Health

  Health care has become increasingly complex, costly and frustrating for many in the U.S., and it’s one of the biggest issues in the 2024 election. Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have both vowed to take this on if they win—and to do so through policies ranging from cutting drug costs to ensuring access to care. But there are drastic differences in how their respective plans would affect the U.S. health care system’s economics—and the people who confront its bureaucracy daily. Harris says her administration would strengthen the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and expand the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA’s) cost-saving provisions. Trump’s presidential record on health care is mixed, riddled with attacks on the ACA and major funding cuts to federal health care insurance programs. Drug Pricing People in the U.S. pay far more for medications than people in most other comparably wealthy nations. Both presidential candidates have prominently stamped lowering dr...

  Anew article published in Nature Reviews Disease Primersunderscores the profound role that stigma can play in health care -- and how addressing stigma-related barriers can significantly improve health outcomes for individuals and communities around the world.  Stigma has harmful effects on health, equity and justice. And while we need more rigorous evaluation of interventions to reduce health-care stigma, we certainly know enough to begin to confront it."  Carmen Logie,  lead author, professor, University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work (FIFSW) Logie and her co-author Laura Nyblade, a fellow at the Social, Statistical and Environmental Sciences, Research Triangle Institute in Washington DC, argue that health-care providers need to be able to identify what drives stigma in health-care settings, so they can take action to address stigmatizing practices as well as internalized, anticipated or perceived stigmatization on behalf of those in need of ...

The conversation about the mental health crisis is loud, but at a standstill. Stuck on repeat around the challenges of accessing existing treatments, the situation can appear increasingly hopeless.  I see another future — one far more positive and exciting. We are on the cusp of a revolution in mental health science. In five years’ time, the mental health treatment landscape will look radically different. We need funding to keep up with innovation. As mental health director at Wellcome, one of the largest nongovernmental funders of research in the world, I see scientific discoveries and technological advances sparking a wave of new therapies and solutions to transform people’s lives on a global scale.  The first new pharmacological approach for schizophrenia in more than 50 years, Cobenfy, has just been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It works in a completely different way from any other currently used schizophrenia drugs and has the potential to change the lives...