Brain Injury, Cancer Detection, Clean Water, & Project 2025 and Providers

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A Good Day To Advocate for Better Healthcare

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Detecting Traumatic Brain Injury

Early detection of traumatic Brain Injury can help patients long term prognosis. Now a new test has been shown to do just that.

Blood biomarkers taken within an hour of injury signaled the presence of CT lesions and the need for 24-hour neurosurgical intervention with high accuracy in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), a cohort study found.

In an analysis of blood samples from a previous trial, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1), and microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP-2) were significantly elevated within 30 and 60 minutes of injury, Linda Papa, MDCM, MSc, of the Orlando Regional Medical Center in Florida, and colleagues reported in JAMA Network Open.

Early Cancer Detection :)

The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a simple blood test to screen for colorectal cancer when it is still in its early stages and usually curable. This year, more than 53,000 people are expected to die of this disease.

This means Medicare will now pay the cost of this new test for seniors. But it will likely be years before private insurers cover it for younger people, among whom there has been an alarming rise in the prevalence of the disease.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) was created in 1984 as an mostly volunteer independent advisory group to evaluate scientific evidence on preventive measures and develop recommendations for primary care providers to follow. The task force weighs in on more than 80 topics, as varied as behavioral counseling, preventive medications (like this test), and screenings for mental and physical illnesses and domestic violence. They are volunteers who meet three times a year.

House Republicans have tried in their budgets to eliminate entirely the government arm that supports the task force, the Health and Human Services Department’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

We need to get such tests into the hands of more doctors to save more lives. To put it in context, those 53,000 lives lost every year to colorectal cancer are more than the number of Americans killed by cars yearly and more than the number killed by guns each year. (Washington Post)

Funding discussions are underway. We need to make sure that this is an area that increases not decreases.

ACTION

Call or email your Senators and Members of Congress and let them know that the colorectal blood test exists and can save lives if insurance covered the test. and that those agencies need additional funding not less to make such recommendations. You can reach them here, https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials.

Or use RESISTBOT via [Apple Messages / WHATSAPP / MESSENGER] or by texting SIGN PGFIDT to 50409 on your cell phone to send this message.

“I am your constituent and I just learned that there is a new test that can detect colon cancer very early so it can be treated successfully and lives can be saved. 53,000 of us die every year from it.

The process for making sure that insurance plans cover it is slow and cumbersome and many in Congress want to defund it. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force do not have sufficient funding and staff to review new medicines and treatments to make those recommendations that save lives.

Look, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is pretty much volunteer and only meets 3 times a year and they only get $11 million a year - they need way more funding so that more scientists and doctors can make the recommendations we need to save lives. I want you to make sure that funding for these two groups, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force , is increased so that more lives are saved, not decreased so that more lives are lost. Thank you.”

A Natural Way to Clean Water

First let me point out that it is better to not pollute water in the first place. My wife and directed a charity aimed at providing clean drinking water so this is close to home for us.

Water contamination by the chemicals used in today’s technology is a rapidly growing problem globally. A recent study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that 98 percent of people tested had detectable levels of PFAS, a family of particularly long-lasting compounds also known as “forever chemicals,” in their bloodstream. I understand that some of these are known to be endocrine disruptors.

A new filtration material developed by researchers at MIT might provide a nature-based solution to this stubborn contamination issue. The material, based on natural silk and cellulose, can remove a wide variety of these persistent chemicals as well as heavy metals. And, its antimicrobial properties can help keep the filters from fouling.

The findings are described in the journal ACS Nano.

PFAS chemicals are present in a wide range of products, including cosmetics, food packaging, water-resistant clothing, firefighting foams, and antistick coating for cookware. A recent study identified 57,000 sites contaminated by these chemicals in the U.S. alone. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that PFAS remediation will cost $1.5 billion per year, in order to meet new regulations that call for limiting the compound to less than 7 parts per trillion in drinking water.

Developing the filter was a happy scientific accident. The initial technology that made the filtration material possible was developed for a completely unrelated purpose — as a way to make a labelling system to counter the spread of counterfeit seeds, which are often of inferior quality. The researchers devised a way of processing silk proteins into uniform nanoscale crystals, or “nanofibrils,” through an environmentally benign, water-based drop-casting method at room temperature.

The team tried nanofibrillar materials for filtering contaminants, but initial attempts with the silk nanofibrils alone didn’t work. They then adding another material: cellulose, which is abundantly available and can be obtained from agricultural wood pulp waste. The researchers used a self-assembly method in which the silk fibroin protein is suspended in water and then templated into nanofibrils by inserting “seeds” of cellulose nanocrystals. This causes the previously disordered silk molecules to line up together along the seeds, forming the basis of a hybrid material with distinct new properties.

By integrating cellulose into the silk-based fibrils that could be formed into a thin membrane, and then tuning the electrical charge of the cellulose, the researchers produced a material that was highly effective at removing contaminants in lab tests.

The electrical charge of the cellulose, they found, also gave it strong antimicrobial properties,

I look for this to occur as a point of use filter like at a kitchen sink. (MIT)

The Effect of Project 2025 on the Healthcare Workforce

Project 2025, the far-right extremist agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation, and written by many who served in the Trump administration. It would increase the power of corporations at the expense of Americans’ health and well-being. It would give more control to health care companies by jeopardizing protections that help many patients access and afford the care they need.

While the agenda is broad, it would have significant ramifications for the health workforce and for health professions education.

Here is a link to a MedPage Today article describing some of the effects. It is worth a look. Of course diversity in healthcare will be out the window so we can expect a that a diverse workforce will dwindle. Studies show that when diversity declines healthcare for patients then suffers. Project 2025 would seek to remove any diversity consideration from school accreditation.

They plan to eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program which many healthcare professional use to pay off student debt by working in rural or underserved areas.

Project 2025 would also seek to make much of reproductive health care training optional for medical professionals. The plan requires that the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) make comprehensive reproductive health training optional (opt-in rather than opt-out) for doctors.

Summary

• Less training in reproductive health - bad for patients.

• Less opportunity for doctors and nurses to work in underserved areas because they will no longer be able to eliminate their student debt by doing so - bad for medical professionals and patients.

• Less diverse healthcare Workforce and so outcomes for a diverse population will suffer - bad for patients.

DON’T LET THEM SCREW UP OUR LIVES AND HEALTHCARE - VOTE ACCORDINGLY UP AND DOWN THE BALLOT.

Find My Elected Officials

Contact State and Federal Representatives - phone and email

• https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

Healthcare Advocacy (Us) Website

Our Newsletter resources including reproductive healthcare - Healthcare Advocacy Reading List

Important Healthcare Resources

League of Women Voters Healthcare Reform Toolkit

Organizations to Contact

National Nurses United Medicare4All

Physicians for a National Health Program

One Payer States

Healthcare Now

Reproductive Health

NARAL - Pro Choice America

Charley. chatbot abortion resource - make sure to use a secure incognito browser if you live in a state that has banned abortion

Planned Parenthood

Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline has references about where to procure abortion medications. They also assist women in the process of self managed abortion or miscarriage by phone or text and will respond in an hour. Details and hours of operation at their website.

United State of Women Reproductive health page (bottom of the page) has important resources such as medical support, access to Telehealth, prescriptions by mail, and legal support references.

Practice careful communications - The Digital Defense Fund has a number of tips to keep texts, calls, and internet use private. Here is their site.

If you need financial help with an abortion try abortionfunds.org

Claims Denials and Appeals & What to Do

Appeal a Healthcare Decision

Appeal/Negotiate a Hospital Bill

Disinformation Management

Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency

Library of Advice

Specific Advice

Save Democracy

Chop Wood, Carry Water by Jessica Cravens

RESISTBOT

Link to the RESISTBOT site to learn more

Link to Chop Wood, Carry Water RESISTBOT write up

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