Category: 4. Health

When outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles occur despite highly effective vaccines being available, it’s easy to conclude that parents who don’t vaccinate their children are misguided, selfish or have fallen prey to misinformation.

As professors with expertise in vaccine policy and health economics, we argue that the decision not to vaccinate isn’t simply about misinformation or hesitancy. In our view, it involves game theory, a mathematical framework that…

The U.S. government recently cut more than US$1 billion in funding to two long-running programs that helped schools and food banks feed children and families in need. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the reductions are a “return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives.” But advocacy groups say the cuts will hurt millions of Americans.

The reductions came just days before the release of the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again report, an analysis of the…

Due to a combination of biological advantages—such as protective effects of estrogen and stronger immune responses—and behavioral factors like lower rates of risky activities, better health-seeking habits, and less exposure to occupational hazards and violence, women live longer…

The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, championed by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., aims to promote the dietary, behavioral, medical, and environmental drivers that can improve health outcomes in the United States.

The movement has a…

In this week’s edition of InnovationRx, we look at the impact of Trump’s proposed budget cuts on biomedical research and global health, news from the ASCO cancer meeting, Summit Therapeutics’ Maky Zanganeh and more. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.

The Trump Administration’s detailed budget proposal, released on Friday, slashes spending for research on diseases and global health. If enacted, it would set back the effort to find cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s…

A recent case in Europe has reignited debate over the regulation of sperm donation after a man unknowingly carrying a rare, cancer-causing genetic mutation fathered at least 67 children across eight countries. Ten of these children have been diagnosed with cancer, including leukemia, brain tumors and lymphomas. The case…

Joint pain, headaches, stomachaches, fibromyalgia – the list sounds like an inventory of ailments that might plague people as they age. Yet these are chronic, painful conditions that frequently affect children.

People often imagine childhood as a time when the body functions at its best, but about 25% of children experience chronic pain. I was one of them: Starting in elementary school, migraines incapacitated me for hours at a stretch with excruciating pain that made it impossible…

The brain is shielded from many substances by the blood-brain barrier, but this shield is not impenetrable. There are immune cells in the brain called microglia that can respond to potential invaders in the brain, but there is a lot we don’t know about how the adaptive immune system, which can ‘remember’ previous infections and respond accordingly, functions in the brain. Scientists have now shown that there are cells of the adaptive immune system in the…

Low-income individuals that received regular monthly cash stipends visited the emergency department less, had fewer hospital admissions and participated in more outpatient subspecialty…