Health & Veritas

Howie and Harlan are joined by Arthur Caplan, Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor of Bioethics and founding head of the division of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to discuss the ethical failings of the pharmaceutical industry and how a community-focused ethos prioritizing justice and protection of the vulnerable would have reshaped the COVID response. Harlan reports on developments in synthetic proteins. Howie recognizes World Malaria Day. Links: Division of Medical Ethics: NYU Langone “‘You’ve got bad blood’: The horror of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment” “When Evil Intrudes” “Surgeons Perform World’s First Combined Heart Pump And Pig Kidney Transplant—Latest Breakthrough Involving Pig Organ” “Biden trolls Trump on injecting bleach anniversary” Frequently Asked Questions on Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act (DWDA) “A quiet revolution in organ transplant ethics” Center for Healthcare Ethics: The Provider-Patient Relationship “Ex-Stanford President’s AI Drug Startup Pulls In $1 Billion in Commitments” “Protein wrangler, serial entrepreneur, and community builder: Inside David Baker’s brain” Baker Lab: Home Page “Atomically accurate de novo design of single-domain antibodies” National Cancer Institute: Definition of a Monoclonal Antibody Malaria: World Health Organization  CDC: Malaria’s Impact Worldwide UNICEF: Ten things you didn’t know about malaria Yale Innovation Summit 2024 Link for the Health & Veritas Livestream at the Yale Innovation Summit Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Scott Berkowitz ’03, cardiologist and chief population health officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine, to discuss the necessity of moving from fee-for-service to value-based care delivery to improve outcomes for all. Harlan highlights the dangers of misinformation about Ivermectin. Howie reports on the potential conflicts of interest created by device manufacturers’ payments to cardiologists. Links: Johns Hopkins Medicine: Home Johns Hopkins Community Health Partnership “Association of a Care Coordination Model With Health Care Costs and Utilization” “Planning for the Future of Population Health: The Johns Hopkins Medicine Experience” “Califf’s long day on Capitol Hill” “The FDA Deleted Its Viral Ivermectin Tweets. Now There’s Even More Misinformation.” “Philly Nonprofit Awarded $48 Million to Apply AI in Search for New Uses for Approved Drugs Posted on March 12, 2024” “Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19” “Effect of Ivermectin vs Placebo on Time to Sustained Recovery in Outpatients With Mild to Moderate COVID-19” “Effect of Higher-Dose Ivermectin for 6 Days vs Placebo on Time to Sustained Recovery in Outpatients With COVID-19” “Systematic review and meta-analysis of ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19: evidence beyond the hype” Ivermectin and Covid “FDA settles lawsuit over ivermectin content that doctors claimed harmed their practice” “Intravascular Microaxial Left Ventricular Assist Device Manufacturer Payments to Cardiologists and Use of Devices” “Impact of Industry Payments on Prescribing Patterns for Tumor Necrosis Factor Inhibitors Among Medicare Beneficiaries” Yale Innovation Summit 2024 Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Atheendar Venkataramani, a physician, health economist, and director of the Perelman School of Medicine’s Opportunity for Health Lab, to discuss the powerful role of economic opportunity in population health outcomes. Harlan reports on two studies where treatments’ unexpected benefits leapt ahead of understanding why they work. Howie reflects on the business model of the pharma industry and the market reaction to anti-obesity drugs. Links: Opportunity for Health | Home “College Affirmative Action Bans and Smoking and Alcohol Use among Underrepresented Minority Adolescents in the United States: A Difference-in-differences Study” “Police Killings and Their Spillover Effects on the Mental Health of Black Americans: A Population-based, Quasi-experimental Study” “Officer-Involved Killings of Unarmed Black People and Racial Disparities in Sleep Health“ Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System | Home “Building Black Wealth — The Role of Health Systems in Closing the Gap“ KFF | Understanding Mergers Between Hospitals and Health Systems in Different Markets “In Hospitals, Affordable Housing Gets the Long-Term Investor It Needs” American College of Cardiology 73rd Annual Scientific Session & Expo  “Semaglutide in Patients with Obesity-Related Heart Failure and Type 2 Diabetes“ “Coronary sinus reducer for the treatment of refractory angina (ORBITA-COSMIC): a randomised, placebo-controlled trial” “A Placebo-Controlled Trial of PCI for Stable Angina“ “Trial of Lixisenatide in Early Parkinson’s Disease“ “The Cream of The Crop: 5 Biotechs That Outrank Most Stocks” “How High Can Eli Lilly Stock Go? $1,000 A Share, One Analyst Says” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Kate McEvoy, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, to discuss the programs’ underappreciated advances in holistically addressing health, housing, and food security. Reflecting on the upcoming election, Harlan notes that facts matter, whether in medicine or politics. Howie reports on the dangers of glyoxylic acid in hair straightening products. Links: “Trump Leads Biden in Six of Seven Swing States, WSJ Poll Finds” “Takeover: Hitler’s Final Rise to Power” “The Forgotten History of Hitler’s Establishment Enablers” The Future of Health Policy in a Partisan United States “Netflix blockbuster ‘3 Body Problem’ divides opinion and sparks nationalist anger in China” “The Future of American Democracy Depends on Improving U.S. Health” Wikipedia | Glyoxylic acid Kidney Injury and Hair-Straightening Products Containing Glyoxylic Acid American Cancer Society | Formaldehyde and Cancer Risk Kaiser Family Foundation | 10 Things to Know About the Unwinding of the Medicaid Continuous Enrollment Provision Kaiser Family Foundation | Medicaid Postpartum Coverage Extension Tracker CMS | NHE Fact Sheet Moral Injuries in Healthcare Workers: What Causes Them and What to Do About Them? NCDHHS | Healthy Opportunities Pilots HealthTech4Medicaid | About Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Margo Harrison, an OB-GYN and femtech entrepreneur, to discuss how innovative solutions to women’s health problems offer deeper understanding and expanded choices. Harlan and Howie each offer a caveat emptor for lightly regulated, unproven supplements and treatments such as Prevagen and hydration spas. Links: “Prevagen Review: A Word of Caution” “Prevagen®: Analysis of Clinical Evidence and Its Designation as a ‘#1 Pharmacist Recommended Brand’” “NY Jury Rules Some Claims About Prevagen Are Misleading” “Effects of a Supplement Containing Apoaequorin on Verbal Learning in Older Adults in the Community” Mate Fertility: Home Dahlia Ventures Margo Harrison, MD: Assistant Adjoint Professor, OB-GYN-Basic Repro Science Margo Harrison: LinkedIn “Use of Cesarean Birth at Mizan Tepi University Teaching Hospital, Mizan Aman, Ethiopia” “Postpartum Contraceptive Use Among Denver-Based Adolescents and Young Adults: Association with Subsequent Repeat Delivery” “Warnings grow about risky IV drips and injections at unregulated med spas” “FDA highlights concerns with compounding of drug products by medical offices and clinics under insanitary conditions” “Drip bar: Should you get an IV on demand?” “Are Your Therapies FDA Compliant?”

Howie and Harlan are joined by Yale health economist Zack Cooper to discuss his work on surprise medical bills and the impact of high healthcare costs on households, wages, and the economy. Harlan reports on Hippocratic AI’s efforts to develop AI nurses. Howie looks at the global effort to eradicate tuberculosis. Links: “Hippocratic AI banks $53M backed by General Catalyst, a16z, Memorial Hermann, UHS and other health systems” “Polaris: A Safety-focused LLM Constellation Architecture for Healthcare” Yale | Eli Whitney Students Program Touching the Dragon: And Other Techniques for Surviving Life’s Wars The Price Ain’t Right? Hospital Prices and Health Spending on the Privately Insured “Costs Can Go Up Fast When E.R. Is in Network but the Doctors Are Not” “Bankrupt Envision Healthcare approved to split in two, cut debt” “The Company Behind Many Surprise Emergency Room Bills” Surprise! Out-of-Network Billing for Emergency Care in the United States “Medical LLM developer Hippocratic AI gets $53M at $500 valuation” The Breakthrough of Large Language Models Release for Medical Applications: 1-Year Timeline and Perspectives World Health Organization | World Tuberculosis Day Partners In Health | Tuberculosis “WHO urges investments for the scale up of tuberculosis screening and preventive treatment” “The latest twist in John Green’s anti-tuberculosis story: working with governments” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Robert Alpern, a Yale nephrologist and the former dean of the Yale School of Medicine, to discuss the importance of a fiscal base for enabling a medical school to deliver top-quality training, research, and clinical care. Harlan asks whether widespread norovirus is a reason to call it quits on shaking hands. Howie reports on a study of the increased mortality among those with ADHD. “Nephrologist Robert Alpern Named Dean of Yale School of Medicine” “UT Southwestern: From Army” Shacks to Research Elites” “National Clinician Scholars Program” “A ‘bittersweet’ end: Historic merger creates one of the nation’s largest hospitals” “Yale New Haven Health: Smilow Cancer Hospital” “Alpern will not seek a fourth term as School of Medicine dean” “Alpern to Step Down After Current Term as Dean” “Cleveland Clinic: Norovirus” “State of Affairs: March 12: Flu, measles, norovirus, and interesting Pew results” “Norovirus has entered the chat” “ADHD Pharmacotherapy and Mortality in Individuals With ADHD” “Overdiagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents” “Racial Disparities in Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in a US National Birth Cohort” “Longitudinal associations between digital media use and ADHD symptoms in children and adolescents: a systematic literature review” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Robert Rohrbaugh, professor of psychiatry and deputy dean for professionalism and leadership at the Yale School of Medicine, to discuss his work training doctors in antiracist practices and ensuring the wellbeing of clinicians during the pandemic. Harlan reports on the problematic history of medical journals promoting eugenics; Howie highlights a cyberattack that has paralyzed Change Healthcare, the country’s largest payments processing hub.  Links: Antiracist Documentation Practices — Shaping Clinical Encounters and Decision Making American Psychological Association | Implicit Bias “YSM Ranks #1 in U.S. News Survey for Psychiatry” COVID-19 Traumatic Disaster Appraisal and Stress Symptoms Among Health Care Workers Application of Artificial Intelligence on Psychological Interventions and Diagnosis: An Overview Is AI the Future of Mental Healthcare? ChatGPT outperforms humans in emotional awareness evaluations “Ridding the Race of His Defective Blood” — Eugenics in the Journal, 1906–1948 Problems Underlying Public Hospital Administration Wikipedia | Public Hospital Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907–2015 “Cyberattack Paralyzes the Largest U.S. Health Care Payment System” “Physicians beg for relief amid Change Healthcare payment crisis” “Court Rejects Vertical Merger Challenge Brought by DOJ” “Aledade Takes Steps to Support Independent Primary Care Partners in Wake of Change Healthcare CyberAttack”

Howie and Harlan discuss health and healthcare headlines, including a cheating scandal that has led to the invalidation of hundreds of scores from Nepal on the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination, the problem of research that never sees the light of day, new anti-obesity medications, and Florida’s unorthodox approach to measles. Links: Standardized Testing “Cheated out of the American Dream” “MCAT scores and medical school success: Do they correlate?” ”Reducing Medical School Admissions Disparities in an Era of Legal Restrictions: Adjusting for Applicant Socioeconomic Disadvantage” “Medical School Admissions — A Movable Barrier to Ending Health Care Disparities?” “Yale Reinstates Standardized Test Score Requirement For Admissions” “New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education” Research at Universities Good Science Project: Stuart Buck “Why Are We Screwing Over Researchers Who Make Innovative Discoveries?” Intellectual Property: Ownership and Protection in a University Setting Measles in Florida “From COVID-19 to Measles, Florida’s War on Public Health” CDC: About Measles “Additional measles case reported at Florida elementary school as lawmaker urges public health emergency” Obesity Drugs “Heard on the Street: Viking Therapeutics Invades Eli Lilly’s Obesity Territory” Unreleased Research Data “The Ghost Research Haunting Nordic Medical Trials” “Publication of NIH funded trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov: cross sectional analysis” Harlan Krumholz: “What have we learnt from Vioxx?” A Transformative Gift “$1 Billion Donation Will Provide Free Tuition at a Bronx Medical School” IVF in Alabama The Alabama Supreme Court’s Ruling “Florida Suspends Bill to Protect ‘Unborn Child’ After I.V.F. Ruling” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: The Alabama Supreme Court’s Ruling on Frozen Embryos Faculty for Yale Faculty for Yale “The Need For Institutional Neutrality At Universities” “Yale faculty sign letter addressed to Yale’s future president, affirms commitment to social justice” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Lucila Ohno-Machado, the Yale School of Medicine’s deputy dean for biomedical informatics. She explains how expanding use of data science, informatics, AI, and technology could enable doctors to spend more time with patients. Harlan celebrates mentorship while marking the death of Irwin Birnbaum, a mentor to many in his time as COO of the Yale Medical School and long after retiring. Howie discusses the mixed evidence from a study on vaping as a tool for helping cigarette smokers quit. Links: “Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, MBA, Will Lead Biomedical Informatics and Data Science” “Lucila Ohno-Machado: Yale Medicine Profile” “Halıcıoğlu Data Science Center” “2024 AI in Medicine Symposium at Yale School of Medicine” “Doctors Vs. ChatGPT: Which Is More Empathetic?” “Irwin M. Birnbaum Obituary” “What is a mentor?” “A Randomized Trial of E-Cigarettes versus Nicotine-Replacement Therapy” “Episode 78, Health and Veritas: Elizabeth Arleo: Advice for Working Mothers from a Women’s Health Specialist”