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Opinion: The real crime of Theranos: Loss of trust in real-time diagnostics
Ramesh Balwani, the chief operating officer of Theranos, was sentenced on Wednesday to nearly 13…
Category: First Opinion
Opinion: If you think health care is dysfunctional now, just wait until after January 1
Doctors across the country, especially those in primary care, have been up in arms about…
Opinion: Deferral of primary care signals a troubled future for Americans’ health
Americans may be returning to their pre-pandemic habits, but most have not returned to their…
Opinion: Victims of domestic abuse should get the same top-notch concussion care as athletes
Two vastly different experiences — serving as a “guest coach” on the sidelines for a…
Opinion: Pediatricians and parents on the brink: This is their March 2020
In March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the United States, the nation’s pediatric…
Opinion: Congress needs to update FDA’s ability to regulate diagnostic tests, cosmetics
Congress is considering two measures that modernize tools the Food and Drug Administration uses to…
Opinion: Carefully crafted digital approaches can improve youths’ mental health care
In the face of a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health, urgent measures…
Opinion: Breakthrough Therapies Act: Good idea, wrong solution
The Breakthrough Therapies Act, recently proposed by Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.)…
Opinion: Congress: Close the gap between funding for nutrition research and the toll diet-related disease takes on Americans
You are what you eat. Every year, new scientific discoveries make clear that food is…
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Opinion: The U.S. doesn’t need a new ‘essential hospital’ designation
A recent essay in Health Affairs, a prominent health care journal, proposed a useful-sounding idea:…
Opinion: Better lab test standards can ensure precision medicine is truly precise
Cancer is becoming less deadly in America. According to the recently released Annual Report to…
Opinion: Excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and sugary beverages benefit health and public budgets
The Covid-19 pandemic blew up budget deficits in low- and middle-income countries, pushing many toward…
Opinion: Rushing into the World Bank’s Pandemic Fund is a bad idea
The World Bank has rolled out a new Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness,…
Opinion: Anti-amyloid drugs and the mystery of treatment-associated brain shrinkage
Eisai’s announcement that lecanemab, its antibody drug for Alzheimer’s disease that targets the buildup of…
Opinion: Minimizing administrative harm: a key step to improving health care
Late on a Friday, I sit reviewing some of my patients’ old medical records instead…
Opinion: Deans: Dump that USNWR ‘best medical school’ survey
Yale and Harvard Law Schools recently announced they would no longer participate in U.S. News…
Opinion: The real experts: people living with mental illness
When Ken Duckworth was a child, his family didn’t talk about mental health, especially not…
Opinion: A tripledemic hurricane is making landfall. We need masks, not just tent hospitals
A viral hurricane is making landfall on health care systems battered by three pandemic years….
Opinion: Congress: Confront the superbug crisis and pass PASTEUR
By 2050, drug-resistant infections caused by “superbugs” could kill 10 million people each year around…
Opinion: STAT+: Removing barriers to biosimilar adoption in the United States
Biosimilars, a much-lauded approach to reducing drug costs in the United States, are still underused…
Opinion: We know what it’s like to live in fear of polio. We also know how to stop it
Polio, a dangerous and even deadly infectious disease, is a distant memory for many global…
Opinion: The conundrum of biopharma investing: low rewards and high risks — but a big social benefit
Over the last decade, investors in biotech and pharmaceutical companies have been taking risks that…
Opinion: Unseen mental health experts: people with mental illness
When I was seven years old, I watched as police carted my father out of…
Opinion: Listen: The ‘First Opinion Podcast’ live from Boston: Jay Baruch returns
In a special event as part of STAT’s Open Doors initiative, the “First Opinion Podcast”…
Opinion: Replace the failure of Medicare Advantage with ‘Medicare Part F’
Medicare Advantage began life as a brilliant idea: a public-private partnership to keep older people…
Opinion: Better access to amyloid-PET scans won’t reduce racial inequities in Alzheimer’s disease
At first glance, it might appear that better access to so-called amyloid-PET scans could compensate…
Opinion: Violence against health care workers is on the rise. They deserve protection
There is no place for violence in civil society. Yet stabbings, shootings, threats and other…
Opinion: Lessons from polio about the need to vaccinate kids against Covid-19
As pediatricians, epidemiologists, and professors of public health — as well as mothers — we…
Opinion: Health workers’ mental health: Addressing the invisible global pandemic
The World Health Organization defines mental health as a state of mental well-being in which…
Opinion: Employing everyday public health efforts to respond to polio’s re-emergence
Ask most Americans to name a victim of polio and they’ll say President Franklin Delano…
Opinion: Listen: Covid is not a ‘racial equity success story’
The idea that the narrowing gap between Covid-19 deaths among white Americans and Americans of…
Opinion: Real-time data are needed to monitor health after disasters
Weather-related disasters like the millions of Floridians left without power by Hurricane Ian or the…
Opinion: The Supreme Court needs to uphold protection for Native American children
As an American Indian pediatrician working in my own tribal community, I know how important…
Opinion: Californians: To keep kids healthy, oppose sales of flavored nicotine products
Californians have an opportunity on Tuesday to protect the health of their children by voting…
Opinion: Trying to quit my job as an ER doctor gave me reasons to stay
The morning was crisp and still dark as I sat in my car in the…
Opinion: Believers in science must take action when recommendations breach public health
Medical practitioners and public health officials work within boundaries that, when crossed by others, can…
Opinion: Millions of Americans have health insurance that isn’t ‘good enough’
The open enrollment season for health insurance is gearing up at a time when more…
Opinion: How the world can end Covid-19 as a public health threat
The journal Nature published today global consensus recommendations to end Covid-19 as a public health…
Opinion: Respiratory infection surge sounds a wake-up call for pediatric emergency care
“Mommy. Daddy. I can’t breathe.” Waking up to those words is terrifying for any parent….
Opinion: STAT+: HHS’s proposed rule prohibiting discrimination via algorithm needs strengthening
The Department of Health and Human Services has proposed a rule to prohibit clinical algorithms…
Opinion: Give Americans the right to save on health care
Dani Yuengling, a 35-year-old South Carolinian, had a family history of fatal breast cancer. So…
Opinion: Listen: Will opioid settlement money actually go to opioid prevention? Here’s hoping
As states begin to receive money from the multitude of lawsuits and settlements the opioid…
Opinion: Exclude race from medical school admissions and students, patients, and the entire health care system lose out
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday in two cases that could eliminate…
Opinion: Biopharma innovation needs to harness lessons learned from Covid-19
The pandemic is a prime case study of what can be accomplished when science delivers….
Opinion: Inconsistent clinical practices thwart wider use of personalized medicine
The promise of personalized medicine — safer and more effective treatments tailored to each individual’s…
Opinion: Hospitals need to make their websites as accessible as their physical spaces
It would be anathema for a health care facility in the U.S. to have a…
Opinion: How motivational interviewing can improve health workforce well-being
The National Academy of Medicine launched its National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being in early…
Opinion: STAT+: The need for regulatory grade evidence: Are you in the stadium or the sandbox?
As real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) continue to share the limelight in pharmacoepidemiologic…
Opinion: Allocate opioid settlement dollars to real addiction-ending solutions
The crisis of opioid overdose deaths that sparked the multitude of lawsuits leading to a…
Opinion: Kids with cancer deserve more than a cure
As an oncologist and a leader at a national cancer organization, I’ve watched countless families…