Liz Borkowski
lborkowski
Posts by this author
February 8, 2016
Since the start of 2013, Texas has excluded clinics affiliated with abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, from receiving payment through the Texas Women's Health Program, which funds reproductive-health services for low-income state residents. The TWHP is the 100% state-…
February 1, 2016
For some people with employer-sponsored health insurance, a new calendar year means a new healthcare plan. In recent years, many employers have encouraged employees to consider high-deductible health plans – or, in some cases, have made an HDHP the only option. These plans’ premiums tend to be…
January 25, 2016
A public-health nightmare is unfolding in Brazil, where the mosquito-borne virus Zika has been linked to nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly – infants born with abnormally small brains and heads. Around 20% of adults with Zika don’t develop symptoms, which include fever, rash, and joint pain, so…
January 20, 2016
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Maryn’s McKenna at Germination: Zika Virus: A New Threat and a New Kind of Pandemic
Kevin Drum in Mother Jones: My Right to Die: Assisted suicide, my family, and me
Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check: Four Facts Nancy Pelosi—and All ‘Pro-Choice’ Democrats—…
January 11, 2016
USA TODAY’s Laura Ungar highlights an important measure in the omnibus spending bill Congress passed last month: It lifts the ban on the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs. State and local needle-exchange programs still can’t use federal money to purchase needles, Ungar explains, but…
January 7, 2016
by Jonathan Heller
Most public health practitioners, and those who work on health impact assessment specifically, want to improve the health of vulnerable populations. Most efforts to do so are well-intentioned, yet they often don’t lead to significant change. What do we need to do differently?…
January 6, 2016
Gerald Lyle Thompson’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Minnesota OSHA (MN-OSHA) in the agency’s citations against his employer, DSM Excavating.
The 51 year-old was working in June 2015 at a construction site for Ryland Homes in Lakeville, Minnesota.…
January 4, 2016
As 2015 drew to a close, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced some good news: Fewer US patients are dying from hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) like pressure ulcers and catheter-associated infections. Between 2011 and 2014, patients had 2.1 million fewer HACs than they would…
December 31, 2015
During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on July 27, 2015:
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
The occupational health community, coal miners, their families and…
December 30, 2015
During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on August 12, 2015:
by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH
“It’s just like the paper we read in class.” That was the email…
December 29, 2015
During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on March 16, 2015:
by Liz Borkowski, MPH
In 2003, the city of London took a dramatic step in the battle against…
December 28, 2015
During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on May 27, 2015:
by Kim Krisberg
For more than a decade, biologist Mariam Barlow has been working on the theory that…
December 27, 2015
During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on June 26, 2015:
By Kim Krisberg
A common hurdle in the field of occupational health and safety is delivering what…
December 24, 2015
During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them which was originally posted on May 26, 2015:
by Kim Krisberg
After 18 years as a professional house cleaner in the suburbs of Chicago,…
December 14, 2015
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Alana Semuels in The Atlantic: How Poor Single Moms Survive
Nina Martin of ProPublica interviews David Cohen: For Abortion Providers, a Constant Barrage of Personalized Harassment
Terry Fulmer at the Health Affairs Blog: Independence -- It's What Older People…
December 7, 2015
Last month, researchers from China reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases that they had identified a gene (MCR-1) that confers antibiotic resistance to a last-resort antibiotic (colistin) and then found that gene in E. coli isolates from pigs, meat, and hospital patients. This prompted Danish…
November 30, 2015
As many of us indulged in Thanksgiving meals last week, NPR’s Planet Money podcast and WAMU’s Metro Connection shared stories on ways food banks are using technology to improve food distribution.
The Planet Money story focuses on how Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, distributes…
November 23, 2015
Last week was World Antibiotics Awareness Week, and a new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases showed just how dire the antibiotics situation has gotten. Authors from the South China Agricultural University, the China Agricultural University, and other institutions identified a gene that confers…
November 18, 2015
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Laura Ungar in USA TODAY: Found too late: Cancer preys on rural Americans
Priya Batra on the Huffington Post blog: Confidentiality Is Key: To Reduce Teen Pregnancy, the U.S. Must Ban Parental Notification Laws for Contraception
Henry Wismayer at Vox: I got…
November 9, 2015
Last week, the CDC published a report on multistate foodborne illness outbreaks that occurred in the US from 2010 – 2014, and the news is sobering. During that five-year period CDC received reports of 120 multistate foodborne disease outbreaks with an identified pathogen and food or common setting…
November 2, 2015
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long been a key source of funding for medical research, but it wasn’t until 1986 that the agency formally established a policy of including women in clinical research. For decades, women received drugs and therapies that had been tested only on men, even…
October 26, 2015
The US spends far more on healthcare than other advanced countries, but we have worse health outcomes. Ideally, we could slow the growth of healthcare spending and improve outcomes by investing in prevention, creating incentives for providers to give high-value care, and eliminating care that’s…
October 19, 2015
A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked:
Margot Sanger-Katz at the New York Times’ The Upshot: Yes, Soda Taxes Seem to Cut Soda Drinking
Mary McKenna at Germination: MRSA In Sports: Long-Standing, Simple to Prevent, Still Happening
Joe Fassler at The Atlantic: How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less…
October 12, 2015
Last week, District of Columbia Councilmembers David Grosso and Elissa Silverman, along with several colleagues, introduced the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015, which would establish the most generous system for paid leave within the US. It would allow covered DC workers to take up to 16 weeks of…
September 28, 2015
The death toll from last week's stampede at the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca has passed 700; on Saturday, Saudi Arabia's health ministry reported 769 deaths and 934 people injured. Basma Attasi reports for Al Jazeera that the stampede occurred when two waves of pilgrims collided -- but that…
September 21, 2015
by Jonathan Heller
The dominant narrative in the United States is that, as individuals, we hold the key to our own success. We are told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and that if we just try hard enough, we’ll succeed.
In the world of health, this translates into a focus on personal…
September 21, 2015
Last week, 203 business-school faculty members from 88 institutions across the US wrote an open letter to members of Congress stating, "It is time to ensure that the entire United States workforce has access to paid family and medical leave." The signatories urge our legislators to consider the…
September 14, 2015
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Sara Rosenbaum at the Health Affairs Blog: Planned Parenthood, Community Health Centers, And Women’s Health: Getting The Facts Right
Laura Ungar at USA Today: Study: Needle exchange policy prevented HIV
Maryn McKenna at Phenomena: Germination: Tickborne…
August 31, 2015
The Colorado Family Planning Initiative is a public-health success story. With funds from an anonymous foundation, Title X family planning clinics serving low-income women were able to offer IUDs and other highly effective forms of contraception for free. Rates of teen pregnancy and abortion both…
August 24, 2015
Last week, an In These Times piece by Sharon Lerner presented an alarming statistics: Nearly one in four employed US mothers return to work within two weeks after giving birth. In "The Real War on Families: Why the U.S. Needs Paid Leave Now," Lerner reports that an Abt Associates analysis of survey…