Health

Rural Blog -  After decades of suicide prevention funding and plan roll-outs, the number of self-inflicted deaths in the United States has only increased, with some rural states shouldering double the number of deaths compared to their urban counterparts, reports Cheryl Platzman Weinstock of KFF Health News.  "From 2001 through 2021 suicide rates increased most years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Provisional data for 2022, the most recent numbers available, shows deaths by suicide grew an additional 3% over the previous year. CDC officials project the final number of suicides in 2022 will be higher," Weinstock adds. "Suicide rates in rural states such as Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming have been about double those in urban areas. 

Medical Express - New research from Guangzhou Medical University in China has challenged the notion that loneliness can cause ill health. Instead, the findings suggest that loneliness might be considered an associated feature for many diseases (a so-called "surrogate marker") as it was shown to not be a root cause for poor physical and mental health.

The researchers used data from the UK Biobank in which over half a million people aged 37 to 73 were asked to report how often they felt lonely. They conducted analyses based on the distribution of genetic variants in the population (known as "Mendelian randomization") to test the causal effect of loneliness on a wide range of diseases, including physical and mental health problems. 

Americares -  This summer, more than 40 safety net clinics across the U.S., including a mobile clinic in southern Arizona, began creating heat-health action plans to help keep at-risk patients safe when temperatures rise.

 KFF Health News-  In what has become a pattern of spreading vaccine misinformation, the Florida health department is telling older Floridians and others at highest risk from covid-19 to avoid most booster shots, saying they are potentially dangerous. Clinicians and scientists denounced the message as politically fueled scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles and whooping cough.

A prominent Florida doctor expressed dismay that medical leaders in the state, leery of angering Gov. Ron DeSantis, have been slow to counter anti-vaccine messages from Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, including the latest covid bulletin. Ladapo is a DeSantis appointee and the top official at the state health department. The bulletin makes a number of false or unproven claims about the efficacy and safety of mRNA-based covid vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna, including that they could threaten “the integrity of the human genome.” Florida’s guidance generally regurgitates ideas from anti-vaccine websites, said John Moore, a professor of microbiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.