Dark Chocolate for Health; Reproductive Health Nightmare in Texas & Polio Resurgence On the Horizon?

A free public service for a better community

Dec 16, 2024

A Good Day To Advocate for Better Healthcare

If there are subjects you’d like to see or improvements made, please let me know using the comment button below or email me at healthcareadvocacy1@gmail.com.

Regarding the photo, no chocolate bars were harmed in the production of this picture. Strictly machine generated. Ok I had a candy bar when I finished the newsletter. Just not this one,

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Chocolate and Health

Eating more dark chocolate was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, an analysis of prospective cohort studies suggested.

Among participants across three studies of healthcare workers, those who consumed ≥5 servings per week of dark chocolate had a 21% lower risk of type 2 diabetes compared with those who never or rarely consumed dark chocolate according to Qi Sun, MD, ScD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues in The BMJ.

There was no significant association between consumption of milk chocolate and type 2 diabetes, but intake of milk chocolate was positively associated with weight gain, while this was not the case for dark chocolate. (MedPage Today)

WOO HOO

Scaling Contraceptive Access in Primary Care

Dec 18, 2024 10:00 AM PACIFIC TIME

Join the Primary Care Collaborative and Upstream USA for a conversation exploring challenges to providing contraceptive care in a primary care setting – and solutions for overcoming those barriers. (Thank you to Save Secular Healthcare - Newsletter sign up here.)

Register here for the conference.

On December 18, the Primary Care Collaborative will speak with experts to explore the current state of contraceptive access in the U.S., the role that contraceptive access plays in broader health outcomes, and why primary care is uniquely poised to deliver high-quality, patient-centered contraceptive care.

Speakers include:

Jess Marcella – Former Deputy Assistant Secretary, HHS Office of Population Affairs -
Dr. Angeline Ti – Wellstar Douglas Family Medicine Residency Program and Upstream Clinical Advisor
Dr. Julia Strasser – Director of the Jacobs Institute of Women's Health, GWU Milken Institute School of Public Health
Moderator: Ann Greiner – President and CEO, Primary Care Collaborator

Register here.

Texas Reproductive Health Shame

Texas AG Goes After An Out-of-State Medicated Abortion Provider

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit to enjoin a New York physician, Maggie Carpenter, from her lawful telemedicine practice, which includes prescribing abortion drugs that can then be delivered by mail. In Texas v. Margaret Dayley Carpenter, Paxton asks a Texas state court judge to stop her. He claims, in an argument that could, by the way, be logically extended to restrict out of state doctors from treating Texas residents even if they physically travel to see them, that her teleheath practice in New York can be regulated by the state of Texas. Link to the lawsuit. (Joyce Vance The Week Ahead)

It sounds like a BS argument but they are on the rise and the court system is not a level playing field. After all the felon Trump should be in jail.

Polio on the Horizon Again?

A lawyer affiliated with Trump’s pick to lead the country’s top health agency, RFK Jr., has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration to revoke approval of the polio vaccine used in the United States.

The lawyer, Aaron Siri, filed the petition in 2022 on behalf of the Informed Consent Action Network, or ICAN, a nonprofit that challenges the safety of vaccines and vaccine mandates. Siri has been working closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – a vaccine skeptic and Trump’s pick to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services. He was also Kennedy’s personal lawyer during his own presidential campaign. ICAN does all it can to make sure people do not take the measles, mumps, and rubella, MMR, vaccine. If Kennedy is confirmed as head of HHS, he’ll oversee the FDA and could take the rare step of intervening in the petition review process and revoke access to this vaccine. P.S. He has that brain worm.

Polio vaccination is considered one of the greatest achievements in global public health. it was once a disease that paralyzed and killed thousands of Americans during outbreaks, but the advent of a vaccine in the 1950s has greatly reduced the incidence around the world, putting the goal of disease eradication on the cusp of becoming a reality.

Polio wastes muscles and easily can result in paralysis and death. Those iron lungs you’re heard about were for people with polio unable to breath on their own anymore.

In the 1950s, before a vaccine was available, polio killed or paralyzed more than half a million people globally each year, according to the World Health Organization.

I grew up then and there were plenty of people in my neighborhood in Chicago who were infected and suffered the rest of their lives with the effects of Polio. That includes my mother.

Kennedy doesn’t want people to have to get vaccinated. His inability to follow logic and insistence on increasing personal fear over public health will create a public health tragedy of enormous proportions. Let’s recall that 318,000 Americans DIED NEEDLESSLY during the COVID 19 pandemic because they chose to remain unvaccinated (NPR) Source).

ACTION

The best action to take is to call your senators (both of them). You can find their phone number here, https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials, and tell them that RFK Jr. would be a public health nightmare heading up HHS and not to approve him. The RESISTBOT message below is a template.

Or on your cell phone text SIGN PXQREI to 50409 (RESISTBOT) to send this message.

“I am your constituent and I just learned that the anti vaccine organization that RFK Jr. supports has asked the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine. If he heads up HHS then FDA falls under his control and he can approve the petition to remove the polio vaccine or any other vaccine he finds offensive.

We cannot afford to have such a non-science based loose cannon in charge of all public health issues in our country. I want you to vote to NOT APPROVE RFK Jr. for any appointment in the upcoming administration. He is a danger to public health. Thank you.”

RESOURCES

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.

Healthcare Advocacy