Tag: health disparities

Oxygen mask as part of artificial lungs ventilation machine in surgery room, closeup.

Pandemic Highlights Need for Quality and Equity in End-of-Life Care

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Elizabeth Clayborne

I was a little less than six months pregnant when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. As an Emergency Physician, I am well aware of additional risks that my job often exposes me to on a daily basis. We frequently face physical and emotional strife from unstable psychiatric patients, critically ill nursing home residents, sexual assault victims, and newly diagnosed cancer patients.

People who work in an emergency department tend to understand what comes with the territory: a lot of hard work, unexpected outcomes, and daily traverses of the human experience, from the best emotions you can imagine, to lowest depths of human despair. This is what accompanies caring for every ailment for people from all walks of life. I actually love this part about my job! I never know what I’m going to see when I walk through the doors.

That said, being a frontline physician during COVID-19 has provided me with a profoundly different lens on the pressures surrounding health care workers. And experiencing this while pregnant was pretty terrifying.

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Grocery store.

How Restrictions on SNAP Harm Health

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Molly Prothero

One of President Biden’s earliest actions in office was to sign an executive order asking Congress and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to expand the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

President Biden proposed that Congress extend the 15% SNAP benefit increase, originally passed in late December. Biden’s executive order also directed the USDA to issue new guidance documents enabling states to increase SNAP allotments in emergency situations and update the Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for determining SNAP benefits, to better reflect the cost of a nutritious diet today.

President Biden’s actions stand in sharp contrast to Trump, who sought to limit the reach of SNAP benefits during his time in office. In December 2019, Trump’s USDA issued a final rule restricting SNAP eligibility for unemployed adults without dependents.

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Gavel and a house on a white background. Concept art for eviction.

Why Biden’s Extension of the Eviction Moratorium Isn’t Enough

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Molly Prothero

On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed an executive order calling on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to extend its federal eviction moratorium through March 2021.

But this action protects only a subset of tenants who meet specific qualifications and, crucially, know to fill out a CDC Affidavit and submit it to their landlords. And despite skyrocketing COVID-19 case counts, most state eviction moratoriums have now lifted, leaving tenants vulnerable to displacement and homelessness.

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Doctor or surgeon with organ transport after organ donation for surgery in front of the clinic in protective clothing.

How to Encourage Organ Donation

James W. Lytle Leave a comment

By James W. Lytle

Last week, Bill of Health published a Q&A with Phil Walton, the Project Lead for Deemed Consent Legislation with the National Health Service Blood and Transplant Division, and Alexandra Glazier, the President/CEO of the New England Donor Services.

In the first part of this conversation, Walton and Glazier described the various frameworks undergirding organ donor registries in their home countries. Walton detailed the “deemed consent” or “opt-out” registry employed by Wales and England, while Glazier detailed the opt-in, prompted choice framework in the U.S.

In this second installment, Walton and Glazier discuss strategies to encourage organ donation, regardless of the opt-in or opt-out framework. The conversation also touched on health disparities and strategies to address them.

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Sign that reads "Racism is a pandemic too."

Editor’s Choice: Important Reads on Race and Health

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By Chloe Reichel

Racism was embedded in the founding of the United States and has persisted in virtually all aspects of our society through the present day.

In 2020, structural racism was made especially apparent in the disproportionate toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on communities of color, which can be traced back to the social determinants of health, and in grotesque displays of police violence, such as the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Elijah McClain.

Racism is the public health issue of our time, after having been woefully un- or under-addressed for centuries. The following posts, which were published on Bill of Health this year, highlight some of the most pressing issues to confront, as well as potential ways forward.

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This 2006 image depicted a nurse, who was administering an intramuscular vaccination into a middle-aged man’s left shoulder muscle. The nurse was using her left hand to stabilize the injection site.

An Equity-Based Strategy for COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution

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By Megan J. Shen

How COVID-19 vaccines roll out in the U.S. will highlight the nation’s priorities, and potentially also its persistent disparities.

Top of the list to receive the vaccine are frontline healthcare workers, who were the first to receive Pfizer’s new vaccine this week.

Next will come long-term care facility residents and workers. This is critical, as long-term care residents have suffered perhaps the most devastating death toll, killing over 100,000 residents.

But there is still a long winter ahead where many will not yet have access to the vaccine. And it remains unclear how the next round of vaccine recipients will be allocated to serve the most vulnerable populations.

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Vial and syringe.

Challenges in COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: Lessons from the UK

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By Sravya Chary

Just over a week after the United Kingdom became the first Western country to authorize the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech for emergency use, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) followed suit on December 11, 2020.

This lag may prove beneficial. The United States can and should cautiously assess the United Kingdom’s vaccination strategy to avoid challenges that may impede its ability to control the virus.

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Vaccine.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Emergency Use Authorizations for COVID Vaccines

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By Sravya Chary

Two COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers recently submitted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) requests to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their candidates.

While the need for a safe and efficacious COVID-19 vaccine is dire and immediate, an EUA may not be the best regulatory method to provide access. Experts warn that the EUA pathway may impede vital scientific progress needed to establish the long term safety and efficacy of investigational COVID-19 vaccines.

According to the FDA, an Emergency Use Authorization is a tool that allows an unapproved medical product to be released to the public in a health crisis given that the medical product meets statutory criteria outlined in Section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

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people waiting in a line.

Advance Health Equity by Getting Vaccine Distribution Right

Nicolas P. Terry Leave a comment

By Sarah de Guia and Nicolas Terry

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to decide soon whether to authorize the emergency use of COVID-19 vaccines. While this is positive news, critical decisions remain about the equitable allocation of the vaccine.

On December 10, 2020, the FDA will hold a meeting of its vaccine advisory committee to consider an emergency use authorization (EUA) sought by Pfizer/BioNTech for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. A week later, the committee likely will consider a similar request from Moderna for its candidate. The UK is moving on an even more aggressive timeline and has already approved the Pfizer/BioNTech candidate.

In 2020, it is expected that doses will be ready for only 20 million Americans; there will not be general availability until the second quarter of 2021.

So, who will get the vaccine soonest, and will those decisions be based on equitable criteria?

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Georgia, Atlanta USA March 6, 2020.

The Politics of CDC Public Health Guidance During COVID-19

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

A version of this post first ran in Ms. Magazine on October 28, 2020. It has been adapted slightly for Bill of Health. 

By Aziza Ahmed

In recent months, public health guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has become a site of political reckoning.

The agency has taken an enormous amount of heat from a range of institutions, including the executive and the public, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The former has sought to intervene in public health guidance to ensure that the CDC presents the President and administration’s response to COVID-19 in a positive light. The latter consists of opposed factions that demand more rigorous guidance, or, its opposite, less stringent advice.

Importantly, these tensions have revealed how communities experience the pandemic differently. CDC guidance has produced divergent consequences, largely depending on demographics. These differences have been particularly pronounced along racial lines.

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