West and Central Africa are experiencing explosive growth in urban populations, economic activities, and connectivity. The recent Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa demonstrated the vulnerability of the local health care infrastructure to newly emergi…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has long recognized that physicians and patients are generally willing to accept greater risks from drugs used to treat life-threatening illnesses than they would from drugs used for less serious illnesses. The ag…
Smoking cessation reduces the risk of major chronic diseases and extends life expectancy, but considerable weight gain may occur in quitters after cessation. Such weight gain is probably due to increased appetite and reduced energy expenditure and may …
Two opposing trends provide a point and counterpoint for the health of the public. The good news is that the prevalence of smoking among adults in the United States has dropped to a provisional modern low of 13.9% (although this figure means that there…
She bore a scowl and a combative attitude from the moment I walked into the room. In response to my hopeful “How can I help you?” she unleashed a tirade that seemed to pick up where some prior conversation had left off. Though she was new to my practic…
Type 2 diabetes is a complex disease that leads to continuous medical care with comprehensive, multifactorial strategies for reducing cardiovascular risk. Patients with type 2 diabetes have risks of death and cardiovascular events that are 2 to 4 times…
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have played key roles in the emergence of safe and effective human gene therapies. Now, we are proposing new efforts to encourage further advances in this rapidly evolvi…
The Medicare payment policy for evaluation and management services — the most commonly billed type of physician services in the United States — has long attracted scrutiny. Tasked with rewarding cognitive work by physicians that is commensurate with pa…
In December 2017, the Boston radio station WBUR chronicled the case of the first patient at Massachusetts General Hospital to receive axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta, Gilead) outside a clinical trial. The chimeric antigen receptor T cells (CAR-Ts) we…
In January 2018, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a letter to state Medicaid directors “to assist states in their efforts to improve Medicaid enrollee health and well-being through incentivizing work and community engagement….
