health care workers
Where are all the Asian American doctors?
Trick question. A new study in JAMA Network Open finds that while Asian Americans are well represented in medicine, members of some Asian subgroups — Laotian Americans, Cambodian Americans, and Filipino Americans — are vastly underrepresented. Such underrepresentation has gone unnoticed because of the common practice of treating Asian Americans as a monolith, lumping them all into one group despite vast differences that exist in educational attainment, income, health outcomes, and food security.
The study also found that Asian Americans from nearly every subgroup were represented less at higher career levels and among academic medical school faculty. Laotian American, Cambodian American, and Filipino American medical students were also less represented in the most selective medical specialties that require the longest training. In contrast, those who were Taiwanese American, Pakistani American, Korean American, and Chinese American were represented at higher levels.
Disaggregating data to better understand Asian Americans populations is key, the authors write, and could help prevent underinvestment in this group, noting that in the past 25 years, just 0.17% of NIH funding has gone to study Asian Americans. — Usha Lee McFarling
one big number
48,870
That’s how many people died of alcohol-related causes in 2020. Put differently, that’s a mortality rate of 21.6 per 100,000 people — more than double what it was in 1999, researchers report in a new study in the American Journal of Medicine. CDC data suggest alcohol-related deaths went up in all age groups, but the largest increases were among those 25 to 34 (a 3.8-fold increase). Women, Asian people and Pacific Islanders experienced over two-fold increases.
Alcohol-related harms and death have been mounting for years, but the pandemic accelerated the problem. A separate study in the Annals of Internal Medicine found the prevalence of any drinking and of heavy alcohol use increased between 2018 and 2020, and the uptick persisted in 2022, though recent polling suggests public attitudes toward alcohol are shifting.
(The CDC offers a free tool for adults to check their drinking levels and build a plan for cutting back.)
If you or someone you know has concerns about substance use, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) or visit findtreatment.gov.
FDA
A cautionary tale of medical device safety, finally told
A woman in Georgia finds a piece of metal poking out of her inner thigh one day in 2011. Later, she learns it was from an implanted medical device that had come apart in her body. She sues the device maker, Cook Medical, and in the process dredges up evidence that critical safety issues were overlooked in clinical trials. That information is shielded from the public for years.
This is a case that researchers say illustrates how medical device regulation can leave patients in the dark — “a tangible example of where that lack of transparency really does cause harm,” device safety expert Kushal Kadakia told STAT’s Liz Lawrence. Kadakia is co-author of a new paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine that shares for the first time the confidential details of the Cook Medical case — including alleged shortcomings of the clinical trial, and how expert witnesses were barred from speaking about it for a decade. Read more.
