Is anyone a better champion of the importance of vaccines to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic than a nurse? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) doesn’t think so. During a late-December videocast at the NIH Clinical Center, prominent healthcare leaders, including nurses, received the Moderna vaccine to demonstrate that it is safe and effective and to encourage others to get inoculated.
U.S. states that adopted the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion in January 2014 have earlier colon cancer diagnoses, enhanced access to care, and improved colon cancer surgical care than states that didn’t implement the expansion, researchers reported in Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Additionally, patients in the expansion states were more likely to have minimally invasive procedures and fewer urgent surgeries.
President Joe Biden made several campaign promises to improve or safeguard health care for all Americans with a focus on scientific and medical evidence. Shortly after the transfer of power, the Biden administration appointed and nominated public health experts to lead the various federal agencies dedicated to safety and biomedical research.
Healthcare providers are one of the most at-risk populations for contracting the COVID-19 coronavirus. However, a 2020 study of healthcare workers found that acquired immunity from an initial COVID-19 infection offers protection against reinfection for at least six months or asymptomatic infection in the rare instances where someone subsequently tested positive within six months of acquiring immunity.
On February 22, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cemiplimab-rwlc (Libtayo®) for the first-line treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are not candidates for surgical resection or definitive chemoradiation and whose tumors have high PD-L1 expression (tumor proportion score ≥ 50%) as determined by an FDA-approved test, with no estimated aberrations to glomerular filtration rate, anaplastic lymphoma kinase, or receptor tyrosine kinase (encoded by the ROS1 gene).
What’s the real cost of youth vaping? In a campaign to combat the ongoing epidemic, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Scholastic, which publishes classroom magazines with accompanying teacher guides, provided e-cigarette education materials for middle and high school students to teach young Americans about the risks of e-cigarette use and nicotine addiction.
Nearly 60 million people in the United States and almost 200 million around the world have received the COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine as of mid-February 2021, and the numbers will continue to grow as more doses come to market and other manufacturers’ versions receive emergency use authorizations. As more people get vaccinated, some of the expected side effects are being observed in clinical practice and have implications for cancer care.
Cancer caregivers are silent and sometimes forgotten victims of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Its impact on patients with cancer and healthcare providers is widely discussed, but it also affects caregiver responsibilities and burden.
From Teddy Roosevelt to JFK, presidents throughout history have sent legislation to Capitol Hill with the intent to expand healthcare coverage to more Americans. Finally, when Lyndon B. Johnson drafted a bill and pushed it through Congress by expanding sections of the Social Security Act, Medicare become an entitlement and is now implemented by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). During the past 50 years, federal health coverage has grown to include Medicaid, maternal and childcare assistance, public health programs, and prescription medication pricing.
Through two letters—one to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and another to U.S. Senate and House leaders—the Nursing Community Coalition, on whose steering committee ONS sits, congratulated policymakers while outlining the need for continued support of nurses in health care.