Health Policy InsightHealthcare management online analysis and intelligence
Health Policy InsightMy friend and colleague Felicia Cox, who has died aged 60, was an inspirational nurse leader who carried out pioneering work in pain management. She was editor in chief of the British Journal of Pain for more than a decade and a founder member of the Pain Nurse Network, which was originally for UK nurses and is now international.
Known to all as Flick, she was born in Launceston, Tasmania, the eldest of the five children of Junetta (nee Keep), an office worker, and Berkley Cox, a well-known Australian Rules footballer who played for Carlton in Victoria. As a young girl, Flick was given a nurse’s uniform – a white dress, red cape and nun-type headdress, which she took to wearing around the house. She eventually followed in the footsteps of her glamorous Aunt Suzanne, who was a senior nurse.
Continue reading...UK Health Security Agency says cases have been treated successfully and antibiotics are being given as a precaution
Three cases of meningitis B have been confirmed in the south-west of England, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), and young people in the area have been offered vaccinations against the disease.
The cases, which have all been confirmed to have occurred between the 20 March and 15 April in Dorset, have been treated. Those affected are said to be recovering well, according to the UKHSA.
Continue reading...Current and ex-officials at the CDC warn Americans’ health security in danger under RFK Jr’s direction
Fourteen months after Robert F Kennedy Jr was sworn in as US health secretary, the country’s prime public health agency over which he presides is in a state of disarray.
Eighty per cent of the top director positions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stand vacant, with no permanent leader to drive policies affecting the health of millions of Americans. No one is in place to coordinate the agency’s day-to-day work fighting infectious disease, combatting heart conditions or screening for cancer.
Continue reading...Jolie has star power as an American film-maker who gets diagnosed with breast cancer while filming in a blandly drawn Paris fashion show
As this film’s producer-star, Angelina Jolie shows honesty and courage in tackling a story that so closely mirrors her own experience of having a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer. But sadly, the film itself feels specious and shallow, insisting with bland and weirdly humourless confidence on the glamorous importance of the fashion world in which it is set.
Jolie’s character, Maxine, is an American indie film-maker just arrived in Paris, having been picked to direct the opening short movie for a super-prestigious fashion show. Her character is first-among-equals in the ensemble cast. Anyier Anei is Ada, a fledgling model from South Sudan who is to be the show’s star; Ella Rumpf plays makeup artist and would-be writer Angèle, trying to convert her experiences into an edgy fictionalised memoir; Louis Garrel smoulders and frowns as only he can as Anton, the first assistant director on Maxine’s film; and Vincent Lindon is the rumpled, caring Dr Hansen, who has the unhappy task of telling Maxine that his American colleague has passed on to him the results of her recent biopsy, and that she has breast cancer. (He sadly watches her walking away down the pavement from his high window after their consultation, while smoking a pensive cigarette.)
Continue reading...Though welcomed by chefs and campaigners, many schools say the government’s plan to remove ‘grab and go’ options from the menu is a step too far
It is lunchtime at Richard Challoner school, a Catholic comprehensive for boys in New Malden, south-west London. The familiar smell of school lunch is beginning to waft around the corridors.
In the canteen, there is a moment of calm as the kitchen team make final preparations before year 7 descend – a mass of chatting, laughing boys, with backpacks swinging and empty tummies grumbling.
Continue reading...Schwartz was deputy surgeon general under Trump’s first administration and is a rear admiral in the US Coast Guard
Donald Trump has selected Erica Schwartz to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), bringing to an end a months-long search for a permanent head of the troubled public health agency.
Trump revealed his choice on Truth Social, saying: “I am pleased to announce the new leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is my Honor to nominate the incredibly talented Dr Erica Schwartz, MD, JD, MPH, as my Director of the CDC,” he wrote. “She is a STAR!”
Continue reading...Health secretary and chef Robert Irvine claim Americans could eat healthier and more cheaply if they shopped better
The first episode of the new Secretary Kennedy Podcast, produced by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), opens with this quote from guest Robert Irvine, who creates meal plans for the US military: “We talk about food being expensive. If you’re buying expensive food, it’s expensive. But if you’re buying food and you know what to do with it, it’s not expensive.”
The episode is titled Fixing America’s Food System – Robert Irvine, and features a 45-minute conversation with the HHS secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the host of the show, and guest Irvine. Best known as a celebrity chef, Irvine has collaborated with the US military to launch Victory Fresh, a program that offers healthy grab-and-go meals on military bases, during the Biden administration. The program’s Biden-era origins are never acknowledged during the show.
Continue reading...Spy-tech company and founder Peter Thiel should ‘have their hands ripped off our NHS’, say MPs
MPs have queued up to demand the government scraps its £330m NHS contract with the spy-tech company Palantir, calling it “dreadful” and “shameful” in a debate on Thursday, after which the government said it was “no fan” of the US company’s politics.
Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs led the calls for Palantir, which also works for Donald Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown and the Israeli military, to be removed as a supplier to the NHS federated data platform (FDP), with one Labour backbencher, Samantha Niblett, questioning whether it could be “trusted as a custodian of the intimate health records of tens of millions of British citizens”.
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