Photo via Pixabay.
Lumping Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders together with East, South, and Southeast Asian patients in U.S. medical studies may be obscuring disparities in outcomes, suggests a new study from JAMA Network Open.
Photo by Elvert Barnes via Flickr.
In two previous posts, I discussed the history of the U.S. Public Health Service study at Tuskegee, 50 years after it was revealed to the nation. I also shared the perspectives of a Black epidemiologist and a Black HIV primary care physician on what the study’s legacy means now.
In this post, I share the perspectives of two Black psychiatrists and a Black colorectal surgeon on how the study at Tuskegee reverberates through Black communities today.
Epidemiologist Dara Mendez, Ph.D., M.P.H., pediatrician Diane Rowley, M.D., epidemiologist Theresa Chapple-McGruder, Ph.D., and epidemiologist Bill Jenkins, Ph.D., who blew the whistle on the experiment at Tuskegee while working at the U.S. Public Health Service, gather at the 2017 meeting of the American Public Health Association. (Photo courtesy of Theresa Chapple)
When writing about the 50th anniversary of the revelation of the U.S. Public Health Service study at Tuskegee, I reached out to several Black health care professionals to ask for their perspectives on the study’s legacy a half-century later. Five women — an epidemiologist, two psychiatrists, a surgeon, and an HIV primary care physician — offered their insight. This post shares two of those perspectives, one focused on the man who blew the whistle on the experiment and the other on how the legacy of the experiment at Tuskegee is playing out with monkeypox.
Photograph of participants in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Photo courtesy of National Archives)
It’s been 50 years ago last month since the nation learned about one of the most shameful and consequential chapters in U.S. medical research (and there’s a fair bit to pick from). In the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male,” the U.S. Public Health Service enrolled 600 Black male sharecroppers from Tuskegee, Alabama, and intentionally withheld information and treatment from approximately 200 of the 399 Black men who had syphilis while researchers studied how the disease affected their life course.
Photo via pexels.
Higher levels of registered nurse staffing are associated with a lower likelihood of Medicare patients’ dying from sepsis in hospitals, according to a recent study published in JAMA Health Forum. An estimated 1.7 million cases of sepsis occur each year, killing 270,000 annually. Even more concerning is one in three patients who die in the hospital has sepsis, according to the CDC. Not all of those deaths occur because of sepsis, but it’s a contributing factor in nearly all cases.
The vast majority of infections that cause sepsis, however — 87% of them — begin outside the hospital, according to the CDC. The difference between life and death depends on early identification of sepsis and immediate treatment. Registered nurses play a significant role in that process because they have more regular interaction with patients and more opportunities to observe symptoms of sepsis.
Why does this study matter to journalists?: Nurses continue to be an under-appreciated and under-utilized resource for better understanding health care issues. Here are some key takeaways from this study: