Tootfinder

add_health: Adolescent health (ADD HEALTH) (1994)
A directed network of friendships obtained through a social survey of high school students in 1994. The ADD HEALTH data are constructed from the in-school questionnaire; 90,118 students representing 84 communities took this survey in 1994-95. Some communities had only one school; others had two. Where there are two schools in a community students from one school were allowed to name friends in the other, the "sister school".…

IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.
The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.
https://www.…

Public Health Professor Craig Spencer Warns Donald Trump’s ‘Eugenics’ Shutdown Health Policy Echoes Nazism
https://www.thedailybeast.com/public-health-professor-craig-spencer-warns-donald-trumps-eugenics-shutdown-health-policy-echoes-nazism/

Open burning of plastic is an escalating public health threat, say experts https://news.mongabay.com/2025/07/open-burning-of-plastic-is-an-escalating-public-health-threat-say-experts/

Open burning of plastic is an escalating public health threat, say experts
When Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa was a child, her mother sent her to market with a basket woven from grasses. “But now we don’t do that,” she says, because plastic has taken over most utilitarian purposes in today’s Malawi. “You go and you get a plastic carrier, and they’re usually not reusable plastics.” In many Malawi communities, […]

☣️ In the Philippines, informal e-waste dismantling poses health risks
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2025/07/29/sustainability/philippine-e-waste-dismantle-health/
🆓

In the Philippines, informal e-waste dismantling poses health risks
Scavenging electronic waste for the nickel, aluminum and copper inside releases a toxic brew of chemicals, including lead, mercury and cadmium, into the air.

New Data Linking Marathons to Colon Cancer https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance/running-marathons-colon-cancer/?scope=anon

New Data Linking Marathons to Colon Cancer
Preliminary findings suggest marathoners and ultramarathoners may have a higher risk of abnormal colonoscopy findings

Amazon Prime Vision's latest feature gives new perspective on QB protection https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6636637/2025/09/18/nfl-amazon-prime-vision-pocket-health/

Former CDC Director William Foege: How public health can fight back in a time of dangerous nonsense (William Foege/STAT)
https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/18/rfk-jr-public-health-threats-william-foege-smallpox/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250818/p117#a250818p117

Doctronic, which uses generative AI for health guidance and offers video visits with licensed doctors, raised a $20M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (PYMNTS.com)
https://www.pymnts.com/healthcare/2025/doctronic-raise…

Doctronic Raises $20 Million for AI-Powered Health Guidance Platform
Doctronic raised $20 million in a Series A funding round to expand its services and grow the adoption of its artificial intelligence-native platform

Health insurance prices for next year under the Affordable Care Act
are now available in about a dozen states,
giving Americans their first look at the sharp increases many will pay for coverage
if Congress does not extend subsidies that have made some plans more affordable.
The annual enrollment period for Obamacare is expected to begin Nov. 1,
but the costs for some Americans are becoming publicly available piecemeal through some state marketplaces.
The…

Higher Obamacare Prices Become Public in a Dozen States
Consumers are facing greater costs for their 2026 A.C.A. health coverage as Congress continues to debate whether to extend subsidies that help people afford their premiums.

WSJ restructures its health, science, and education teams, with the health group moving back under the business team, after separating during the pandemic (Chris Roush/Talking Biz News)
https://talkingbiznews.com/media-news/wsj-restructures-…

WSJ restructures health, science and education, makes layoffs - Talking Biz News
Wall Street Journal editor in chief Emma Tucker sent out the following on Wednesday: Dear all, Today we are announcing changes to how we structure our health, science and education teams at The Wall Street Journal. The health group is returning to the business team after becoming a separate coverage area during the Covid-19 pandemic. Coverage of […]

Got my Covid and flu vaccinations.
I hope you will too.
#health

Reproducible workflow for online AI in digital health
Susobhan Ghosh, Bhanu T. Gulapalli, Daiqi Gao, Asim Gazi, Anna Trella, Ziping Xu, Kelly Zhang, Susan A. Murphy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13499

Reproducible workflow for online AI in digital health
Online artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are an important component of digital health interventions. These online algorithms are designed to continually learn and improve their performance as streaming data is collected on individuals. Deploying online AI presents a key challenge: balancing adaptability of online AI with reproducibility. Online AI in digital interventions is a rapidly evolving area, driven by advances in algorithms, sensors, software, and devices. Digital health intervent…

AI in Mental Health: Emotional and Sentiment Analysis of Large Language Models' Responses to Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Queries
Arya VarastehNezhad, Reza Tavasoli, Soroush Elyasi, MohammadHossein LotfiNia, Hamed Farbeh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11285

AI in Mental Health: Emotional and Sentiment Analysis of Large Language Models' Responses to Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Queries
Depression, anxiety, and stress are widespread mental health concerns that increasingly drive individuals to seek information from Large Language Models (LLMs). This study investigates how eight LLMs (Claude Sonnet, Copilot, Gemini Pro, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini, Llama, Mixtral, and Perplexity) reply to twenty pragmatic questions about depression, anxiety, and stress when those questions are framed for six user profiles (baseline, woman, man, young, old, and university student). The models generated …

I can't see how anything could possibly go wrong with this #MentalHealth

Your AI 'Twin' Could Soon Test And Treat Your Mental Health
When we hear the word "twins", we tend to think of two identical people who share physical traits, and perhaps certain behaviours or quirks.

ugandan_village: Ugandan village networks (2013)
Complete friendship and health advice social networks among households in 17 rural villages bordering Lake Victoria in Mayuge District, Uganda in 2013. Nodes are households and edges represent either a close friendship or a trusted health advisor connection, obtained via a name generator questionnaire.
This network has 117 nodes and 210 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unweighted, Multilayer

Fired CDC director describes pressure from Kennedy over vaccines:
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/public-health/fired-cdc-director-describes-pressure-kennedy-over-vaccines

... We know from brain research that institutionally reared children have
enlarged, overly active amygdalas---an area of the brain involved in
emotional processing ---especially pay excessive attention to negative
information.  They are easily frightened.  Their emotion regulation
and mental health are permanently damaged, which is why the Romanian
orphanages were known as the "slaughterhouses of souls."
There are many parallels with animals reared in…

“[Rubio’s] priorities speak volumes: financing Israel genocide on Palestine, torturing Cuba, going after health care services for those who need them most,”
Diplomat Johana Tablada.
USA can't tolerate Cuba's good example of free health care nor its international solidarity.
US sanctions Brazil health officials over Cuba’s overseas medical missions | Donald Trump News | Al Jazeera

US sanctions Brazil health officials over Cuba’s overseas medical missions
Washington claims the health officials were involved in Cuba’s ‘coercive labour export’ of medical workers.

Mind the Gap: Aligning Knowledge Bases with User Needs to Enhance Mental Health Retrieval
Amanda Chan, James Jiayu Liu, He Kai, Onno P. Kampman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13626 …

Mind the Gap: Aligning Knowledge Bases with User Needs to Enhance Mental Health Retrieval
Access to reliable mental health information is vital for early help-seeking, yet expanding knowledge bases is resource-intensive and often misaligned with user needs. This results in poor performance of retrieval systems when presented concerns are not covered or expressed in informal or contextualized language. We present an AI-based gap-informed framework for corpus augmentation that authentically identifies underrepresented topics (gaps) by overlaying naturalistic user data such as forum po…

Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration With Targeted Mental Health Outreach: A Case Study in Machine Learning for Public Policy
Kit T. Rodolfa, Erika Salomon, Jin Yao, Steve Yoder, Robert Sullivan, Kevin McGuire, Allie Dickinson, Rob MacDougall, Brian Seidler, Christina Sung, Claire Herdeman, Rayid Ghani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14129

Breaking the Cycle of Incarceration With Targeted Mental Health Outreach: A Case Study in Machine Learning for Public Policy
Many incarcerated individuals face significant and complex challenges, including mental illness, substance dependence, and homelessness, yet jails and prisons are often poorly equipped to address these needs. With little support from the existing criminal justice system, these needs can remain untreated and worsen, often leading to further offenses and a cycle of incarceration with adverse outcomes both for the individual and for public safety, with particularly large impacts on communities of …

RIP my family's budget https://mastodon.social/@kottke/114874790839359326

'murcans: I can't make it to protests today (health issue) but please go to there in numbers.
https://www.nokings.org/#map

#GiveDirectly

Failing to Make America Healthy Again
In the face of the worst outbreak of measles this century - due to vaccine mistrust he himself sowed - US Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr is gaslighting America.
https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/failing-to-mak…

Failing to Make America Healthy Again
In the face of the worst outbreak of measles this century - due to vaccine mistrust he himself sowed - US Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr is gaslighting America, argues Matt Bernardini

Ignoring Africa.
U.S. to Cut Out Nongovernmental Groups in Refocusing Health Aid - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/us/politics/us-aid-health-ngos.html

‘Dismal’ health of world’s forests is threat to humanity, report warns https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/14/dismal-health-of-worlds-forests-is-threat-to-humanity-report-warns

ugandan_village: Ugandan village networks (2013)
Complete friendship and health advice social networks among households in 17 rural villages bordering Lake Victoria in Mayuge District, Uganda in 2013. Nodes are households and edges represent either a close friendship or a trusted health advisor connection, obtained via a name generator questionnaire.
This network has 221 nodes and 579 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unweighted, Multilayer

Got my Covid and flu vaccinations.
I hope you will too.
#health

Lost in Data: How Older Adults Perceive and Navigate Health Data Representations
Peterson Jean, Emma Murphy, Enda Bates
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11876 https://

Lost in Data: How Older Adults Perceive and Navigate Health Data Representations
As the ageing population grows, older adults increasingly rely on wearable devices to monitor chronic conditions. However, conventional health data representations (HDRs) often present accessibility challenges, particularly for critical health parameters like blood pressure and sleep data. This study explores how older adults interact with these representations, identifying key barriers such as semantic inconsistency and difficulties in understanding. While research has primarily focused on dat…

I found two different apps for iOS that will export GPX files one at a time, which is nice when you don't want to export *all* of your Apple Health data to get just a few files.
But also, it's fucked up that we cannot just access the data/files in the file system.
Yeah, yeah, I know... Apple, iOS, etc. So much I don't love but it's the lesser of many evils ecosystem for me right now.

It's really hard for me to floss: some of my interdental gaps shred floss. A decade ago I discovered GUM sticks and they've been fantastic for my dental health. Can't recommend them enough. Hope their inventor got rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/well/in

Dentists Know You Hate Flossing. Try This Instead.
You still have to clean between your teeth, but other tools might work even better.

AgentMental: An Interactive Multi-Agent Framework for Explainable and Adaptive Mental Health Assessment
Jinpeng Hu, Ao Wang, Qianqian Xie, Hui Ma, Zhuo Li, Dan Guo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11567

AgentMental: An Interactive Multi-Agent Framework for Explainable and Adaptive Mental Health Assessment
Mental health assessment is crucial for early intervention and effective treatment, yet traditional clinician-based approaches are limited by the shortage of qualified professionals. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have sparked growing interest in automated psychological assessment, yet most existing approaches are constrained by their reliance on static text analysis, limiting their ability to capture deeper and more informative insights that emerge through dynamic interaction and i…

For me... 12mm stone blocking the urtethra. Once they blasted it and function slowly (and painfully) got back to normal.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/what-does-it-mean-if-you-suddenly-cant-pee/

Mental Health Resources for Musicians & Music Industry Professionals (World Mental Health Day 2025) https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2025/10/top-mental-health-resources-for-musicians-on-world-mental-health-day-2025.html

There should be a DRTM emoji.
Here is my proposal:
👩‍⚕️‍™️
Yes, that is a health worker (Dr.), zero-width joiner, and trademark (tm). :D

Risk-Based Prognostics and Health Management
John W. Sheppard
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11031 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.11031

Risk-Based Prognostics and Health Management
It is often the case that risk assessment and prognostics are viewed as related but separate tasks. This chapter describes a risk-based approach to prognostics that seeks to provide a tighter coupling between risk assessment and fault prediction. We show how this can be achieved using the continuous-time Bayesian network as the underlying modeling framework. Furthermore, we provide an overview of the techniques that are available to derive these models from data and show how they might be used …

The Mind Movement Health Podcast
Kate, a Nutritionist and Movement Specialist with over 15yrs experience in the health and fitness industry...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/mind-movement-health/

Obamacare Insurers Seek Double-Digit Premium Hikes Next Year (Anna Wilde Mathews/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/obamacare-insurers-seek-double-digit-premium-hikes-next-year-454f1e1c
http://www.memeorandum.com/250718/p39#a250718p39

How are health staff not innoculated against measles?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-18/four-new-cases-confirmed-in-cairns-measles-outbreak/105786794

Cairns maternity ward named as exposure site in Far North Queensland measles outbreak
More locally acquired cases have been confirmed with exposure sites now including Cairns Hospital's maternity ward and areas on the Atherton Tablelands.

YouTube is like heroin because it pulls you in, hooks you, and slowly drains you. It is designed to be addictive and destructive, and that is exactly why it feels so hard to step away from it.
And yes, I know the excuse, maybe your favorite dealer has not set up shop on PeerTube. But that does not change the truth of the comparison.
PeerTube is like weed, it grows more naturally, it is gentler on you, and it still gives you a high without tearing apart your health and your lif…

“One good aspect of this feature is that you don’t need to wear an Apple Watch to take advantage of it. If you use a Garmin watch or any other device that can input sleep data into the Health app, you will get a sleep score based on that information.”
This is the funniest recommendation I read about the “awe” Apple Sleep score.

From daughter at uni: "Im having to do a load of health and safety training and I think they think its my first day on earth..."
And so it begins!

#FactFriday
An unwalled version of a walled article that originally appeared in Rolling Stone (not happy that Rolling Stone has such an important health article behind their wall - I've seen other places unwall important articles - shoutout to @…). I personally …

One highlight of 4 runs this week. My goal was 5 runs of at least 5 miles; I just got in 4, though (definitely not going out at night tonight, lol).
These were in rural western Wisconsin. Health has been a bit all over the map this week, and things have been hectic with family stuff. Yet, it was good to take time off work for vacation 😎
Note, this is running on beta blockers; a whole new world to me, and I don't know if I like it.

Real-Time Health Analytics Using Ontology-Driven Complex Event Processing and LLM Reasoning: A Tuberculosis Case Study
Ritesh Chandra, Sonali Agarwal, Navjot Singh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09646

Real-Time Health Analytics Using Ontology-Driven Complex Event Processing and LLM Reasoning: A Tuberculosis Case Study
Timely detection of critical health conditions remains a major challenge in public health analytics, especially in Big Data environments characterized by high volume, rapid velocity, and diverse variety of clinical data. This study presents an ontology-enabled real-time analytics framework that integrates Complex Event Processing (CEP) and Large Language Models (LLMs) to enable intelligent health event detection and semantic reasoning over heterogeneous, high-velocity health data streams. The a…

MedicalOS: An LLM Agent based Operating System for Digital Healthcare
Jared Zhu, Junde Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11507 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.11507…

MedicalOS: An LLM Agent based Operating System for Digital Healthcare
Decades' advances in digital health technologies, such as electronic health records, have largely streamlined routine clinical processes. Yet, most these systems are still hard to learn and use: Clinicians often face the burden of managing multiple tools, repeating manual actions for each patient, navigating complicated UI trees to locate functions, and spending significant time on administration instead of caring for patients. The recent rise of large language model (LLM) based agents demonstr…

Scientists detail Delphi-2M, an AI model trained on large-scale health records that can predict susceptibility to over 1,000 diseases decades into the future (Clive Cookson/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/598e07ec-954f-49b7-9bc5-ce77f9fff934

"Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to investigate climate and weather control, and is expected to create a task force that will recommend possible federal action, according to a former agency official, an internal agency memo obtained by KFF Health News, and a consultant who helped with the memo."
Leaked memo shows bizarre weather conspiracy theory being taken seriously by government - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/weather-2674206192/

🤕 Medicaid cuts are likely to worsen mental health care in rural America
#mentalhealth

Medicaid cuts are likely to worsen mental health care in rural America
Across the nation, Medicaid is the single largest payer for mental health care, and in rural America, residents disproportionately rely on the public insurance program.

ugandan_village: Ugandan village networks (2013)
Complete friendship and health advice social networks among households in 17 rural villages bordering Lake Victoria in Mayuge District, Uganda in 2013. Nodes are households and edges represent either a close friendship or a trusted health advisor connection, obtained via a name generator questionnaire.
This network has 120 nodes and 295 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Unweighted, Multilayer

EthicsMH: A Pilot Benchmark for Ethical Reasoning in Mental Health AI
Sai Kartheek Reddy Kasu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11648 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.1…

EthicsMH: A Pilot Benchmark for Ethical Reasoning in Mental Health AI
The deployment of large language models (LLMs) in mental health and other sensitive domains raises urgent questions about ethical reasoning, fairness, and responsible alignment. Yet, existing benchmarks for moral and clinical decision-making do not adequately capture the unique ethical dilemmas encountered in mental health practice, where confidentiality, autonomy, beneficence, and bias frequently intersect. To address this gap, we introduce Ethical Reasoning in Mental Health (EthicsMH), a pilo…

Trustworthy AI Psychotherapy: Multi-Agent LLM Workflow for Counseling and Explainable Mental Disorder Diagnosis
Mithat Can Ozgun, Jiahuan Pei, Koen Hindriks, Lucia Donatelli, Qingzhi Liu, Xin Sun, Junxiao Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11398

Trustworthy AI Psychotherapy: Multi-Agent LLM Workflow for Counseling and Explainable Mental Disorder Diagnosis
LLM-based agents have emerged as transformative tools capable of executing complex tasks through iterative planning and action, achieving significant advancements in understanding and addressing user needs. Yet, their effectiveness remains limited in specialized domains such as mental health diagnosis, where they underperform compared to general applications. Current approaches to integrating diagnostic capabilities into LLMs rely on scarce, highly sensitive mental health datasets, which are ch…

Some 22 million Americans are set to lose health insurance subsidies by the end of the year.

These subsidies, known as enhanced premium tax credits, lower costs for people who buy their health insurance through Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces ("Obamacare").
They are at the heart of
the government shutdown that has shuttered the federal government since October 1.
About 80 percent of the people who benefit from them live in states that Donald Trump …

Who will lose out when ACA health insurance subsidies expire?
Here’s a look at who could be affected by the end of the Affordable Care Act credits and how much prices could change.

Blue States Are Setting Up a Shadow Public-Health Alliance to Counter RFK Jr. (Betsy McKay/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/rfk-jr-hhs-democratic-public-health-alliance-6a6a7e28
http://www.memeorandum.com/251015/p37#a251015p37

Bridging the Gap: Leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation to Better Understand Public Concerns about Vaccines
Muhammad Javed, Sedigh Khademi Habibabadi, Christopher Palmer, Hazel Clothier, Jim Buttery, Gerardo Luis Dimaguila
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12840

Bridging the Gap: Leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation to Better Understand Public Concerns about Vaccines
Vaccine hesitancy threatens public health, leading to delayed or rejected vaccines. Social media is a vital source for understanding public concerns, and traditional methods like topic modelling often struggle to capture nuanced opinions. Though trained for query answering, large Language Models (LLMs) often miss current events and community concerns. Additionally, hallucinations in LLMs can compromise public health communication. To address these limitations, we developed a tool (VaxPulse Quer…

Meet Dr. Lincoln, the Internet’s Favorite OB-GYN - Ms. Magazine
https://msmagazine.com/2025/10/18/dr-jennifer-lincoln-health-abortion-misinformation-birth-control/

"Indoor air pollution from New Zealand’s 523,000 wood burners was estimated to account for 446 hospital admissions for heart and lung problems, and 101 early deaths annually, in a country with a population of just over 5 million people. "
Wood burning and gas cooking hugely costly to healthcare systems, New Zealand study finds | Environment | The Guardian

Amazon says it's investing $1B to raise pay for US fulfillment and transportation staff, increasing the average total compensation to $30 /hour with benefits (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-

Standing up at desk, leaving office, never returning #health

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back
ROCHESTER, MN—In an effort to help working individuals improve their fitness and well-being, experts at the Mayo Clinic issued a new set of health guidelines Thursday recommending that Americans stand up at their desk, leave their office, and never return. “Many Americans spend a minimum of eight hours per day sitting in an office, but we observed significant physical and mental health benefits in subjects after just one instance of standing up, walking out the door, and never coming back t…

“The Maha report is essentially a distraction from the real causes of poor health,”
said Elizabeth Jacobs, professor emerita at the University of Arizona and a founding member of Defend Public Health.
“This administration does not want to address things like poverty and education and access to healthcare.
Instead, they’re distracting the public with information on solutions to problems that don’t actually exist.
When the foundation of your policy is not evidence-based…

RFK Jr.’s Wi-Fi and 5G conspiracies appear to make it into MAHA report draft - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/08/maha-draft-takes-on-electromagnetic-radiation-echoing-rfk-jr-s-conspiracies/

SitLLM: Large Language Models for Sitting Posture Health Understanding via Pressure Sensor Data
Jian Gao, Fufangchen Zhao, Yiyang Zhang, Danfeng Yan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12994

SitLLM: Large Language Models for Sitting Posture Health Understanding via Pressure Sensor Data
Poor sitting posture is a critical yet often overlooked factor contributing to long-term musculoskeletal disorders and physiological dysfunctions. Existing sitting posture monitoring systems, although leveraging visual, IMU, or pressure-based modalities, often suffer from coarse-grained recognition and lack the semantic expressiveness necessary for personalized feedback. In this paper, we propose \textbf{SitLLM}, a lightweight multimodal framework that integrates flexible pressure sensing with …

WatchAnxiety: A Transfer Learning Approach for State Anxiety Prediction from Smartwatch Data
Md Sabbir Ahmed, Noah French, Mark Rucker, Zhiyuan Wang, Taylor Myers-Brower, Kaitlyn Petz, Mehdi Boukhechba, Bethany A. Teachman, Laura E. Barnes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13725

WatchAnxiety: A Transfer Learning Approach for State Anxiety Prediction from Smartwatch Data
Social anxiety is a common mental health condition linked to significant challenges in academic, social, and occupational functioning. A core feature is elevated momentary (state) anxiety in social situations, yet little prior work has measured or predicted fluctuations in this anxiety throughout the day. Capturing these intra-day dynamics is critical for designing real-time, personalized interventions such as Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs). To address this gap, we conducted a stu…

Cards vague on status of QB Murray, WR Harrison https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46627258/cardinals-gannon-vague-status-qb-murray-wr-harrison

Can LLMs Address Mental Health Questions? A Comparison with Human Therapists
Synthia Wang, Yuwei Cheng, Austin Song, Sarah Keedy, Marc Berman, Nick Feamster
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12102

Can LLMs Address Mental Health Questions? A Comparison with Human Therapists
Limited access to mental health care has motivated the use of digital tools and conversational agents powered by large language models (LLMs), yet their quality and reception remain unclear. We present a study comparing therapist-written responses to those generated by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Llama for real patient questions. Text analysis showed that LLMs produced longer, more readable, and lexically richer responses with a more positive tone, while therapist responses were more often written in …

#GiftLink: "Daniel Metzger, a senior fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said the judge’s opinion offered “very detailed guidance for designing cases that can overcome the challenges this one faced.”
**The Kids Who Sued Trump Just Lost Big in Court. Or Did They?** - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/climate/climate-lawsuit-children-montana-trump-health.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uU8.XGvS.JzTmLO-wpAR7&smid=url-share

🧽 Indoor surfaces can act as massive sponges for harmful chemicals
#airquality

Indoor surfaces can act as massive sponges for harmful chemicals
Indoor surfaces have an unexpectedly strong ability to absorb and hold harmful chemical compounds that can threaten human health for as long as a year, according to air chemistry researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

Corporate reports miss the mark on ocean health, according to new analysis #ocean

Corporate reports miss the mark on ocean health, according to new analysis
New research led by Stanford University and co-authored by Lancaster University explores the industrial impacts on the ocean and compares them with what leading companies in the ocean economy disclose, underscoring the need for greater transparency and accountability.

Arintra, whose AI medical coding system translates clinical documentation into insurance codes for healthcare providers, raised a $21M Series A led by Peak XV (Erin Brodwin/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/health-tech-deals/2025/08/12/arintra-21m…

Exclusive: Arintra raises $21M to expand into denials prevention
As financial pressure mounts on U.S. health systems, Arintra aims to leverage gen-AI to secure reimbursement while reducing dependency on human coders.

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Chemtrail? New Conspiracy Theory Takes Wing at Kennedy's HHS (Stephanie Armour/KFF Health News)
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/chemtrails-conspiracy-fringe-theory-maha-kennedy-hhs/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251017/p21#a251017p21

Queen Detection in Beehives via Environmental Sensor Fusion for Low-Power Edge Computing
Chiara De Luca, Elisa Donati
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14061 https://

Queen Detection in Beehives via Environmental Sensor Fusion for Low-Power Edge Computing
Queen bee presence is essential for the health and stability of honeybee colonies, yet current monitoring methods rely on manual inspections that are labor-intensive, disruptive, and impractical for large-scale beekeeping. While recent audio-based approaches have shown promise, they often require high power consumption, complex preprocessing, and are susceptible to ambient noise. To overcome these limitations, we propose a lightweight, multimodal system for queen detection based on environmenta…

Hundreds of infectious disease specialists have been let go by the Trump administration.
Here are four who focused on keeping pandemics at bay.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/health/trump-…

They Fought Outbreaks Worldwide. Now They’re Fighting for New Lives.
Hundreds of infectious disease specialists have been let go by the Trump administration. Here are four who focused on keeping pandemics at bay.

When Curiosity Signals Danger: Predicting Health Crises Through Online Medication Inquiries
Dvora Goncharok, Arbel Shifman, Alexander Apartsin, Yehudit Aperstein
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11802

When Curiosity Signals Danger: Predicting Health Crises Through Online Medication Inquiries
Online medical forums are a rich and underutilized source of insight into patient concerns, especially regarding medication use. Some of the many questions users pose may signal confusion, misuse, or even the early warning signs of a developing health crisis. Detecting these critical questions that may precede severe adverse events or life-threatening complications is vital for timely intervention and improving patient safety. This study introduces a novel annotated dataset of medication-relate…

WA health inspectors on cusp of gaining access to Tacoma immigrant detention center • Washington State Standard
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/09/16/wa-health-inspectors-on-cusp-of-gaining-access-to-tacoma-immigrant-detention-center/

🌡️ Mexico’s rising mercury trade fuels toxic gold mining in Latin America: Report
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/07/mexicos-rising-mercury-trade-fuels-toxic-gold-mining-in-latin-america-report/

Mexico’s rising mercury trade fuels toxic gold mining in Latin America: Report
MEXICO CITY — In 2017, as part of an international treaty, Mexico started phasing down mercury production and eliminating its use in gold mining, citing major environmental and public health hazards. The effort appeared to work: Between 2017 and 2018, the government reported that national mercury production had dropped from 442 metric tons to just […]

“The Michigan doctor is Bernie’s true heir.” 🔥
It’s Dr. Abdul El-Sayed
– epidemiologist, former Detroit Health Director, and wrote the book on Medicare for All. 
𝗜’𝗺 𝗿𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗮𝗻’𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗨.𝗦. 𝗦𝗲𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿. In public service,
I’ve seen how broken politics puts profits over people.
That’s why I led the effort to cancel $700 million in medical debt for 300,000 Michiganders
— 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘯𝘰 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘨𝘰 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘬.
Our campaign is prou…

Support Abdul El-Sayed
Become a founding donor of our campaign today!

Families on Obamacare brace for higher health care premiums next year (Berkeley Lovelace Jr/NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/obamacare-higher-premiums-2026-affordable-care-act-rcna226637
http://www.memeorandum.com/250913/p42#a250913p42

add_health: Adolescent health (ADD HEALTH) (1994)
A directed network of friendships obtained through a social survey of high school students in 1994. The ADD HEALTH data are constructed from the in-school questionnaire; 90,118 students representing 84 communities took this survey in 1994-95. Some communities had only one school; others had two. Where there are two schools in a community students from one school were allowed to name friends in the other, the "sister school".…

Foundation Health, which develops an AI assistant to automate patient communication and prior authorization workflows for pharmacies, raised a $20M Series A (Heather Landi/Fierce Healthcare)
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-te

An influential US medical journal
👉is rejecting a call from the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr,
to retract a large Danish study that found that aluminum ingredients in vaccines do not increase health risks for children,
the journal’s editor told Reuters.
⚠️ Kennedy has long promoted doubts about vaccines’ safety and efficacy,
and as health secretary has upended the federal government’s process for recommending immun…

⚾ Sports teams appear to provide less injury protection for players with temporary contracts
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-sports-teams-injury-players-temporary.html

Sports teams appear to provide less injury protection for players with temporary contracts
Research in Economic Inquiry reveals that Major League Baseball teams appear to manage player injuries differently depending on contract status, with players on temporary contracts missing significantly fewer games due to injury. This suggests that teams may invest less in the long-term health of non-permanent players.

Who Makes Decisions About Vaccine Policy Now? (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/16/health/vaccines-rfk-jr-cdc-fda.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250916/p31#a250916p31

add_health: Adolescent health (ADD HEALTH) (1994)
A directed network of friendships obtained through a social survey of high school students in 1994. The ADD HEALTH data are constructed from the in-school questionnaire; 90,118 students representing 84 communities took this survey in 1994-95. Some communities had only one school; others had two. Where there are two schools in a community students from one school were allowed to name friends in the other, the "sister school".…

A novel imaging solution, called
"prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) positron emission tomography (PET) scanning",
can more effectively detect the recurrence of prostate cancer
compared to standard imaging methods,
and is associated with improved survival outcomes.

New imaging technique boosts survival in prostate cancer patients
A multicenter study led by London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute (LHSCRI), Lawson Research Institute of St. Joseph's Health Care London (Lawson), and University Health Network (UHN) has found a novel imaging solution, called prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, can more effectively detect the recurrence of prostate cancer compared to standard imaging methods, and is associated with improved survival outcomes.

😅 Wearable sweat sensor can detect responses to physical, emotional and pharmacological stress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-wearable-sensor-responses-physical-emotional.html

Wearable sweat sensor can detect responses to physical, emotional and pharmacological stress
Most people are well aware of the effects of chronic stress in the modern world. While some stress can be a good thing, like the type of stress your body feels during an intense workout, prolonged or chronic stress can lead to a myriad of health problems, including anxiety, heart disease, and inflammation. And, at a larger scale, the high prevalence of chronic stress in the population increases the burden on public health systems.

Trump cuts jobs at nation's mental health agency and some jobs at CDC : Shots - Health News : NPR
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/11/nx-s1-5571948/trump-mental-health-substance-abuse-cdc-layoffs-jobs

The collapse of two US firms, First Brands and Tricolor,
has shone a light on private credit and its growing influence in the global economy.
The failures have led to ballooning losses at traditional banks,
and, coupled with worries about the health of US regional banks,
have raised concerns about weak lending standards and potential threats from an opaque corner of the so-called "shadow banking" sector

RFK Jr.'s new 'MAHA' report gives road map to improving kids' health but stops short of action (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/kennedys-new-maha-report-outlines-steps-improve-kids-health-short-spec-rcna223893
http://www.memeorandum.com/250909/p171#a250909p171

The CDC shooting was public health’s Jan. 6: In RFK Jr.’s America, it will never be safe to practice public health or medicine | STAT
https://www.statnews.com/2025/08/15/cdc-shooting-january-6th-for-public-health/?utm_campaign=rss

For the first time in U.S. history, there are more Americans over 62 than under 18.
With the national workforce getting older every year, many economists argue that having people keep working longer than they used to would help maintain a robust labor market.
But it can be hard for many older adults to stay employed past the age of 62, the year they typically become eligible for early Social Security retirement benefits, even when their health is good.
In part, that’s becaus…

Trump administration ends a federal program helping older people get jobs since the 1960s
The White House left the program out of its proposed 2026 budget due to what it said was a failure at moving older workers into unsubsidized employment.

Trump slashes mental health agency as shutdown drags on (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/10/11/nx-s1-5571948/trump-mental-health-substance-abuse-cdc-layoffs-jobs
http://www.memeorandum.com/251011/p71#a251011p71

Around 31,000 registered nurses and front-line healthcare workers at Kaiser Permanente are on strike,
demanding better wages, working hours, and proper staffing.
The strike began on Tuesday, Oct 14, and spans hundreds of medical centers and offices in California, Oregon, and Hawaii.
Calling in from the picket line in Portland, Oregon, Registered Nurse First Assistant (RNFA) and Executive Secretary of the Oregon Federation of Nurses & Health Professionals (OFNHP) Nick …

31,000 healthcare workers are on strike at Kaiser Permanente—and more may be joining soon
The strike began on Tuesday, Oct. 14, and spans hundreds of medical centers and offices in California, Oregon, and Hawaii. Calling in from the picket line, we speak with striking Registered Nurse First Assistant Nick Eng.

Oh, for fuck's sake, release the #EpsteinFiles
Trump advances IVF agenda with latest pricing deal
https://thehill.com/newsletters/health-care/5559489-trump-advances-ivf-agenda-with-latest-pricing-deal/

The Trump Administration is giving tax breaks to billionaires while cutting vaccine research and development.
This puts every single American at risk.
-- Katie Porter
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news

RFK Jr. cuts $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts, dealing major blow to promising area of research
The Trump administration is terminating 22 contracts focused on developing mRNA vaccines and winding down additional federal investments in mRNA technology, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Our job is not to throw 15 million people off health care and double insurance premiums for more than 20 million.
Our job is not to shutter community health centers, nursing homes and rural hospitals.
Our job is to fix a broken system and guarantee health care to all.
-- Sen Bernie Sanders
https://

Senator Bernie Sanders (@sanders.senate.gov)
Our job is not to throw 15 million people off health care and double insurance premiums for more than 20 million. Our job is not to shutter community health centers, nursing homes and rural hospitals. Our job is to fix a broken system and guarantee health care to all.

Six surgeons general: It’s our duty to warn the nation about RFK Jr.
Secretary Kennedy is entitled to his views.
But he is not entitled to put people’s health at risk.
He has rejected science,
misled the public
and compromised the health of Americans.
The nation deserves a health and human services secretary who is committed to scientific integrity
and can restore morale and trust in our public health agencies.
Having served at senior leve…

Six surgeons general: It’s our duty to warn the nation about RFK Jr.
We took an oath to declare dangers when we found them. We’re doing that again today.