The Healthcare Policy Podcast ® Produced by David Introcaso

My Latest Climate and Health Essay, "FDA User Fee Legislation Needs to Mitigate the Pharmaceutical Industry's Carbon Pollution" (June 8th)

Yesterday, STAT published my latest climate and health related essay.  Here is the email text I forwarded to Senator Murray's staff director.  

This morning STAT published my latest, "FDA User Fee Legislation Needs to Mitigate the Pharmaceutical Industry's Carbon Pollution."   I'd appreciate your reading and distributing to your colleagues. 

It's at: https://www.statnews.com/2022/06/08/fda-user-fee-legislation-address-pharmaceutical-industry-role-climate-crisis/.

This is my 11th or 12th related article published over the past few years.  Believe me, I take zero pleasure in drafting these - nor any of the numerous related HHS comment letters or any of the over 25 related podcast interviews.  Just so you're aware, I receive no compensation for this work.   

I hope you know the climate crisis reality continues to worsen, e.g., Nature Climate Change just published research showing atmospheric CO2 is now measured at 421 ppm (50% higher than pre-industrial era), the highest in human history or higher than any time in at least 4 million years.  Every week Kim Stanley Robinson's, "The Ministry for the Future," becomes less and less cli-fi.   As always, I am happy to discuss related policy reforms with the Chairwoman or your staff.

Thank you.
David Introcaso, Ph.D.          

 

Alfred and Blair Sadler Discuss Their Just Published, "(P)Luck: Lessons We Learned For Improving Healthcare and the World" (June 7th)

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(P)Luck moreover details the nine year collaboration between identical twins, Dr. Alfred Sadler and Blair Sadler, an attorney, via their work at NIH,  Yale, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Hastings Center on Bioethics to advance national organ donation and transplantation policy, create the Physician Assistant profession, advance national emergency medical care and address related bioethical issues.   The work also provides insights regarding related challenges these fields face today and provides a list of lessons learned applicable to present day health care problems. 

During this 39 minute discussion, Dr. Sadler and Mr. Sadler begin by explaining the purpose of the work and how and why they chose to collaborate after completing medical and law school.   The conversation moves on to an overview of their collaborative efforts, they discuss challenges still facing organ donation and persisting ethical issues, for example, related to the ongoing pandemic and conclude with comments concerning a few of the 15 lessons learn they identify.              

Alfred Sadler, MD, ScD (Hon) FACP, is the Co-Founder of the Physician Assistant Program at Cal State University, Monterey Bay and is the President of the Cypress Foundation - dedicated to improving physician and PA workforce in the tri-county area where he lives.  He was trained in surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and in internal medicine at the Harvard Medical School and at Mass General Hospital  He practiced primary care in Monterey County for nearly forty years with an emphasis on underserved populations.  He is a a member of Alpha Omega Alpha and in 2018 was recognized as Physician of the Year by the Monterey County Medical Society.  He is a coauthor of The Physician Assistant: An Illustrated History. 

Blair Sadler, JD, is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a member of the
faculty at the University of San Diego's Rady School of Management.   A graduate of Amherst College and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, he was a law clerk for the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.  From 1980 to 2006, he was President and CEO of the Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego.  He has served on the board of the Hastings Center for 12 years and is a member of the board of Health Care without Harm, an environmental health advocacy organization.  He chairs the Board of Access Youth Academy in San Diego.

Information on their work is at: https://www.bookdepository.com/P-Luck-Alfred-Sadler/9781735873176?ref=grid-view&qid=1654425267966&sr=1-6.  

   

Mr. Jim MacMillan Discusses Gun Violence Reporting (June 3rd)

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Listeners are certainly aware of never ending US gun violence.  For example, since 37, moreover 4th grade children, were shot with 19 killed in Uvalde, Texas on May 24th, there have subsequently been at least 14 subsequent mass shootings killing at least 10 and wounding another 61.   Over the past ten years, or since the Sandy Hook , there have been 950 subsequent school shootings.   Concerning federal policy, via the so called (Jay) Dickey amendment the Congress effectively banned the CDC from researching gun violence between 1996 and 2020.  Presently, it does not appear the Senate will act to pass substantive and widely popular policies designed to reduce gun violence.   As the British journalist, Dan Hodges, concluded in 2015, "in retrospect, Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate.  Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."

During this 36 minute conversation, Mr. MacMillan begins by providing an overview of the Center's mission and its work along with the Center's weekly newsletter, the roots of the problem, suicide reporting, his preliminary impressions regarding the Uvalde shooting, his related interaction/experience with the medical community, status regarding the Center's work informing policy reform and the specifics of his "better gun violence reporting" initiative.          

Mr. Jim MacMillan is the Founder and Director of the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence and its parent organization, the Initiative for Better Gun Violence Reporting.  Previously, Mr. MacMillan was a Journalist in Residence at Swarthmore College, a Fellow at the Philadelphia Social Innovations Lab at the U. of Penn and a Practitioner in Residence at the Institute for Global Leadership at Tufts University.  Mr. MacMillan was also an Ochberg Fellow with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University and a Knight Fellow in Medicine/Health Sciences Journalism with the Knight-Wallace Fellows at the U. of Michigan.  Previous faculty appointments include the U. of Missouri School of Journalism, Swarthmore College, NYU's Carter Journalism Institute and Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University.  During his prior photo journalism career, Mr. MacMillian spent 17 years at the Philadelphia Daily News and with The Associated Press working in Boston and Baghdad during the war in Iraq.  His teams war reporting was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. 

Information on the Philadelphia Center for Gun Violence is at: https://www.pcgvr.org/.