
In some ways, the announcement does not come as a surprise; FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn’s predecessor, Scott Gottlieb, outlined the DHCoE in a press release two years ago. What does remain to be seen is whether DHCoE represents a true paradigm shift in FDA’s approach to regulating digital health products.
According to Hahn, the DHCoE aims to (1) build partnerships, (2) share knowledge across FDA and with stakeholders, and (3) innovate regulatory approaches. It will be led by the current Director of CDRH’s Division of Digital Health, Bakul Patel.
By Abe Sutton
Surprise medical billing has emerged as a top political priority amid a torrent of complaints about expensive balance billing.
Despite leaders such as President Trump, former Vice President Biden, and members of the 116th Congress pledging to address surprise medical billing, federal legislation is unlikely, due to powerful health associations’ divergent interests. To shake legislation loose, the President would need to publicly take a side and expend political capital on a creative solution.
In this piece, I walk through why federal legislative action has been stymied to date, and what it would take to get surprise medical billing legislation over the line.
We are so excited to welcome a new group of Student Fellows to the Petrie-Flom Center family. These six students are a fantastic cohort of health law policy, biotechnology, and bioethics scholars who join us from Harvard Law School and the HMS Center for Bioethics. While we cannot physically welcome our fellows this year, we are excited to provide them with a robust virtual fellowship.
They each will undertake a year-long research project with mentorship from Center faculty and affiliates, and also will blog here at Bill of Health regularly. Keep an eye out for their bylines!
By Beatrice Brown, Jane Cooper, and Danielle Pacia
Due to the Bill of Health production schedule, this piece is being published two weeks after it was written, on May 20th, 2020. The authors would like to affirm the importance of protests against anti-Black racism in America.
Stay-at-home orders—the primary means of managing the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.—face increasing opposition as protestors against these public health measures clamor for a “return to normal.” In Wisconsin, pushback against stay-at-home orders culminated in the state Supreme Court’s decision on May 13 to reverse the state’s “Safer at Home” policy.
Republican leaders of the state legislature filed suit against state Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm and other health officials, resulting in the case Wisconsin Legislature v. Palm. In a 4-3 ruling, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that the “Safer at Home” order was “unlawful” and “unenforceable.” Read More
By Beatrice Brown
Several states, including Texas, Ohio, and Alabama, have dangerously and incorrectly deemed abortions a non-essential or elective procedure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The stated reason for these orders is to conserve personal protective equipment (PPE), a scarce, important resource for protecting health care workers treating COVID-19 patients.
However, these policies restricting abortion are unlikely to conserve PPE, and more importantly, they mischaracterize the nature and importance of abortions.