My column last month discussed one of the “endgame” approaches to finally end tobacco smoking. This approach is the “birthdate-based phaseout” of tobacco use whereby people born after a certain…
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For decades, public health officials and anti-tobacco activists have talked about the “endgame” in tobacco control. It refers to laws and policies that would virtually end tobacco use. Great strides…
Vaccine misinformation and politicization abound in America. Social media and internet sites are packed with both from vaccine critics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other…
The COVID-19 pandemic has killed over 1.2 million Americans and over 7 million worldwide. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 Americans and 40 to 60 million globally….
For many years much of the medical and public health communities have anxiously awaited the long-overdue federal Controlled Substances Act reclassification of marijuana to characterize it more accurately. In 2022,…
There’s an expression, “You may be done with COVID, but COVID isn’t done with you.” It’s true. COVID-19 is still very much with us even though we would like to…
Being an election year and with primary elections looming, the clear intention of the 2024 Indiana General Assembly leadership was for a short session avoiding controversial issues. Indeed, the session…
The corporatization of medicine. It can’t be good for patients. I know it’s not good for physicians. The corporatization of medicine removes much of the essential autonomy of physicians. According…
I have been practicing long enough to remember the time when prior authorization (PA) by insurance companies for medications, procedures, testing, and other medical services occurred very infrequently. Physicians felt…
The landscape has changed for the prevention of serious and life-threatening adult respiratory infections, especially for seniors and those with chronic underlying conditions. We now have the fall vaccination-responsive “tripledemic”…