Group items tagged

For decades, researchers and physicians tended to think about pregnancies as either planned or unplanned. But new data reveals that for a significant group of women, their feelings don't neatly fit into one category or another. As many as one-fifth of women who become pregnant aren't sure whether they want a baby. This fact may reshape how doctors and policymakers think about family planning. For women who are unsure, it doesn't seem enough for physicians to counsel them on pregnancy prevention or prenatal care. "In the past we thought of it as binary, you want to be pregnant or not, so you need contraception or a prenatal vitamin," said Maria Isabel Rodriguez, an obstetrician-gynecologist at Oregon Health and Science University whose research focuses on family planning and contraceptive policy. "But it's more of a continuum." The new data comes from a recent change in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's big survey of new mothers, now allowing them to answer a question about their pregnancy desires by saying "I wasn't sure." It shows that some women want to avoid making a decision about becoming pregnant, or have strong but mixed feelings about it.

A headline in The New York Times today reads "In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda." Is it true? The story itself provides hints that the headline is misleading, and likely to damage the image of the SNAP program and its beneficiaries. This is dangerous, considering that many readers look at clickbaity headlines, like the NYTimes one, but don't read stories. SNAP households aren't different than the rest of households. Most Americans buy and drink way too much soda and, as a result, obesity and Type II diabetes have reached epidemic levels. The story says that households that receive food stamps spend 9.3% of their grocery budget on soft drinks, while families in general spend 7.1%. This is one of those cases when reporting just percentages, and not taking into account other variables, such as total spending in groceries, sounds fishy.

Using comedy/performance to make a point about statistics regarding a social/health issue.

Most of the poor people in the world are women. In no country on earth are women economically equal to men, and Australia is no exception. Research from Acoss and the University of New South Wales last year showed that a higher share of people living in poverty in Australia are women. The experience of living below the breadline in our very wealthy nation is a gendered one, for reasons that are complex and intertwined. As women progress through life, they encounter a series of barriers and setbacks that simply do not encumber men in the same way. The cause of gendered poverty is structural. It is entrenched in our workplace settings, and embedded in our personal relationships. It is at play at every stage of a woman's life, from childhood to the grave, making its mark on our education, our employment, our homes, our familial responsibilities and our retirement options. At its heart is the simple fact that women do the lion's share of caring for others. Caring is women's work, and our society does not value women's work.

EVERYONE HAS A THEORY about who's to blame for the housing shortage that's driving up prices and chasing Bay Area families out of the region. A new poll offers surprising insights into where most of us point the finger: not at the government officials who control what homes are built where, but at the tech companies that have flooded this region with jobs and the real estate developers trying to maximize profits.

Last week, the American Cancer Society published new guidelines that call for colorectal cancer screening to begin at age 45 - five years earlier than the group had previously recommended. But some experts are saying not so fast. The new recommendation was made in reaction to increasing rates of colorectal cancer among people younger than 50. But while the rise in cancers among this younger age group is troubling, this new recommendation was made before we know what's behind the new trend. And it's not clear that screening can help.It makes intuitive sense to respond to increasing rates of colon cancer among young people by lowering the screening age, said Michael Hochman, director of the the Gehr Family Center for Health Systems Science at the Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. "But if I had a quarter for every time in medicine that we were tricked by an idea with intuitive appeal, I'd be a rich man," Hochman said.

News stories regarding the latest in the world of medicine are often popular. After all, most people are interested in their own health and that of their family and friends. But sometimes reports can be confusing. For example, one minute coffee seems good for you, and the next it's bad for your health. And remember when 150 health experts from around the world called for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games to be cancelled or postponed because of the Zika virus? This call was swiftly opposed by both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sometimes these contradictions reflect differences of opinion in the scientific community, and different approaches to research. These are a normal part of the scientific process. But in other instances, health news misinforms because of the way some journalists interpret and report research findings.

It's pretty common nowadays to see the likes of the Reserve Bank of Australia or the Australian Bureau of Statistics issue warnings about the size of Australian household debt. The reason is that the consequences of poor financial decisions often reach far wider than an individual or family. The global financial crisis showed us how rapidly financial contagion can spread - one person's debt is another person's asset, so when the debt is written off so is the asset. However, there has been little improvement in financial literacy in the wake of the financial crisis, the lack of which was one of the underlying causes.