Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
While opioid overdoses have been rising for decades, trends in most recent times provide us a glimmer of hope. NPR reports: For the first time in decades, public health data shows a sudden and hopeful drop in drug overdose deaths across the U.S.“This is exciting,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute On…
The RE-AIM framework developed by Glasgow et al. (1999) has five evaluation components. Reach: share of people from a given population who participate in a program and their characteristics. For instance, organizational reach with stakeholders could be indirect, intended or direct. Reach is the number of participants in the program divided by the size of…
The Rippel Foundation has an interesting framework to describe the dimensions for improving health and overall individual quality of life. This is part of their mission to guide “transformational change that supports better health and well-being for all—a future where everyone thrives, without exception.” The organization identified relevant desirable outcomes of health and wellness as…
It makes sense that more educated individuals have lower mortality rates. Better education may improve health literacy. More education can lead to higher income and and more employee health benefits (with better insurance coverage). However, does living in communities with more educated individuals impact mortality separately from whether an individual’s family is highly educated? According…
According to the 2019 NSDUH survey, 27.7 percent of 18-22 year olds who are not enrolled in college full-time and 33.0% of 18-22 year old full-time college students reported binge drinking in the past month. Should society impose stricter restrictions on drugs and alcohol for younger individuals? On the one hand, drugs and alcohol harm…
epidemic. noun an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time : an outbreak of epidemic disease an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development The opioid epidemic is one that has impact a large number of Americans. Data from 2019 shows that there were over…
This weekend prior attending ISPOR 2023 in Copenhagen, I visited the Cisternerne Museum. The museum is a unique as it a (literal) underground art museum that is housed in a former water reservoir (and dripstone cave). While the museum currently had an interesting light-based art exhibit from South Korean artist Kimsooja, perhaps even more interesting…
At least that is according to an NBER working paper by DiSalvro and Hill (2023). The abstract is below: Previous research in the US has found negative health effects of contamination when it triggers regulatory violations. An important question is whether levels of contamination that do not trigger a health-based violation impact health. We study…
That is the title of an interesting review paper by Squires et al. 2023. The abstract is below: The effectiveness and cost of a public health intervention is dependent on complex human behaviors, yet health economic models typically make simplified assumptions about behavior, based on little theory or evidence. This paper reviews existing methods across…
Using 2001-2016 Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys (MEPS) data from working adults, a paper by Cawley et al. (2021) find that: Adults with obesity in the United States compared with those with normal weight experienced higher annual medical care costs by $2,505 or 100%, with costs increasing significantly with class of obesity, from 68.4% for class…