The Latest Research, Commentary, And News From Health Affairs
Friday, September 24, 2021
Dear John,
Global health papers in the September issue focus on heart attack care and sick leave.
Heart Attack Care & Paid Sick Leave
Two papers in the most recent issue of Health Affairs compare aspects of US health care with other countries.
In one paper, John Hsu and coauthors compared heart attack care among the elderly in the United States and Norway, two countries with some of the world’s highest per capita medical spending levels.
“To our surprise,” they wrote, "post–acute myocardial infarction treatments dropped substantially with increasing age, including both more invasive procedural treatments and inexpensive medications” in both countries. The size of the decrease is modestly smaller in the US than in Norway.
In the second study, Jody Heymann and colleagues looked at inequities related to the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which provides job protection but no pay. The act’s “minimum hours requirement disproportionately excludes women…whereas its tenure requirement disproportionately excludes Black, Indigenous, and multiracial workers,” they found.
The authors emphasize that US policies differ significantly from those of its peers: “Every other high-income country provides paid sick leave to all workers regardless of firm size, nearly all countries with paid sick leave cover workers regardless of hours, and a majority do so regardless of tenure.”
Today on Health Affairs Blog, Jared Baeten from Gilead Sciences responds to criticism of Gilead’s research decisions around two decades of HIV therapy development.
In a new GrantWatch post, Laudan Aron and coauthors describe three key recommendations from an Urban Institute assessment of a portfolio of health-focused community development grants awarded by a large foundation. These insights could help other funders seeking long-lasting systems change to improve community health, well-being, and equity.
Elevating Voices: Hispanic Heritage Month: In a GrantWatch blog post earlier this year, Alonzo Plough and Gail Christopher discussed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s National Commission to Transform Public Health Data Systems.
They argue, “Current health data constructs and systems exemplify structural racism in their lack of detail by race and ethnicity and failure to make disaggregated data available when they have been collected.”
Listen to our latest podcasts. On today’s episode of This Week, Jessica Bylander and Rob Lott talk about recent policy movements on maternal health and postpartum insurance coverage.
The Fight to Expand Postpartum
Medicaid—And Why It Matters Listen to Health Affairs' Jessica Bylander and Rob Lott talk about recent policy movements on maternal health and postpartum insurance coverage.
You are invited to join us on Tuesday, September 28, for “Following the ACA: A Status Check,” featuring Health Affairs Contributing EditorKatie Keith.
More than a decade since it was signed into law, the Affordable Care Act has been baked into every part of the health care system. The law has been a success on many measures, but its impact on other indicators—such as health care costs—is far from clear.
As Congress considers new ways to build upon the law, join us to learn more about the history of health reform, what it has meant for access to coverage and care, and what to expect next from Congress and the White House.
The session is intended to be highly interactive, and participants will interact directly with the speaker. Chris Fleming,Health Affairsblog editor, will moderate.
Date: Tuesday, September 28, 2021 Time: 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (EDT) Place: Online details will be shared with registrants 24 hours in advance of the event
Health Affairs is the leading peer-reviewedjournalat the
intersection of health, health care, and policy. Published monthly by Project HOPE, the journal is available in print and online. Late-breaking content is also found through healthaffairs.org, Health Affairs Today, and Health Affairs Sunday Update.
Project HOPE is a global health and humanitarian relief organization that places power in the hands of local health care workers to save lives across the globe. Project HOPE has published Health Affairs since 1981.
