Viewpoints: New Tragic Data On Life Expectancy Calls For Better Approach To Health Care; Rural America Isn’t Ready For HIV Problem Heading Its Way

Opinion writers focus on these public health issues and others.

The Washington Post: More Americans Are Dying In The Prime Of Life. A Better Approach Is Needed.

They call the years between ages 25 and 65 the prime of life because it is supposed to be the period during which an adult enjoys his or her best health and maximum productivity. Yet to a disturbing degree, that description no longer fits Americans’ experience. Between 2010 and 2017, the mortality rate for 25-to-64-year-olds increased from 328.5 deaths per 100,000 to 348.2 per 100,000 — or about 6 percent — according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This contributed to a reversal of what had been decades of progress (albeit slower since the 1980s) in life expectancy, which stood at 78.6 years in 2017, down from the all-time high of 78.9 years in 2014. This simply should not be occurring in a rich country whose peer nations have maintained or improved life expectancy figures in recent years. (11/30)

The New York Times: H.I.V. Is Coming To Rural America

While there are still about a million people living with H.I.V. in the United States, in some of America’s largest cities, the news about H.I.V. and AIDS is surprisingly positive. “New H.I.V. Diagnoses Fall to Historic Lows,” the New York City Department of Health announced on Nov. 22, reporting that the largest city in the United States had fewer new diagnoses of H.I.V. in 2018 than during any year since statistics were first kept in 2001. This was just a few weeks after Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health reported a 14 percent drop in the number of newly diagnosed H.I.V. infections overall, and a drop of more than one-third among black men who have sex with men — an especially vulnerable population. (Steven W. Thrasher, 12/1)

Stat: From West Virginia, The End Of HIV Transmission Is A Distant Dream

“End the AIDS epidemic” seems to be the battle cry of the day. It’s a lofty goal that we all hope is attainable. But if West Virginia, where I live and work, is any indication, we have far to go. Sunday is the first World AIDS Day since President Trump announced in his 2019 State of the Union address a federal initiative to reduce new HIV infections in the United States by 75% in five years and by 90% by 2030. A plan to end the epidemic shows how far we have come since the first World AIDS Day in 1988, when a call was sent for solidarity against a pandemic that was taking a terrifying toll on families, communities and countries, and for a commitment to end its global impact. (Judith Feinberg, 12/1)

The Washington Post: This Vape Craze Should Never Have Been Allowed To Happen

Todd White is superintendent of the Blue Valley School District in Johnson County, Kan. It’s an enviable position. The Blue Valley schools serve a relatively upscale population in the suburbs of Kansas City. On an average day, more than 95 percent of Blue Valley students are in school. The graduation rate is 97 percent. The dropout rate, less than 1 percent. Every student in grade three and above has a computer.Yet White confessed recently that his prosperous district is in the midst of an epidemic. “In my 35 years in education, I’ve never seen anything that has been so rapid and devastating to the health and well-being of students, nor so disruptive to the daily work of teachers and administrators in educating our students,” he said of the crisis. What wreaks such havoc? Vaping. (David Von Drehle, 11/29)

The New York Times: If ‘Pain Is An Opinion,’ There Are Ways To Change Your Mind

Some days I’m grumpy; other times, my head hurts or my feet or my arms do. Yet when I play the trumpet, my mood improves and the pain disappears. Why? Alternative medicine — including music therapy — is full of pain-relief claims. Although some are simply too good to be true, the oddities of pain can explain why others hold up, as well as why my trumpet playing helps. One thing we tend to believe about pain, but is wrong, is that it always stems from a single, fixable source. (Austin Frakt, 12/2)

The Washington Post: We Used To Know How To Manage Discomfort. Our Quest To Banish It Brought On The Opioid Crisis.

One of the first things I learned about pain was its value. I was a third-year medical student in 1976. My first clinical rotation was in general surgery. The chief resident explained that a patient’s abdominal pain was the most useful tool we had in distinguishing the life-threatening condition of acute appendicitis from a more benign ailment such as stomach flu or constipation. He warned us not to treat that pain before the attending surgeon had a chance to place his hands on the patient’s abdomen. We were also encouraged to listen carefully to the patient’s experience of pain, the timing, the duration and any factors that made it better or worse. Forty years later, our concept of pain couldn’t be more different. Instead of learning from pain, we now regard it as an illness in and of itself. (James D. Hudson, 11/27)

Los Angeles Times: Suicide Prevention Recording Warnings Are A Bad Idea

Since September, the last thing a caller to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline hears before being connected to a counselor is this: “Your call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance purposes.” As a Lifeline counselor, this alarms me. Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S., and rates have increased in nearly every state from 1999 through 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Ray Regan, 11/29)

The New York Times: The Unending Indignities Of Alzheimer’s

There’s a home movie — an old one, on actual film — that I like to watch around the holidays. It features my two siblings and me in front of our childhood home after a huge snowstorm. We’re toddlers. There’s a favorite red sled and the three of us in matching snow gear: puffy blue coats, adorable earflap hats, mittens. But the real star of the show is our dad. He zigs and zags us relentlessly through mounds of fluffy white powder, beaming frequently back at my mother, who holds the camera. His joy is palpable. At one point the sled tips over, and I start wailing. He turns it right-side-up, plops me back in and we resume. He is laughing, and before long, so am I. (Jeneen Interlandi, 12/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Genomic Science Kept My Boys From Going Blind

Nine years ago, my family attended a medical conference in Philadelphia for the genetically unblessed. My husband, Eddie, and I found kinship with the other parents there, born of shared purpose: We refused to accept the diagnosis that our child was going blind. Not long after we brought my newborn son, Anthony, home from the hospital, we noticed his eyes kept darting to the nearest light. If left in a room alone, he couldn’t self-soothe unless we placed him beside a sunlit window out of which he would obsessively gaze. He was eventually diagnosed with Leber congenital amaurosis, or LCA, a rare retinal disease affecting one out of every 50,000 newborns. (Kristin Papiro, 11/29)

The Washington Post: Do NAD-Boosting Supplements Fight Aging? Not According To Current Research.

The fabled “fountain of youth” has remained elusive for thousands of years. So when you see an ad for modern science’s newest incarnation of anti-aging hope in a bottle — supplements that boost the body’s levels of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD for short — it’s deeply tempting to click “Buy now.” The marketing messages on these sleek websites offer promises of not just longevity, but healthy longevity. Unfortunately, the hype is ahead of the research, and it’s unclear whether the research will ever confirm the hype. (Carrie Dennett, 11/26)

The New York Times: What To Consider Before Trading Your Health Data For Cash

After I signed up for my insurance plan, I got an email with a link to a “wellness program” that, if I traded some health data — such as steps from a pedometer or smartwatch exercise data — could earn me a small monthly payout and some gift cards. But the second I logged in, I felt paranoid about the whole thing. If you work for a company with employer-sponsored health insurance, there’s a chance you’ve come across wellness programs such as UnitedHealthcare Motion, Humana Go365, Attain by Aetna, and Vitality. (Thorin Klosowski, 11/27)

This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription