What’s happening Oprah Winfrey hosted a new TV special earlier this month in which she shared her personal experiences with new weight loss drugs and discussed how the revolutionary new medications have changed the lives of people struggling with obesity. Over the course of her career, Winfrey’s honesty about her own challenges with weight made […]
Category: Health
Has Obamacare been a success?
What’s happening President Biden has always considered the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the major health care overhaul commonly known as Obamacare, to be a “big f***ing deal.” Over the weekend, he marked the 14th anniversary of the bill’s signing, not with a celebration but with a warning that it could be at risk if Donald […]
This could be why your hair turns gray — and other health stories you may have missed
It’s been a busy week — from lab leak theories at a COVID-19 origins hearing to the Supreme Court’s eagerly anticipated decision on access to the abortion pill mifepristone. But that’s not all that’s going on in the health space. Here are some interesting updates you may have missed, as reported by Yahoo News partners. […]
Black women should start breast cancer screening at younger age, study suggests
Breast cancer is the second-most-common cancer among women and the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Even though it’s slightly less prevalent among Black than white women in the U.S., Black women are more likely to die from the disease. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) — a group of […]
Teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten says House hearing crossed the line
WASHINGTON — Congressional hearings are frequently acrimonious, but they rarely descend into the kind of personal attack that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., waged against teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten at a House hearing last week on pandemic-related school closures, an issue that continues to excite strong passions. Those passions were expressed in a “very […]
Randi Weingarten, Anthony Fauci, and why are we still talking about pandemic school closures
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, testifies before a House subcommittee hearing on COVID-19 school closures on April 26. (Mariam Zuhaib/AP Photo) WASHINGTON — Long gone are the days when American children started their school day with a laptop at the kitchen table. Since the Omicron surge of early 2022, schools across […]
Doctors perform lifesaving brain surgery on fetus in the womb
In a first-of-its-kind procedure, physicians performed a successful in utero surgery to repair a rare and potentially deadly prenatal condition in a fetus. In utero surgery has been used for other conditions, but this is the first time it has been attempted to treat “vein of Galen malformation” — a rare blood vessel abnormality inside […]
What it means for the COVID-19 pandemic to be ‘over’
Dr. Joseph Varon comforts a patient in the COVID-19 intensive care unit on Thanksgiving at the United Memorial Medical Center on Nov. 26, 2020 in Houston. (Go Nakamura/Getty Images) Friday’s declaration by the World Health Organization that the coronavirus emergency was “over” marked the end of a three-year journey that saw the world transformed by […]
Raccoon dogs did not start COVID-19, new study says
The raccoon dog did it: That was the explosive takeaway of a genomic analysis conducted in March by a trio of scientists who had scrutinized data from a market in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic was thought to have begun. Until then, evidence for that conviction had been scant. “This is a really strong indication […]
The COVID public health emergency expires Thursday. Here’s what that means for you.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will allow the federal public health emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic to expire, but not everyone sees it as a cause for celebration. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra had renewed the emergency for 90 days in February, signaling at the time that this would be […]
Bats could hold secret to long life — and other health news you may have missed
A protein found in bats could have “therapeutic potential” for humans. (Getty Images) It’s been a busy week in health news — from saying goodbye to COVID public health and mpox global health emergencies to ushering in a new era of over-the-counter birth control pills. But that’s not all that happened in the wellness space. […]
Pandemic learning loss needs urgent attention in U.S., national survey finds
The “educational harm” caused by the coronavirus pandemic has been “devastating,” according to a recent survey of 26 million K-8 students by researchers at Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Dartmouth and Harvard. The researchers also found that the pandemic “exacerbated economic and racial educational inequality,” as lead authors Tom Kane of Harvard and Sean Reardon of Stanford […]