Tiffany Kindratt of CAPRA discussed the need for a MENA racial/ethnic checkbox on the U.S. Census and other federal forms. She noted the designation is important for securing funding for research. This is work that aligns with her CAPRA funded study – Novel approaches to explore national and state-based evidence on the burden of cognitive difficulties […]
Tiffany Kindratt of CAPRA discussed the need for a MENA racial/ethnic checkbox on the U.S. Census and other federal forms. She noted the designation is important for securing funding for research. This is work that aligns with her CAPRA funded study – Novel approaches to explore national and state-based evidence on the burden of cognitive difficulties among Middle Eastern and North African Americans.
Scott Landes was interviewed by the Associated Press about his work on how the Census Bureau’s changes to disability-related questions will impact disability research.
“This, in my mind, is illogical. There is a piece of me that thinks, ‘How dare you — to think that we don’t count.’ I get offended.”
An article in the January 2024 issue of The Milwaukee Magazine quotes Doug Wolf and refers to a paper written by Wolf, Shannon Monnat and Jennifer Karas Montez regarding the adverse public health consequences of state legislation that preempts local governments’ ability to impose paid sick leave requirements on employers. https://www.milwaukeemag.com/again-and-again-legislators-ignore-home-rule-protections/
It seems safe to conclude that the state’s preemption law is responsible for numerous deaths that might not otherwise have occurred.
An article by Population Reference Bureau featured work by Emily Wiemers, Shannon Monnat, and Haowei Wang related to how COVID-19 affected the mental health of older adults.
The University of Minnesota Alumni Association featured Shekinah Fashaw-Walters’ and Tetyana Shippee’s (University of Minnesota Life Course Center) research on the disparities that exist in care for aging BIPOC communities.
“As the U.S. is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, Minnesota—still a majority-white state—generally gets high marks for care of older adults. But a closer look shows that often doesn’t extend equally to older adults who are Black, American Indian, or low income.”
Jennifer Karas Montez’s work was covered in an article from The Washington Post: “How Red-State Politics are Shaving Years Off American Lives.”
Miriam Mutambudzi appeared on a recent episode of WCNY’s Cycle of Health, Old Covid, Long Covid, New Covid, and Vaccines, discussing long COVID’s effects on the heart.
The U.S. News & World Report reported on the risk factors for long haul COVID. Some risk factors predict long COVID – hair loss, headache, and sore throat during illness, and obesity increase the risk of long haul symptoms. According to a recent paper by Eileen Cimmins & coauthors, other risk factors for COVID-19 infection do not predict long COVID. “What’s somewhat more interesting are the things that didn’t matter,” Crimmins said. “Gender didn’t predict long COVID. Race/ethnicity didn’t predict long COVID. And having conditions like hypertension [high blood pressure], heart disease, cancer, they didn’t predict long COVID.”
Original research
Qiao Wu, Jennifer A. Ailshire & Eileen M. Crimmins (2022). Long COVID and symptom trajectory in a representative sample of Americans in the first year of the pandemic. Scientific Reports, 12: 11647.
Americans have gained over $6 million in home equity during the pandemic; many have used this equity to send their children to college, to start businesses, and to invest further in housing, which builds even more wealth. Emily Wiemers said, “There’s a rosy picture and a not-so-rosy picture. The flip side is pretty troubling. There’s this set of kids whose parents don’t own a home and so didn’t see this increase in wealth, and also whose parents may have seen declines in income.”
Read the full article, The Extraordinary Wealth Created by the Pandemic Housing Market.
Read Emily Wiemers’ research on how families pay for education.
Merril Silverstein discussed the rise in importance of multigenerational family ties and the decline of the nuclear family ties. “I think it’s a net positive,” said Silverstein. “In gerontology, we like to say dependence is a double-edged sword. We want to rely on people, but we also resent them, and that’s part of the human condition.”
Read the full article, The Nuclear Family Is No Longer the Norm. Good.
While cost-of-living increases protect older Americans against medium- and long-term effects of inflation, they do little to shield them from shorter-term price hikes, said Gary Engelhardt, an economics professor at Syracuse University whose work focuses on Social Security, pensions and aging.
“The sting of rising prices for older Americans is real,” he said. “Sudden increases in prices, like the ones we’ve experienced with gas, food and housing, will erode the purchasing power of those on fixed incomes until those benefits get adjusted.”
Read the full article, Fewer hot showers, less meat: How retirees on fixed incomes are dealing with inflation.
Brooks B. Gump, PhD, MPH, a professor of public health at Falk College at Syracuse University in New York, told Healthline “When compared to other infectious diseases, COVID is in a class of its own.”
Gump and other experts say it’s far from certain that the current decline in severe COVID-19 cases will continue.
“I would push back on the notion that hospitalizations and deaths have plateaued,” said Gump. “They are the trailing indicators, and case counts are rising again. Unfortunately, we will have a very dynamic situation for the foreseeable future – with infection rates and case-fatality rates varying as a function of new variants [that vary] in transmissibility, severity, and resistance to vaccines, vaccine and booster effectiveness and coverage, and adherence to guidelines on masking and distancing.”
“The idea that we can just set a policy and walk away is a pipe dream. If we want to keep some control of these rates, we need to modify our approach each time the situation on the ground shifts,” he added.
An article in The Washington Post — A new attitude toward the pandemic seems to be taking shape. But we’ve been here before. — reports the ways the U.S. population are “fatigued, frustrated and frazzled by five surges over two years” and ready to move on. Kevin Volpp, director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “It’s a little bit like riding a roller coaster and everyone is wondering: Are we going to be going up or are we going to be going down? … I feel like people collectively have been carrying around this huge burden of worrying about covid, and it affects their lives, their performance in lots of ways. People are really worn out by that.”