Martha Bebinger
Health Reporter at WBUR-FM (Boston, MA)
Covering Covid, addiction, health disparities and the intersection of climate change & health for WBUR. Mom of 3 adventurous young men. Texan at heart. She/Her
Articles
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3 weeks ago |
wbur.org | Martha Bebinger
Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from WBUR's weekly health newsletter, CommonHealth. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here. You might not use the Patient Safety Network website (PSNet for short). But I, for one, sure hope my doctor does. A pair of case studies posted last week help explain why. They’re about migraines. About 12% of Americans get them, including me.
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1 month ago |
wbur.org | Martha Bebinger
One year ago this month, police found the body of my nephew on the front seat of a borrowed car in a gas station parking lot. Austen Smith was 29. He'd been addicted to pain pills, on and off, for more than 10 years. On some level, Austen knew the risk he was taking in those wee morning hours, but opioids had hijacked his brain. This time there was enough fentanyl in whatever Austen took to kill him. The risk-taking piece is no surprise. Austen always pushed for more out of life.
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1 month ago |
wbur.org | Martha Bebinger
Two Massachusetts doctors are suing the Trump administration for removing their research from a patient safety website. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the doctors allege the deletions violated their rights to free speech. The physicians, who are on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, received emails that said their studies were taken down because they used the terms “transgender” or “LGBTQ” to describe patients who should be screened because they have specific risks.
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1 month ago |
wbur.org | Martha Bebinger
A Boston-area health care director received guidance from the Trump administration last month about words to be removed from the organization's website. They included "equity," "women," "disability" and "gender."If the terms were not removed quickly, the organization could expect to lose federal funding. "We had painful, angering and discouraging conversations with our staff," said the director, who is a doctor. "But the answer seemed pretty clear.
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2 months ago |
wbur.org | Priyanka Dayal McCluskey |Martha Bebinger
Massachusetts health officials are rolling out new programs aimed at improving health and life expectancy in 30 communities across the state where residents are more likely to suffer preventable, early deaths. The Healey administration’s initiative, Advancing Health Equity in Massachusetts, is focused on reducing complications that happen during and after pregnancy, and addressing the social and economic drivers of heart disease and other related health conditions.
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Four years ago, a young man named V was deep into an addiction to cocaine. He hasn’t used in a year now. He swapped the rush he got from cocaine for the pleasure of achieving goals and getting rewards in a program called contingency management. https://t.co/j2JPoYqC8U
First time I’ve seen Harm Reduction listed on an elevator menu. This is at the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center in Mass. A whole office of people doing counseling, handing out supplies, offering contingency management and medications to treat substance use disorder. https://t.co/uvM925nfLR
Massachusetts has set another record that no one will celebrate. Preliminary state data shows there were 2,357 overdose deaths in 2022. That’s 57 more deaths than in 2021, and an increase of 9% from the highest point before the COVID pandemic. https://t.co/HUBlJRzI4I