January 8, 2024 — Right now, the promise of GLP-1 medicines for obesity, though revolutionary, is serving only to widen the economic rift in health. People with extraordinary wealth or generous health insurance plans receive the health benefits that flow from treating obesity effectively – which include a longer life, fewer strokes, and fewer heart attacks. Others are consigned […]
December 5, 2023 — Let’s call this a half step. During the pandemic, Americans lost almost two and a half years in life expectancy. Men did worse than women. Now the news from CDC is that in 2022, we got back just a little more than a year of that loss – a meager regain in life expectancy. Jacob […]
August 27, 2023 — Writing for the New York Times, Joseph Goldstein tells us that prescriptions for GLP-1 agonists are going to the wealthiest, whitest, and healthiest neighborhoods in New York City. Neighborhoods where the medical need is greatest? Not so much. Though we might hope that advanced medicines for obesity and diabetes would go to places with the […]
August 21, 2023 — If you are paying attention to the disparities in wealth, poverty, health, and obesity, you might note that there’s good news and bad news to be found right now. On the good news side of things, the global inequality of wealth shrank in 2022. That happened for two reasons. People in some of the poorest […]
July 11, 2019 — Does money bring happiness? That’s a matter of some debate. Though poverty doesn’t do it, research suggests that money isn’t always the best answer for pursuing happiness. In fact, recent research suggests that active living might bring more joy than money. Exercise and Mental Health In Lancet, Sammi Chekroud and colleagues published a large study […]
December 15, 2018 — We’ve noted it before. The relationship between income and obesity is tricky. And according to a new paper from Alexander Bentley and colleagues, the relationship is very new. As recently as 1990, they say, it simply wasn’t there. Today, it’s quite clear. Less income predicts more obesity. Likewise, the correlation between income and diabetes is […]
May 3, 2014 — Who’s hungry? In America, it’s more people than you might think. In Mississippi — the state most affected by hunger — one in four households (24.5%) report food hardship. In 30 states, at least one in six households report food hardships. And in the least hungry state in America — North Dakota — the number is one […]
