HPH Weekly: Researchers tried to fix a racist lung test. It got complicated.

This edition of Harvard Public Health Weekly was sent to our subscribers on September 19, 2024. If you don’t already receive the newsletter, subscribe here. To see more past newsletters, visit our archives.

Researchers tried to fix a racist lung test. It got complicated.

Until recently, patients taking a lung function test were sorted into one of four categories: Caucasian, Black, Asian, or Hispanic, and the threshold for “healthy” lungs changed for every group. It was, Felice Freyer writes, “a startling example of how racial bias has literally been written into the machinery of 21st-century health care.” Last year, in an effort to address that bias, the lung function test changed. Unfortunately, the new test raises yet more questions—and sends a pointed reminder of racism’s systemic nature.

One Montana county hopes safer gun storage will change its grim suicide statistics

In the Montana Free Press, Erin Hansen tells the story of Adam Miller—the type of young Montanan who hunted big game and was rarely without a gun. His struggle with mental illness and substance use ended in tragedy when he died by a self-inflicted gunshot in April. Montana has the highest rate of suicide in the nation, and officials in Anaconda-Deer Ridge County are trying to reduce the number of stories that end like Miller’s by encouraging gun owners to make their firearms less easily accessible.

Snapshot: Statins as a shield against air pollution

Many people with heart disease take cholesterol-lowering statin medications—which may also protect them against air pollution.

What we’re reading this week

Arizona’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud left patients without care →
ProPublica

In a historic move, Colombia bypasses patent to access HIV drug →
Al Jazeera

Philly residents with opioid addiction get medication from the ‘bupe bus’ →
The Conversation

Escaping the “heroin hustle” in South Africa →
The Guardian

Extreme heat is changing when students go back to school →
The Hechinger Report