Category Archives: Research

Psychology Today and recent headlines

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I am thrilled to have the opportunity to blog at Psychology Today. My first post at my new blog, In the Kingdom of the Sick, is up today. I would love it if you’d click on over, leave a comment, and subscribe to it. I will be posting lots of new content and articles over there, and will not replicate the material that appears here on my personal blog.

I also have a new piece up over at Cognoscenti, WBUR’s Ideas and Opinions page, where I am a regular contributor. It’s all about collaboration between patient and provider, and why participatory medicine is so important. I wrote a lot about this in my new book, and am happy to see it getting mainstream media attention.

Up next here: a book review of My Foreign Cities, a memoir about a woman’s experiences living with her husband’s cystic fibrosis.

Why I Participate in Medical Research

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Um, it’s March.

How did that happen? In a blink, the late classes that used to start when it was dark now only end in the shadows of dusk, and tiny shoots of early spring flowers are poking through slushy dirt.

It’s been awhile. Actually, it’s been the longest stretch of time in between posts I think I’ve ever had. Usually, silence equals bad news in my world, but thankfully my absence is not the result of acute illness and fragmentation like it was when I made my confessions here last March.

Instead, it’s just a lot of medium-sized things piling up, leaving me standing in a pile of excuses and hating hearing the words coming out of my mouth.

You see, I meant to write a post this weekend in honor of Rare Disease Day, a cause that means so much to me. But I was out of town and then I got glutened, which totally threw me off my game. It’s a few days late, but my meek attempt at fulfilling an obligation I feel strongly about is to instead point you to my Rare Disease Day post from last year, since all the points still ring true.

(How ironic is it that on the heels of my last post on restaurants doing more to accommodate food allergies I went and got glutened for the first time in quite awhile? And this was after speaking with both an employee and a manager and being assured beyond all doubt the marinade on the chicken did not have wheat. Super. I know it wasn’t the lettuce underneath the chicken that made me wretchedly ill…)

And I meant to write and submit a post for this edition of Patients For a Moment that answered the questions: What is your relationship to illness? Is there a particular time when you wish illness wasn’t in the picture? Or is there a time when you find it’s easy to forget about illness?

But I didn’t, because each night that week I came home with the best of intentions but by the time I battled traffic and had chest PT it was already 8pm and I hadn’t started dinner and my work inbox needed me and man, my brain was tired. And as much as I wanted to elegantly dissect the ramifications of being a lifelong patient and never knowing what it was like to live without illness as my near-constant companion, I couldn’t get the words from my brain to the screen.

See? Excuses. Valid and truthful, yes, but in the end, meaningless.

But there’s something else I’ve been doing the past few weeks (months, really) that I don’t need to make excuses for, something that relates to the Rare Disease Day and to our identities as patients.

I’ve been participating in research studies. From broad public health studies launched in the ER to short, three-week surveys to long-term trials with blood work and follow-ups, I’ve jumped in whenever I’ve been approached by a research assistant. Sometimes, the studies have little value to my personal situation but are part of worthwhile projects in communicable diseases or prevention. Other times, the studies are directly related to what I live with and am going through.

I am not exaggerating when I say I wouldn’t be alive and certainly wouldn’t have the quality of life I do have were it not for medical research, for the thousands of participants or “subjects” who have volunteered for studies before me and for the researchers and scientists who launch these investigations.

From my point of view, any time I can participate in a research study it’s a tiny way of giving back, and of hopefully contributing to something that will positively impact other patients down the road.

For rare disease patients, the need for research is especially critical. So it may be a few days late and it may not be an official Rare Disease Day post, but consider this my public service announcement for the week.

And at least this is something I don’t have a lame excuse for these days!

Getting Out of My Own Way

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I’ve noticed a pattern the past couple of weeks.

I have a lot to say. From following up on the issue of chronic illness and parenting to re-visiting that lofty January goal of balance to so many others things, I do not suffer from lack of ideas.

And yet, whenever it’s time to settle down and crank out a post, I end up reading. Sometimes it’s Penelope Trunk or Dawn Friedman, sometimes it’s Kairol Rostenthal or Duncan Cross or Sick Momma.

What can I say? I’m eclectic.

It’s not an issue of being too sick to write, like I am sometimes, nor is it an issue of competing priorities. (I think I’ve forsaken the idea of negotiating them right now, anyway.)

Instead, it’s idea overload.

And in a much more exaggerated way, the same thing is happening with what appears in my mind as full caps, the much longed-for and equally feared BOOK 2.

I’ve discovered something: I really love research. Getting lost in journals, tracking down archived information, furiously annotating books (and books, and books). Of course I love the writing part, but that was a given. The more research I do, the more I want to write, the more the ideas develop and complicate each other in ways I didn’t foresee.

But the past couple of weeks I’ve found that I’ve used research as a distraction, something tangible I can say I’m doing for the oh-so-demanding BOOK 2, something I know is important to the overall process.

But deep down I know I’m doing it because I have so many ideas in my head, so many images of what material I’ll add to which paragraph and which interviews will flow best, that I’m running in circles.

Now, I’ve tried to be proactive about this. I diligently schedule in daily chunks of writing time, even if it means pulling back-to-back 7-8 hour workdays on the weekend. I precisely list the topics I need to address on a particular day.

I even recently hired a research assistant, who is fabulous and competent and efficient. I make lists for her, and she skillfully completes the tasks and gets me the information I need.

(I know! It’s the best.thing.ever.)

And yet I remain trapped in my own head, word counts taunting me and stacks of research beckoning me.

One of my students wrote recently that the hardest part is the doing—after free-writing and just seeing what comes about is the best way she can eventually get around to her point.

I think that could be the solution. I’m so immersed in ideas that I’m hemming myself in. I need to let go and see what happens, with less analyzing what I need to write or should write and more barebones writing.

Letting go is never easy for me. (Seriously. Ask my husband when it’s midnight and I’m obsessing about something.)

So, deep breath. Write now, worry about structure and voice and perfection later.

At least I got this piece done. It’s a start.

Writers, researchers, and kindred control freaks everywhere, any other tips?

An Issue of Scope

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It’s been a more eventful few weeks than normal, what with last-minute
trips to New York, visiting old haunts in Dublin, dealing with epic technology fails, and the assorted messiness and unpredictability of daily life.

Still, no matter how wonderful or frustrating these distractions are, they haven’t supplanted the main thing looming in my mind right now:

I’m having a bit of scope issue these days (and yes, here’s where the “writing” part of the writing blog comes in). For a huge project I’m working on, I’m asking a lot of questions I don’t know the answers to yet, questions I am not even sure have resolute answers…which is of course a great thing. After all, questions with known answers aren’t exactly intellectually stimulating.

However, the flipside to being really interested in something and asking lots of questions means that as soon as you locate research and information and begin to understand something, you realize how much more you need to know. And then when you find that next piece of the story, yet more doors open. It’s an exhilarating, exhausting cycle. I’ve gathered thousands of pages of journal articles, newspaper/magazine articles, essays, and statistics. I’ve read and annotated dozens of books, and am in the middle of several rounds of interviews with people all of all persuasions—patients, doctors, researchers, activists, policymakers, etc.

I can sit at my desk and quite literally be surrounded by mounds of resources, fully organized and categorized, and still not know exactly what I am doing. I know this is part of the process, I know this is how it should be, but sometimes I am overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information I have. Some of the research articles or carefully annotated passages from books I know I won’t end up using, some of it I know is still out there and is information I will need, I just don’t know it yet. How much context do I need, how much background is appropriate, how can I possibly touch on the surface of topics that are so big each could warrant a book on its own?

To talk myself of the ledge of information overload, I’ve had to remind myself that all of it matters, that it’s all shaping something bigger and eventually it will become clear to me how the pieces fit. None of the knowledge will be in vain. Seriously, I’ve actually said this to myself in my head. (What can I say? Writing can be an isolating existence at times. I’m lucky I don’t say it to dogs.)

It reminds me a little of one of my early experiences freelancing. I pitched Idea A to a newspaper editor, who teased out a smaller thread from my original idea and assigned me Idea B as the story. I jumped in, reading multiple books, wading through research, interviewing national experts, revising draft after draft. I became truly engrossed in the topic, and rattled off statistics and factoids without ceasing to anyone unfortunate enough to ask me about it. I’m fairly certain my neck flushed and I talked with my hands, which happens when I’m either nervous or really animated.

Then the editor decided it wasn’t the right fit for her page after all. Of course I was upset; no byline, no paycheck, no recompense for hours and hours of work. But I don’t regret the experience at all. I now know so much about direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals, and I still have strong feelings about it. The foundation I got from that story comes in handy when I’m interviewing people for other stories, when I’m doing research for my book, when I’m reading and responding to other blogs and essays, when I’m thinking about health reform, when I’m watching television or flipping through a magazine and am inundated with bouncing balls, buzzing bees, or luminous butterflies.

And when I have classes full of pharmacy students? I don’t regret for a second all the knowledge I gained because it allows me to engage in a more meaningful dialogue with them.

So yes, I sometimes need to remind myself that all of this data that is flying around will settle, and that none of it will be in vain. In a way, it’s also similar to all the researching and trial and error we do when we’re narrowing down diagnoses or testing different treatments. Not everything is going to yield the exact answer you’re looking for in that moment, but eventually you find it will answer other important questions, too.

While I prefer concrete answers when it comes to diagnoses and treatments, despite its stresses I see the value in unraveling questions. When it comes to writing, I wouldn’t want it a different way.

Disclosing Physcians’ Gifts: Analysis, Articles, and An Interview

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As a patient, patient blogger, and all around news junkie, I have to admit when I first heard about health care reform legislation in Massachusetts aimed at reducing costs this past March, I was more than interested. When I learned that part of this legislation involved a ban on gifts to physicians from pharmaceutical companies, I was even more interested. Reduce costs and limit potential conflicts of interest? My heart trilled just a bit. What’s not to love?

But if a recent flurry of headlines about the controversy and heated opinions are any indication, newly modified legislation that makes public any gift of $50 or more a physician receives from a pharmaceutical or other company is anything but simple or obvious—especially in a state like Massachusetts, where the life sciences sector is a huge part of the economy and academic research centers and hospitals are integral.

To wit, an editorial in the Boston Globe urges Governor Deval Patrick to stand firm on the bill, writing that “the state is right to make sure doctors make medication decisions based on merits, and not meals.” At the same time, an op-ed penned by leaders from the biotech and medical device industries outlines their case for why the legislation “will absolutely affect whether companies continue to choose our world-class hospitals for this important clinical work.” Read through them for more background; there’s a lot to digest.

It’s certainly a good time to be a health news junkie in Boston, no?

As always, what I’m interested in how these issues will affect our daily lives. As a patient with rare diseases who knows firsthand how important research and development are to patient outcomes, how could I not be curious? After all, clinical trials are where the developments we count on come from, and if this legislation will have a negative impact on clinical trials, as opponents claim, I’m certainly paying attention.

It makes plenty of sense to me why legislators who want to reform health care and contain costs would support this bill, and it makes a lot of sense to me why patients would care about what their doctors are getting from the companies that manufacture the medications and medical devices that treat them. Patients want the treatments that are best for them, and those are not necessarily the ones that have the largest marketing and promotions budget. Transparency is a hot-button issue in health care right now, and with good reason in this context.

It’s important to me I understand where the positions both sides are taking originate, and clearly it’s not enough to pit this in terms of disclosing physicians’ gifts or not, or making comments about sandwiches and pens. To that end, I chatted today with Dr. David Charles, chairman of the Alliance for Patient Access, a non-profit organization that teaches physicians how to advocate to ensure patients have access to appropriate therapies, to see why there is such opposition to this legislation.

(Since it’s all about disclosure, the AfPA receives funding from industry trade groups).

According to Dr. Charles, a fundamental problem with this portion of the legislation is that it has the potential to set up a “complete misunderstanding” of the relationship between universities, physicians, and the companies (pharmaceutical, medical devices, biologics, etc) that support these clinical trials—and he considers this partnership imperative if we’re to continue seeing progress in understanding and treating diseases like multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer’s, to name but a few.

“This is a step backwards, not forwards,” he says.

Since the information published on the state Web site would mention the physician’s name and the money he/she received that went above $50—and not how the money was used—he fears the flow of funding could be misconstrued. This also goes along with other claims (see links above) that this kind of disclosure would make physicians less likely to participate in clinical trials, meaning companies would then invest in them in other places.

For example, money that goes to the university to help support clinical trials would look like it was simply being paid to a physician, not the university and all the staff involved in the trial. Or, money allocated for a physician to teach other physicians how to use cutting edge technology and devices that improve patient care would not be identified as such. Dr. Charles worries this “disclosure without context” could make what are completely appropriate and essential practices seem inappropriate.

He also had some interesting things to say about the writing of prescriptions, which is often one of the first criticisms patients and policy experts point to when discussing conflicts of interest and gifts from pharmaceutical companies. “Writing prescriptions is not the issue at hand,” he says. Rather, helping physicians understand when to select certain medications—what the side effects are, what drugs they work the best with and which ones they shouldn’t be prescribed with, etc—is the key issue. He views educating physicians about these variables, much like training physicians on how to use new equipment and other forms of continuing medical information, as both completely appropriate and essential for the best care for patients.

So patients (and readers from all points of view), I’m interested in what you think about all of this. As you can see from the media blitz on all sides the debate wages on, but the bottom line is, what is best for the patient? Do the potential risks to the partnership so important to clinical trials outweigh the benefits of the concept of transparency so many of us hold as paramount these days? While we wait for the Governor’s response, I’m eager for yours.

UPDATE, 8/11: Here’s an update article from today’s Globe that discusses the health policy Gov. Deval Patrick signed into law. Looks like transparency wins–or at least gets a big push! Check out the article; there’s a lot of good info the primary care physician problem I’ve written about before.

An Open Mind

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I was asked recently what one thing I would like to tell physicians, nurses, and other health care providers. I just wrote a book about interacting with the health care system, and its content ran the gamut of emotion: gratitude, optimism, frustration, skepticism–clearly I’m not one for brevity.

In the end, though, the answer was succinct, and the more I think about it, it is something that applies to patients and practitioners equally:

Keep an open mind.

In terms of diagnosis, the flash point for so many patients with chronic conditions, keeping an open mind works in several ways. For physicians, it means remembering that the obvious, logical diagnosis may not always be the correct one, something I can attest to personally. I am forever grateful to the physicians who looked beyond what “should” have made sense for a diagnosis and found the diagnosis that actually reflected both my experiences and my symptoms—even if it was an exceedingly rare one. For patients, it means remembering that even if you’ve been dismissed before, it is possible to start fresh with a physician or nurse practitioner and work towards a correct diagnosis.

In daily life, keeping an open mind means, quite literally, being open to new or creative ways to adapt to illness. Whether it means trying techniques like yoga or meditation, incorporating new foods and recipes into meal planning, or very pragmatic things like switching your exercise schedule or working out a flex time arrangement with an employer, keeping an open mind means recognizing there are many different approaches towards accomplishing a particular wellness or lifestyle goal.

If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, then you know how important I think an open mind and a willingness to try new ways of solving existing problems are to meeting some of the universal challenges in health care: better disease outcomes, increased compliance, and, yes, of course, more accurate and efficient diagnoses.

That’s why I’ve posted about the value of expressive writing, and why I developed a creative writing program for chronically ill pediatric patients. It’s also why I think programs like Dancing with Parkinson’s or Loolwa Khazzoom’s Natural Pain Relief that use dance and other forms of the arts to relieve pain, increase strength, and otherwise address symptoms of debilitating disease are incredibly valuable.

It’s also why I was so interested in “Monet? Gauguin? Using Art to Make Better Doctors” from Sunday’s Boston Globe, which discussed a class at Harvard Medical School that encouraged medical students to use art to improve that most fundamental and most complex of interactions—the patient exam and diagnostic process.

The article quotes Dr. Joel Katz, who first proposed the class five years ago, as saying, “We’re trying to train students to not make assumptions about what they’re going to see, but to do deep looking. Our hope is that they will be able to do this when they look at patients.”

Turns out, new research in the Journal of General Internal Medicine supports this. The article goes on to say that the students’ ability to make more observations increased by 38 percent. In age where physicians rely heavily on CT scans, MRIs and other specialty diagnostic tools—some argue too heavily, and at too high a cost for the health care consumer—helping medical students learn to see the many possibilities inherent in one situation is a valuable skill indeed. More precise observations yield more precise diagnoses.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? The course was a stark departure from the required core courses at Harvard Medical, but all it took was a few open minds…

Summer Reading…

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Nothing says Independence Day quite like the Law and Order SVU marathon. With my long weekend vacation plans derailed by an acute infection (where do I keep catching these things, anyway?), I ditched the sandy shores of Cape Cod for my living room couch and settled in for the one-two punch of the nebulizer and Benson and Stabler cracking meaty cases.

However, my revised weekend plans also gave me a lot of time to feed my habit as a news junkie, and I came across some stories I had to share.

I recently wrote about the promise of research in terms of better treatments and improved outcomes, so I was particularly excited to read these new developments. This Boston Globe article discusses cutting-edge nanotechnology that allows scientists to detect cancer cells in patients’ blood, which could mean more targeted treatment and less side effects.

According to the article, “The technology, invented at Massachusetts General Hospital, uses a microchip scanner no bigger than a business card to analyze a patient’s blood, hunting for stray cells shed by tumors. The device is so powerful that it can detect a single cancer cell among 1 billion healthy blood cells.”

Another Globe article—this one’s hot off the presses, in today’s edition—reports that scientists have linked 32 genes to Crohn’s disease, a serious autoimmune disorder that affects the GI system. While genome research is often used to help determine the risk of developing certain diseases, this type of information is a powerful use of research with huge implications for patients. As the article posits, figuring out what goes wrong in certain diseases will help experts design more effective treatments:

“I would say Crohn’s disease has proved the paradigm,” said Dr. Francis S. Collins, outgoing director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. “Namely, that by studying the genetic factors involved in a complicated disease, you can shine bright light on its causes that you never could have achieved any other way.”

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In preparation for a ReachMD radio interview I’m doing, I’ve been thinking a lot about the doctor-patient relationship. I’ve had some truly amazing doctors and nurse practitioners—compassionate, insightful, dedicated, and creative people. I’ve also had the opposite, of course, and those are the relationships I’ve abandoned. As such, I found this New York Times piece fascinating—in this case, it’s the doctor who ends the relationship because he cannot work with the pediatric patient’s difficult (and noncompliant) mother. Check it out and see if you agree.

Speaking of the New York Times, I’ve enjoyed past entries about writing and illness in Tara-Parker Pope’s “Well” column. If you’re interested in the power of expressive writing, here’s another good read from her column, this time about poetry and cancer.

Enjoy!

What’s In a Treatment…

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Earlier this week, I was fortunate to attend an event at Fenway Park (can’t ask for a better setting than that!) benefiting and celebrating the neuroscience department at BIDMC. On so many levels, it was a wonderful evening. I got to chat with one of my favorite medbloggers and BIDMC CEO, I met a fascinating and highly acclaimed memoirist, and spoke with all kinds of people doing creative things in health care.

The most exhilarating part of the evening was learning about the innovative research and treatments these doctors are working on, and the atmosphere of collaboration and care for the patient that guides it. Whether it was discussing yoga and dance therapy for Parkinson’s patients, hearing patients talk about stroke rehabilitation, or learning how noninvasive techniques can help patients with a variety of conditions, it was impossible not to feel the energy and potential gathered in that room.

You don’t need to be a neurology patient or even the friend or family member of one to appreciate these types of advancements. In fact, the idea that if given the appropriate time, resources, and environment researchers can get closer to developing more refined, targeted, and effective innovations for diseases is one that stretches across many disciplines.

By pure coincidence, I also stumbled across this Slate article, “Old Drugs, New Tricks” this week. Writer Darshak Sanghavi points out that in some of the major fields of medicine—like pediatric oncology, or cardiovascular disease—some of the most significant strides in increasing patient survival rates came from refining existing older drug therapies, rather than aggressively hyped new medications. Of course he points out cases where brand new drugs have made enormous (and unexpected) gains for patients, but his central point is a compelling one, and his thoughts about why some specialties are better equipped for the long-term, rigorous studies that make such refinement possible make a lot of sense.

As someone with multiple conditions of varying degrees of severity and treatment options, I find myself in an interesting position within this debate. When I was diagnosed with PCD and bronchiectasis a few years ago, my treatment regimen changed in many ways. While I had pretty much lived on steroids and all kinds of inhalers for most of my life (and spending weeks each year in the hospital and getting worse with each trip shows how well that worked out for me), I switched over to a system of rotating strong antibiotics. I still use inhalers and my nebulizer, but the steroids are no longer the first line of treatment. I also started daily chest physiotherapy, and that has made such a difference in my quality of life.

I mention all this because for me, some of the biggest improvements in my quality of life, and even my survival, are tried and true therapies. (This isn’t to say that some of my antibiotics aren’t newer generation, or that the vest I use when I can’t get chest PT isn’t a more modern version of the very physical and visceral pounding I get from my therapist, obviously.)

These things were already in existence and working well in some populations—but if it weren’t for advanced technology and research, I wouldn’t have known to use them because I wouldn’t have been able to get the correct diagnosis for such a rare condition. Without research and innovation, I’d still be chafing under the wrong diagnosis, living between hospitalizations, and causing yet more irreversible damage to my lungs.

(You can probably see now why the research I learned about the other night was so exhilarating, yes? Hope is an equal-opportunity phenomenon.)

So while my daily life involves many old-school techniques, my improved quality of life and my existence as a PCD patient speaks very much to new-school capabilities. It’s a collaboration between what we already know works for similar patients and what we’re beginning to understand about how specific cells and structures function—and based on what I learned the other night, it’s a collaboration that also stretches across all sorts of specialties and boundaries.

Clearly I can’t say if so many of us will ever have a cure for what ails us, but the more innovation and collaboration we have, the more we can refine treatments and understand the origins of our disease and target specific pathways, connections, and cells, the better. As the Slate article points out, it must be done in the appropriate way, and as recent events have shown me, when this happens, it’s a great thing.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—A Wake-Up Call

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I read “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome No Longer Seen as ‘Yuppie Flu’” in the New York Times with great interest.

Actually, it was more than just passing interest I felt. It was similar to when I read that Anheuser-Busch launched Redbridge, a gluten-free beer: relief. After all, if a mainstream beer company embraced the needs of the gluten-free consumer, didn’t that mean others would soon follow suit?

So when I read that the CDC released studies “that linked the condition to genetic mutations and abnormalities in gene expression involved in key physiological processes,” it buoyed me a bit. When I read that “some cases of the syndrome were caused when an acute infection set off a recurrence of latent infections of Epstein Barr virus and HHV-6, two pathogens that most people are exposed to in childhood,” I was intrigued.

Decades have passed since chronic fatigue was dismissed as “yuppie flu”—decades marked by residual skepticism and dismissal nonetheless—and understanding the biological origins of the condition has always been paramount in allaying these dismissals.

I don’t write about it often, but my personal history with chronic fatigue began when I was in high school and a case of mono felled me. For nineteen months. Nineteen months of fatigue that overwhelmed me (at first, I slept twenty hours a day); of pain in my neck and joints so severe I cried; of fevers and infections and a brain haze so profound I found it hard sometimes to type my name.

Eventually, doctors gave this siege a name: chronic fatigue, and the flare that began my junior year in high school lasted for several years. I know how fortunate I was to have doctors who identified and diagnosed it so quickly; sadly, this is not often the case, even ten years later.

My condition improved somewhat after those first few months, but it definitely changed things. I didn’t have the same stamina; more than that, I didn’t have the same faith or reliance in my own body.

A decade later, its presence still insets itself in my life, though I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t again had a flare like the one that swallowed up four years of my life. When it happens, I don’t always know the source of the deep fatigue, the brain fog that comes over me sometimes that makes my sentences clumsy and my muscles burn and ache: Residual effects of steroids? Not getting enough air? Lingering complications from adrenal insufficiency? Or chronic fatigue?

I tell myself sourcing these moments isn’t important; dealing with them and moving forward with everything I need to do is what counts. And I believe that. But I remember how bad it was when it was really bad, when chronic fatigue was life halting, not merely life altering—and I know there are so many people still in that life-halted state.

Which is why the news in this updated article—particularly given the fractious history that exists with the CDC in relation to chronic fatigue—is so important. Some highlights? Research using strong antiviral medications shows promise, and it’s an avenue that opens up options beyond population-based studies, which some advocates and patients fault.

Click on over to the link above and read the rest—see how far things have come along, and how much work there is to be done.

Trends and Prevention

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“Trends” is a big buzzword in healthcare. As such, I can’t help but notice a trend of my own. Yes, it is Easter, and yes, instead of Easter brunch with the family, I am hunkered down on the couch, nursing a fever and infection.

Sound familiar?

Let’s review: Thanksgiving (freak infection spread to my jaw; dinner was consumed via straw); Christmas (nursed a cold but unlike many Christmases, wasn’t in the hospital); New Year’s (very serious infection that felled me for weeks). On the bright side, at least I haven’t had to worry about the traditional holiday food hangover the past several holidays.

There really isn’t more to rehash about this trend of mine except that it broke my 11-day streak of being infection-free, a personal record since early October. So instead, I’ll turn this idea of chronic disease trends outwards.

The Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease and the Milken Institute released a new study that puts the annual cost of seven common chronic diseases (cancer, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, pulmonary conditions and mental illness) at $1.3 trillion.

Of that amount, a staggering $1.1 trillion is the result of lost productivity. Since I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to meet deadlines when I am sick, I can’t help but focus on this particular statistic about work, productivity, and illness. Since we live in an age where economics, healthcare, and quality of life are increasingly linked together and increasingly strained, I can’t help but focus on this study as a whole.

Sobering information? Definitely. But there’s a bigger message in these results, a positive one: most of this economic impact is avoidable through effective disease prevention.

In fact, according to an article on the PFCD’s site, “The study is the first of its kind to estimate the avoidable costs if a serious effort were made to improve Americans’ health. Assuming modest improvements in preventing and treating disease, Milken Institute researchers determined that by 2023 the nation could avoid 40 million cases of chronic disease and reduce the economic impact of chronic disease by 27 percent, or $1.1 trillion annually. They report that the most important factor is obesity, which if rates declined could lead to $60 billion less in treatment costs and $254 billion in increased productivity.”

There’s reason to hope this trend doesn’t have to continue.

(And with winter almost behind us, there’s reason to hope my own trend won’t continue, either. After all, my track record for July 4 is practically spotless!)