The New York Times, 2024, 8:37... Should your insurance company be allowed to stop you from getting a treatment — even if your doctor says it’s necessary? Doctors are often required to get insurance permission before providing medical care. This process is called prior authorization and it can be used by profit-seeking insurance companies to create intentional barriers between patients and the health care they need. At best, it’s just a minor bureaucratic headache. At worst, people have died.
The documentary Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017) explores a fascinating case of “Munchausen syndrome by proxy” (aka factitious disorder imposed on another), an abusive situation whereby a parent or guardian forces an imagined illness onto a vulnerable dependent. As a result, the once-healthy person often becomes sick from forced treatments and/or unnecessary medication.
CBS Sunday Morning, 2023, 8:38… According to statistics cited by the U.N., .05 to 1.7 percent of the world's population is intersex, defined as having external or internal sexual organs that are not clearly male or female. As a matter of course, doctors in the past performed surgery on babies, ostensibly so that they would live a "normal" life.
Vox, 2021, 22:53… Many of us assume that tech is neutral, and we have turned to tech as a way to root out racism, sexism, or other “isms” plaguing human decision-making. But as data-driven systems become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, we also notice more and more when they fail, and, more importantly, that they don’t fail on everyone equally. Glad You Asked host Joss Fong wants to know: Why do we think tech is neutral? How do algorithms become biased? And how can we fix these algorithms before they cause harm?
Vice News, 2020, 11:07… Alzo Slade participates in an “Emotional Emancipation Circle,” an Afrocentric support group created by the Community Healing Network and the Association of Black Psychologists. It’s a safe space for Black people to share personal experiences with racism and to process racial trauma.
Vox, 2020, 9:02… Across the US, black people are dying from Covid-19 at disproportionately high rates. While there are many different factors at play behind the stark racial disparities — there’s one possible reason that’s been lurking in the air for decades: pollution. The long history of segregation and housing discrimination has long put black people at greater risk of living near chemical plants, factories and highways, exposing them to higher levels of air pollutants. These pollutants have had a chronically negative impact on health, leading to conditions like hypertension and asthma. Now, those same diseases are associated with severe cases of Covid-19, and showing that where you live can determine whether you survive from Covid-19.
Refinery29, 2019, 16:14… On this episode of Shady, our host Danielle Cadet is looking to get to the bottom of the Black maternal and infant mortality rate in America. She consults experts and well as those affected by this nation-wide crisis. Watch Shady to get a better understanding of what needs to change.
Vox, 2020, 4:57… It's important to know how the process of data visualization can shape our perception of the coronavirus crisis. In this video, we deconstruct one particularly popular chart of covid-19 cases around the world which uses a logarithmic scale, and explain how to avoid being misled by it.
Vox, 2020, 6:33… In most developed countries, workers have the right to a certain number of paid sick days. It’s a policy that isn’t rooted in just generosity — during pandemics like the novel coronavirus, it can literally save lives. When workers have to choose between earning a living and staying home sick, it incentivizes them to come to work when they're ill, and potentially infect their colleagues and anyone else they come into contact with. That’s why public health officials are concerned that millions of American workers don’t have access to paid sick days. And a disproportionate share of those workers are concentrated in occupations like food service and hospitality, where there’s potential to infect the hundreds of customers many of them interact with every day.
Vice News, 2019, 10:21… Pidgeon Pagonis’ childhood memories include surgeries, hormone therapy, and repeated inspections of their genitals. When they turned 18 and got a copy of their medical records, they finally understood why. The first page had a handwritten note: “46 XY male pseudohermaphrodite.” The procedures that followed were also listed: a clitoral reduction, vaginoplasty, and surgery to remove undescended testes. For Pagonis, the results of some of these procedures have been both physically and psychologically damaging.
Last Week Tonight, 2019, 22:37… The intersection of sex and race bias is particularly deadly for women of color who are often not believed by their physicians. Medical students are often taught there are biological differences between the races in terms of skin thickness, pain tolerance, and nerve endings. There are also the problems of implicit biases and structural problems in medicine. For example, the male body has traditionally been the default reference in medical research. In other words, most medical studies have been done on male bodies.
Al Jazeera, 2019, 2:25… More and more minority neighbourhoods in US cities are becoming what healthcare experts call "pharmacy deserts". From Oregon on the west coast to Baltimore on the east, local drug stores are closing up shop in low-income and minority neighbourhoods. The decisions may be based on profitability, but with the widening scope of services pharmacies offer in the United States - like physicals, immunisations, drug counselling, sexually transmitted infection screening and other laboratory testing - residents of poor neighbourhoods struggle to access an increasingly important part of the national healthcare system. Al Jazeera's John Hendren reports from Chicago.
Vice, 2018, 15:13… A new wave of activism by disabled Americans has quickly gained momentum under the Trump administration in response to federal policies they feel are threatening their community on issues ranging from healthcare, to education, to fundamental civil rights. VICE’s Ryan O’Connell, who lives with cerebral palsy, joined hundreds of activists from ADAPT, the largest organizer for disability rights in the U.S., as they staged several days of protest and civil disobedience in Washington D.C.
PBS NewsHour, 2018, 5:36... The placebo effect influences all types of healing, from yoga to laying of hands to remedies in your doctor's office. While researching his book, “Suggestible You”, on the science of belief, science writer Erik Vance visited healers in the U.S., China and Mexico. He has been blessed, cursed and tortured in countless ways. He joined ScienceScope to journey from Mexico to Maryland to show how these beliefs influence healing.
