Janice Hopkins Tanne

Over-the-counter painkillers may not be sufficient when fitting IUDs, says US agency

Social media: Add tobacco-style warnings to protect children, says US surgeon general

Congress must tackle crisis in physician numbers in the US, says AMA president

Doctors should no longer use only body mass index (BMI) when assessing patients for overweight or obesity, the American Medical Association (AMA) decided at its annual meeting in Chicago.1 The new policy criticised the use of BMI because body shape and composition differ across race and ethnic groups, sex, gender, and age, and because the measure had been used for racist exclusion. AMA past president Jack Resneck Jr said at the meeting on 14 June, “There are concerns with the way BMI has been…

Guns were used in more than three quarters of murders in the US in 2020, the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, up nearly 35% on 2019 and a 25 year high, data have shown. Some 19 350 people died in gun homicides in 2020, up from 14 392 in 2019.1 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which carried out the analysis, described firearm homicides and suicides as “important public health concerns in the United States with substantial inequities by race and ethnicity and poverty leve…

Covid-19: US cases drop overall but increase among children

Stephen Hahn, director of the US Food and Drug Administration, issued an emergency use authorization on 11 December approving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus. Distribution throughout the US began on Sunday 13 December.1 On Thursday the FDA’s independent advisory panel had voted in favor of an emergency use authorization.2 The panel will this week consider a second vaccine, made by Moderna, whose approval also seems likely. Nearly three million doses of the Pfizer vaccine ar…

Neurosurgery is highest paid specialty in the US, survey shows

After the mass shootings last week in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, seven leading US medical and public health organisations have called for comprehensive steps against gun violence, which they called a critical public health issue.1 “As with other public-health crises, firearm-related injury and death are preventable,” the organizations said. The American College of Physicians, the Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Surgeons, the Amer…

Serious illness often means financial disaster for Americans, study finds