Walking While Doing This Activity Might Reduce Your Risk Of Dementia—And It's Completely Free
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The brain is your body's command center—so keeping it in working order is really a nonnegotiable. While doctors have repeatedly recommended factors like eating well and trying to do new activities to support brain health, research over the last few years has found two habits worth prioritizing in your daily life: walking and spending time with loved ones.
Every walk you take is a step toward a sharper mind in more ways than one. A growing body of research shows that regular walking can boost memory, sharpen focus, and even slow cognitive decline—including reducing risk of developing dementia. Separate research has shown that walking can boost creativity, too. People who were physically active—including with walking—at some point within the last 3.5 hours showed processing speeds equivalent to someone four years younger while playing brain games, a recent study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine found.
The second game changer for your thinker: socialization. Your brain thrives on connection, and research backs this up. A separate body of research shows that regular social connection can shore up memory, problem-solving, and also reduce dementia risk. One study, published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity, found that people who interacted with family and friends on a weekly or monthly basis had a slower rate of memory decline than those who socialized less.
Meet the experts: Jonathan Howard, MD, is a neurologist at NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue. Scott Kaiser, MD, is the director of geriatric cognitive health for the Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John's Health Center. Amit Sachdev, MD, is medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University.
With that, it's worth exploring whether doing both at once would be a double whammy for brain health. While this powerhouse combo hasn't technically been studied formally just yet, doctors say there might be something to this health hack. Let's investigate.
There are a few mechanisms at play. One is the fact that walking is simply a great form of exercise. 'Anything that improves overall cardiovascular health will help reduce dementia risk,' says Jonathan Howard, MD, a neurologist at NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue. Your brain needs healthy blood vessels to function properly, get nutrients, and remove toxins, and there's an established link between heart disease and dementia.
Getting your steps in can help support overall health—and that will do your brain a solid too, says Amit Sachdev, MD, medical director in the Department of Neurology at Michigan State University. 'Overall health is important for brain health,' he notes.
Walking directly boosts brain health, too. It triggers the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein that supports nerve cell growth and survival in the brain and spinal cord. BDNF is involved in crucial tasks like memory and learning, says Scott Kaiser, MD, director of geriatric cognitive health for the Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John's Health Center. 'That helps to create a well-functioning brain network,' he says.
Walking also can help reduce your overall stress levels. Stress can negatively impact your brain on a cellular level when it goes unchecked, and ramping up your step count can help counteract this, says Dr. Kaiser.
Time with loved ones is an anti-stressor, too, and can support good heart health which, again, ultimately boosts brain health, Dr. Kaiser says. There may even be an indirect link here: 'If you're feeling well connected, you may be more likely to make better choices for your health—and brain health—around drinking, eating, and substance abuse,' Dr. Kaiser says.Whether walking around the house or around the neighborhood, these 'perfectly comfortable and lightweight shoes are a great value at an affordable price,' says Jacqueline Andriakos, WH executive health and fitness director. Plus, they come in countless colors.
$23.99 at amazon.com'These are like little clouds beneath the feet—and I've never seen a shoe style quite like them," Andriakos says. 'I lace up in my Ziplines mostly for walking and errands.'
$320.00 at athleticpropulsionlabs.comSoft, cushiony, and great for pain-free walking, this model has an elevated heel. 'If you are a heel striker in general or deal with nagging heel pain, these would be a match,' says WH news and features editor Currie Engel.
$149.95 at zappos.comA platform walking sneaker? Yes! This elevated pair performs thanks to the Dr. Scholl's comfort built-in. 'I can wear them all day with no foot aches,' says Andriakos, who deals with sesamoiditis (nagging inflammation of the sesamoid bones in the ball of the foot).
$59.99 at amazon.com'First day out of the box, this pair performed even with no socks, 90-degree weather, and on my feet all day exploring, on a weeklong vacation—I could not have been more comfortable,' says Laura McLaughlin, WH managing editor.
$129.00 at kizik.com'They feel sturdy, yet cushioned and supportive. The light and responsive soles make perfect sense as a standing and walking shoe,' Andriakos says. (It's no wonder nurses and teachers rave about them!)
$149.99 at zappos.com'My feet stayed totally dry on snow, grass, mud, and slush, and I never slipped on the smooshy surfaces after a New York City snowstorm,' says Nied. 'As long as the snow isn't above the ankles, these work as well as full-blown snow boots and are much easier to pack if you're traveling.'
$82.50 at zappos.comEnter: a warm hug for your feet. These easy slip-ons mold to your entire foot, making them perfect for strolls after grueling workouts.
$152.00 at oofos.ca'This neutral-looking shoe goes with everything,' says WH senior e-commerce editor Neha Tandon. 'After unexpectedly getting caught in snow and doing a rainy hike, these kept me warm and dry and were slip-proof on the steep parts.'
$139.95 at zappos.com'They are stiff and structured in a protective way, but still pack enough cushioning and a wider design for all-day comfort,' Andriakos says. 'I swear I stand with better posture when I wear them.'
$70.00 at vionicshoes.com
To be clear, there are no available studies that specifically found walking with a loved one can prevent dementia. (However, a 28-week group-walking program helped people with dementia maintain a steady quality of life over the testing period, and the intervention was well-liked by both participants and their caregivers.) There are studies to support the benefits of group exercise, particularly outdoor group exercise, especially when it comes to lowering stress levels.
'We know that exercising is good and that socializing in groups is beneficial,' Dr. Kaiser says. 'Theoretically, the benefits for brain health could be greater when you do them together.'
It's hard to put a specific number on this, given that research hasn't extended into this territory just yet. If you want to set a lofty goal, Dr. Howard suggests trying to walk for 30 minutes at a time on most days of the week.
Since it can be tricky to consistently block out that time with family and friends, Dr. Kaiser just recommends doing what you can. 'Most evidence suggests that inactivity is bad and any amount of activity is a good amount,' he says. 'But, in general, more is better.'
If going for longer walks with loved ones is hard to pull off, Dr. Kaiser recommends trying to squeeze in 'exercise snacks,' like walking out of the office at the end of the night with your work buddy or taking a lap around the neighborhood with your mom during a visit instead of catching up on the couch. You can also try taking up your own walking habit and socializing by chatting on the phone with loved ones.
By the way, you can take up this new habit any time. 'I can't think of any age group that won't benefit from this,' Dr. Kaiser says.
There's a lot that goes into supporting good brain health, but walking with a loved one checks off a lot of boxes and gets in some quality social time, too. 'It makes sense to kill two birds with one stone,' Dr. Howard says.
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USA Today
2 days ago
- USA Today
'I refuse to give up': Michigan researchers, health officials grapple with funding cuts
'I refuse to give up': Michigan researchers, health officials grapple with funding cuts Show Caption Hide Caption Video: MSU breast cancer researcher Jamie Bernard talks about funding uncertainty MSU breast cancer researcher Jamie Bernard talks about federal funding uncertainty on Thursday, May 8, 2025, at her lab in East Lansing. Michigan public health officers say they've had to cut services and lay off workers after the Trump administration slashed funding, affecting their ability to work to stop the spread of disease. Scientists from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University say federal cuts to their research could halt development for new cancer treatments and eviscerate the scientific workforce. Using words like "devastating," "heartbreaking," and "shortsighted," Michigan public health leaders and researchers at the state's largest universities described the effects of President Donald Trump's efforts to slash federal government spending — through executive orders, cuts to federal grants, and stop work orders — and the wide-reaching fallout. Some local health departments have laid off workers and cut back on the services they can provide at regional laboratories and at community and in-school health clinics, and have seen disruptions in their ability to stop the spread of infectious disease, said Norm Hess, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health. When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services revoked $11.4 billion in COVID-19-related grants in late March, the effects were felt across Michigan in ways that might not have been anticipated, he said. 'While everyone agrees the emergency response phase of COVID-19 is over, the funding streams created for pandemic response have been supporting laboratories monitoring other diseases around the state, from legionella to tuberculosis to measles, as well as water quality inspections and other sampling work,' Hess said. 'Federal leaders rescinded those grants, clearly thinking it was a responsible way to recover money that was being misspent. Instead, it's a great example of unintended consequences. Everyone agrees government should spend public dollars efficiently and effectively, but it appears they did not check to see what they were actually eliminating when cutting grants that had 'COVID' on the label.' Although Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined other states in challenging many of the Trump administration's cuts to federal public health and university research funding, including the $11.4 billion in COVID-19-related grants, Hess said it's too risky for local health departments to count on money that may or may not be awarded to them in the end. "You can't turn it off, and then if money comes, turn it back on," he said. Cuts hit research on the science of aging When he took office, Trump pledged to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending, and "make America healthy again" by shifting priorities of the nation's top health agencies and taking aim at research and programs that focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. But medical researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan say his administration's abrupt cuts to funding for scientific studies, clinical trials and training programs have all but gutted their life's work and could halt the development of new treatments for diseases like cancer as well as eviscerate the future scientific workforce. University of Michigan psychology professor Toni Antonucci lost the $13 million federal grant that supported her research on health disparities among aging Americans. It focused on minority populations, including African Americans, and comes at a moment in history when the U.S. population is older than it ever has been and is growing increasingly diverse. "I have never thought that politics should be involved in research, and, unfortunately, this is clearly the case here," said Antonucci, who has worked at U-M since the 1970s. "We were focusing on our most vulnerable populations, and I think that's the reason that the money was ... rescinded. "It shows a kind of shortsightedness and, in a way, vindictiveness. ... My focus was on ... how can the social relations that people have improve their health? What kinds of relationships are positive for people or negative for people? How do we increase the positive, and reduce the negative? "What are the kinds of things that universally predict better health, longer longevity? ... The point is, if you know what's influencing different groups, it gives you some insight on how to intervene both with that group and with other groups." Now, she said, that data will be lost. "If a government has policies that they want to enact, regardless of the data, then this is what you do," Antonucci said. "You just make sure there are no data. But just because you don't collect the data, that doesn't mean the association isn't still there." U-M professor: Slashed grants suggest 'you just don't matter' Gary Harper, a U-M professor of health behavior and health equity, learned in late March that his nearly $1.15 million five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health had been rescinded. "It's devastating," said Harper. "I am an openly gay man, and have been involved in activism, research, clinical work, and policy work in the HIV field for 40 years, starting out in 1985 as an old-time activist at a time when we were burying our friends every week. ... This is the first time in the history of my academic career that I've been without federal research or training funds." Harper is co-director of the SOAR at U-M, which stands for Student Opportunities for AIDS/HIV Research. It's a two-year intensive mentoring program that provides HIV-related research opportunities to undergraduate students, propelling them toward graduate school, and, eventually, the HIV research workforce. Many of those students are LGBTQ+ themselves, have disabilities, or come from low-income backgrounds, he said, but Harper noted that the program is open to anyone. "I'm a strong believer that we need to be making sure that we mentor researchers who reflect the communities that are most impacted," Harper said. More: Federal research cuts would rock Michigan economy, halt clinical trials, those affected say More: Trump's budget cuts could cost Michigan universities more than $200 million Discovering that the NIH canceled SOAR's grant funding "ripped me apart," Harper said. "We have one more cohort to get through their senior year." He said he won't let the Trump administration win and cancel the program before they graduate. "Basically, what they're saying is, 'We don't want to spend any money on you because you just don't matter,' " Harper said. " 'Your life has no value.' ... Well, I refuse to give up on them." Harper and SOAR's co-director are scrambling together the money themselves to pay for the final year of the program. Slowly, he said, that is coming together, but his other work through the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (ATN) for HIV/AIDS Intervention has also been targeted by the federal cuts. A study on transgender youths was canceled, he said, and funding for the leadership group that oversees equity and inclusion in all ATN studies also was eliminated. He also lost grant funding to study gay and bisexual men in Kenya living with HIV. Still, he said, "I'm not going to let this get me down. "I try and show power and strength and resilience to the students, to give them hope that this, too, shall pass. This is a moment in time, but this is not your entire life. ... Your lives do matter. You are special and you are perfect, just the way you are." Breast cancer prevention studies in limbo The Trump administration isn't taking aim solely at research that fits its definition of DEI, said Jamie Bernard, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University. "What I don't really think is being well communicated is that cancer research is also being threatened," said Bernard, who began studying interventions to prevent breast cancer in 2016, when her mother, Pamela O'Brien, was diagnosed with the disease at 61 years old. "This is something that Democrats and Republicans have always supported. In fact, we've come so far in the treatment of breast cancer due to federal funding, we diagnose women earlier. There's lots of options for treatment, and really, this research has saved a lot of lives and brought health care costs down." Her work is now focused on the environmental and lifestyle factors that can increase a woman's risk of getting aggressive breast cancers. "Not all breast cancers are curable, so that's what I really set off to focus on," she said, explaining that her work involves understanding how to kill cancer cells that are resistant to treatment and discovering new drug therapies. Earlier this year, she applied to renew a $2.07 million federal grant funded by the National Institutes of Health along with a new, $2.79 million grant, but both have been held up for months in a cloud of uncertainty. The initial reviews of her grants were postponed but eventually got through the first stage of the process; they now await the second step of review. There remain no guarantees. "How are they going to choose what they fund?" she said. "I don't know what's going to happen, really. So, we are in a time of uncertainty. Grant funding has always been uncertain. It's always been competitive, but there's always been a process and an infrastructure that researchers have relied on." Bernard runs a research lab at MSU, where a team of scientists are working to 'stop breast cancer from ever starting in the first place or prevent it so much that you've delayed it and you die of some other natural cause before you have to deal with cancer," she said. "I am in a place where I don't know if I should be accepting students in the fall. What's my next move? Am I still allowed to study what I've been studying? So it's a confusing time, a frustrating time, a time of high anxiety in our department of pharmacology and toxicology.' Bernard said the NIH canceled a grant for a graduate student from Puerto Rico who is Hispanic, and had applied through a mechanism that provided funding for predoctoral students who are disabled, identify as Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, or who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. "Just simply because she was a minority, the grant mechanism that she applied with, they withdrew it," Bernard said. "The white woman in my lab, her grant is going to be reviewed. ... It's so awful." The work they're doing, she said, "really should be bipartisan, nonpartisan — not even partisan. It's freaking cancer research." Ph.D. student reexamines future in scientific research The political climate is chasing Alex Chapman, a Ph.D. student at MSU who is studying migraines and pain, away from a career in academia. Chapman, 24, who is originally from Richmond, Virginia, secured a federal grant studying a neuropeptide that's upregulated in people with migraines, before Trump took office in January. Many of her friends and colleagues haven't been so lucky. "Science is being so vilified that I'm considering careers in other places or different avenues because it's just hard to see a future in a place that doesn't value science at all," she said. "It's heartbreaking. ... My career options are kind of dwindling, and the more time that passes, the more fellowships and different opportunities just keep becoming defunded," Chapman said, noting that a fellowship she was eyeing through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been axed. She considered shifting toward public policy work, helping government leaders understand "why we should fund pain research," but then she attended a symposium and heard a woman who works in public policy speak about the cuts there, too. "She was like, 'This is a great fellowship. It's been defunded. This was an awesome fellowship. It's been defunded,' " Chapman said. When entrepreneur Elon Musk, who headed the new Department of Government Efficiency early in the Trump administration, criticized the use of federal dollars on scientific studies of legumes and aggression in hamsters, Chapman said, it showed that he couldn't see the full impact of the work. "If you just simplify it like that, maybe it does seem silly, but you're looking at the small picture," she said. "The point of research is to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. When you understand the best process of planting beans or why certain strains of corn are more susceptible to different fungi, you help people more effectively and efficiently plant food. This will help us in the face of climate change. "If you understand why a hamster is aggressive after ingesting a certain substance, you understand the role of that substance and how it could potentially affect humans." That small-picture view — and the cuts made because of it — could have generational impacts on the United States and the world, Chapman said. "This isn't just shutting down one study that focuses on hamsters fighting," she said. "It's preventing a new generation of scientists from coming into the (field), which is going to stunt our growth as a nation, which is going to prevent new ideas from happening, which is going to lead to ... horrible damage that would take years, if not decades, to recover. "People are afraid to come out and criticize this because of the way the government has treated them, especially foreign students. When it gets to the point where the government can strike fear in your heart if you speak out against them, especially about something regarding science, it's a very scary place to be." Local public health departments rattled, services cut Nick Derusha, the director and health officer of the LMAS District Health Department, which also includes Luce and Mackinac counties, said his part of the eastern Upper Peninsula has been rattled by a Trump administration stop-work order that means there's no money to run clinics that provide medicine like methadone to help people wean off opioid drugs and reduce the risk of overdose deaths in Alger and Schoolcraft counties. "We take a really holistic approach to that program," Derusha said. "We're not just providing medication-assisted treatment. We have peer recovery coaches. We have community health workers. We have a lot of staff that are there to support them in many other ways, not just the medication. "When funding is abruptly eliminated like that, we can't just drop people off the caseload. We needed to find a way for them to be able to continue to receive services or some type of off-ramp. We worked with the local hospital, and we agreed for three more months, which is kind of nearing the end here, to continue to provide those services, absent the funding. But the long-term ability of us to do that is not likely." In addition, Derusha said the LMAS department lost $512,000 a year to pay for a courier system for its laboratory services. Because the district is so sprawling — it covers four U.P. counties — when test samples need to be shipped to the regional lab in Luce County, ordinary mail often doesn't get them delivered quickly enough. Without the courier system, it means slower results for important public health testing, he said, which could delay treatments and lead to poorer outcomes. The LMAS District Health Department isn't alone. The Mid-Michigan Health Department, which includes Clinton, Gratiot and Montcalm counties, announced in April it will no longer investigate or treat latent tuberculosis infections because of "funding cuts and workforce limitations." Mental health services for school-age children are being cut, too, said Andrea Cole, president of the Ethel and James Flinn Foundation, a Detroit-based nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality, scope, and delivery of mental health services in Michigan. A $1 billion grant was terminated through the Department of Education in late April to pay for in-school social workers, counselors and other mental health professionals — even though 70% of children who receive mental health services get them through their schools, she said. "A lot of the federal cuts were to the most vulnerable and underserved populations," Cole said. "Schools are faced with the possibility of laying off those people that they hired under that grant if they don't have funding to continue it." And the students will be left without that critical mental health support when "they need it more than ever," Cole said. Hess said all of these cuts, along with proposed legislation — the Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and now is under consideration in the U.S. Senate — that would slash Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and a state Senate budget proposal that also seeks to trim funding even more, public health in Michigan could dramatically change. More: Whitmer: Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' could cost Michigan $900 million a year for food stamps More: 700,000 Michigan residents could lose health insurance under Medicaid cuts, report shows "We don't want to give the impression that the sky is falling, and that public health is going to pack up and go home," Hess said. "We've been here for 100 years, and we've seen ups and downs over the years. Health officers are used to kind of making things work, but this is sort of a unique situation. "Community residents are really going to feel this if all of these things that we are watching come to fruition. Public health will not look the same in their communities, in most places." Contact Kristen Shamus: kshamus@ Subscribe to the Detroit Free Press.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Planned Parenthood provides basic health care. If they close, where will many women go?
When the Trump administration suddenly froze federal funding to more than 100 Planned Parenthood clinics this spring, the organization's Michigan branch was already deep into hard discussions about its finances. 'The leadership team and our board had been scenario planning for months to try to fill those gaps to see how we could continue providing care,' said Ashlea Phenicie, chief external affairs officer of Planned Parenthood of Michigan. The only option was clear. Michigan's 14 Planned Parenthood clinics serve tens of thousands of women. In order to save clinics around the state that were either busier or in places where women had few other options, the team would have to close multiple clinics, including the only one in the state's Upper Peninsula, a large, isolated and mostly rural area surrounded by a stretch of Lake Michigan. In Ann Arbor, home of Michigan State University, the city's two clinics would be combined. It's a reality playing out across the country. At least 20 Planned Parenthood clinics have closed or will close within the year. For decades, the health care organization has been squeezed by the same pressures choking nearly all U.S. providers –– low insurance reimbursement rates, blocked Medicaid expansion, understaffing and rising costs of providing medical care that have forced hospitals and health clinic closures throughout the country. Uniquely, Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit that serves more than 2 million patients nationwide every year, many of them uninsured, underinsured or who qualify for Medicaid, has also become the target of pointed funding cuts that started under the first Trump administration. 'What is different this time around is that it's much more sweeping. It's a deeper and broader cut that will affect both more clinics and more people,' said Farzana Kapadia, a professor of epidemiology and population health at the New York University School of Global Public Health. In March, the Trump administration withheld funding by excluding many Planned Parenthood clinics from the Title X family planning program, a federal grant program that funds family planning and reproductive health care. Then, in late May, House Republicans delivered another enormous blow, voting to end funding for Planned Parenthood as part of the reconciliation bill. Federal law already restricts federal funds from being used for abortion, except in cases of incest, rape or if a mother's life is in danger, through a law called the Hyde Amendment. But if passed, the reconciliation bill would cut off Medicaid reimbursement to any nonprofit that primarily offers family planning or reproductive health services, provides abortions beyond the Hyde Amendment exceptions and received more than $1 million in Medicaid reimbursements in 2024. As a nationwide organization, Planned Parenthood does all three. If the bill passes in the Senate, it would block Planned Parenthood clinics from billing Medicaid for any health services at all, including cancer screenings, wellness exams and birth control. It's unclear if the new legislation would apply to Planned Parenthood nationally or on a state-by-state basis. Over half of Planned Parenthood patients are covered by publicly funded health programs like Medicaid and in 2023, about 36% of all Title X services were provided by Planned Parenthood clinics. Eliminating these sources of funding would cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Planned Parenthood's care costs every year. Targeting federal funding for any type of care for Planned Parenthood clinics is a way opponents of abortion rights can attempt to shut down clinics that do provide abortion, even if they also offer other care. Phenicie said Republican lawmakers appear to understand that cutting off Planned Parenthood from Title X and Medicaid reimbursement will put the clinics that perform abortion in peril, even if these funds can't cover the procedures. The slashed funds could affect all Planned Parenthood clinics whether they offer abortion services or not. 'They know so much of our patient base is on Medicaid or needs Title X to pay for their care, they know that cutting this off will allow them to cut off access to abortion and they are willing to make that trade,' she said. Before the cuts, Planned Parenthood was already operating on thin margins. Now, clinics are struggling to operate at a loss. 'The numbers are so devastating that there are really no options other than closing some centers and consolidating others, and then investing in our virtual health centers that can serve people across the state,' Phenicie said. At least 1 in 3 women say they have gone to a Planned Parenthood clinic for care, as well as 1 in 10 men, according to a recent KFF Health poll. Nearly half of Black women have gone to a Planned Parenthood clinic, the poll found. Abortions, the main reason the Trump administration has ended support for the clinics, account for just 4% of the services Planned Parenthood provides, according to a 2024 annual report. The vast majority of Planned Parenthood's services involve basic health care for women, including diagnosing and treating urinary tract and yeast infections and screening for cervical cancer and breast cancer. Some locations offer vaccination against HPV, hepatitis B, Covid and influenza. More than half of care is related to testing for sexually transmitted infections and treatment. Another 25% is providing access to contraception, often at low or no cost. Cancer screenings and other non-abortion services make up 18%, the report showed. Those important medical services haven't swayed opponents of the clinics. In January, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a bill that sought to ban Planned Parenthood from federal funding in the same ways the federal reconciliation bill would. The bill is called the Defund Planned Parenthood Act. 'My commitment to protecting life isn't just personal, it's rooted in both science and principle. Life begins at conception, and I've spent my time in the Senate fighting to protect the right to life,' Paul said in a press release. About 40% of Planned Parenthood's funding comes from government health care reimbursements and grants. Many locations offer a sliding scale payment option for people who can't afford health care. That money comes, in part, from government programs that are now being cut. 'Cutting this funding is really about cutting access to care for people who are not insured or who are underinsured to allow for tax breaks for people who can afford their medical care,' NYU's Kapadia said. Wendy Stark, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, said that even when a patient has private insurance, 'the reimbursement rates are just not meeting the costs of primary care. 'The U.S. health care system pays a tiny amount of health care dollars into primary and preventative care,' Stark said. 'We are sitting in a micro version of that.' Earlier this year, Planned Parenthood announced it was selling the building that housed its only Manhattan location. Planned Parenthood locations are also shuttering throughout the Midwest and in other states that have historically voted in favor of abortion rights, including Vermont. In late May, Planned Parenthood announced it will close four clinics in Minnesota within a year. The state was the first to codify the right to abortion into law after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade, but only one of the closing clinics performed abortions. Four of the six Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa, including one in Ames, where Iowa State University is located, will also be shuttered. Four Illinois clinics, none which performed abortions, stopped operating in March. In April, three locations closed and two were consolidated in Michigan, where the right to abortion is enshrined into state law. Two Utah locations closed in May after losing a significant amount of funding as a result of the Title X freeze. 'We are subsidizing almost every visit we do, even with insurance,' Stark said. 'We also have a great deal of our patients who come who do not have insurance.' The decision to sell the Manhattan clinic was a strategic but difficult decision, she said. The revenue from the sale could help keep other clinics in the state operating. Both the patients and staff of the Manhattan clinic can be absorbed by Planned Parenthood's other New York City locations, which can minimize the impact the closure will have. 'When we consolidate in certain locations, we look at the whole area. Can we funnel patients to our next closest health center, are there other clinics that patients can be sent to?' Stark said, adding that this is more difficult to do in rural areas that already have extremely minimal health care options. 'If we face further erosion of our finances, we will have to make more hard decisions,' she said. Several state-level laws banned Planned Parenthood from receiving Title X funds in the decade preceding the sweeping federal exclusions. Robin Marty, the executive director of WAWC Healthcare, formerly West Alabama Women's Center, in Tuscaloosa, said these states can provide a picture of what health care may look like in states that have more recently faced Planned Parenthood closures. 'We exist as kind of a lesson to people of what resources are like if there is not a Planned Parenthood,' she said. Planned Parenthood operates just one brick-and-mortar clinic in Alabama, in Birmingham, but offers telehealth throughout the state. There are just two in Louisiana and one in the Florida Panhandle. There are no physical clinics in Mississippi, which has the highest teen birth rate in the nation. Alabama and Louisiana rank in the top seven, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Mississippi also has the highest maternal mortality rate. Louisiana comes in second. Alabama is fourth. 'There aren't places for people to go for free birth control or STI screenings or maternal care,' she said, referring to sexually transmitted infections. WAWC Healthcare is one of the only providers in Alabama, outside of federally qualified health centers, which are run by states or counties, that does. Already, Marty said, the clinic relies heavily on nongovernmental grants in the absence of access to Title X, though the clinic does accept Medicaid. 'Every time I apply for a grant, I know I have only about a 10% chance of getting it, but I do it anyway because that's the only way my patients can get care,' she said. Other than grants, 'we rely on donors who each donate about $50 each time we contact them.' Marty said other clinics that provide some of the same services as Planned Parenthood, which are already operating on razor-thin margins, if not at a loss, will be further strained by closures. This strain will be passed onto patients. 'You are talking about individuals who are living at or below the poverty level who already can't afford health care on their own and then you are eliminating a major source of their health care,' Kapadia said. The GOP megabill, which blocks Planned Parenthood from being reimbursed with Medicaid dollars, among other Medicaid cuts, is awaiting its fate in the Senate this week. For now, Title X funding is frozen for Planned Parenthoods in 20 states. If the 'Big Beautiful Bill' passes, another 200 of the roughly 600 Planned Parenthoods will be in danger, according to Planned Parenthood. When Title X funding was cut off to Michigan Planned Parenthood between 2019 and 2021, the number of people seeking preventative care at its locations dropped 75%, Phenicie said. Although there are other health centers that can pay for visits using Title X funds, they could not absorb the patients Planned Parenthood could no longer see, she added. In the month leading up to this year's closures, Planned Parenthood Michigan kept the four closing clinics open to honor all the appointments that had already been made, and spent hours trying to help patients line up care at other clinics or through telehealth with Planned Parenthood. 'Even if they would like to continue care, if they can't be covered under Title X and they can't use Medicaid, their options will be limited,' Phenicie said. This article was originally published on
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Hiltzik: Study finds removing school mask mandates contributed to 22,000 U.S. COVID deaths in a year
Someday we Americans may stop quarreling over our response to the COVID-19 pandemic — lockdown orders, social distancing and so forth — but one category of debate may never become immune to second-guessing. That's the impact of anti-pandemic measures on schools and schoolchildren. According to popular opinion, these were almost entirely mistaken or ineffective. A newly published study from data scientists at Michigan State University knocks one pillar out from under this claim. It finds that the abrupt removal in 2022 of mandates that children wear masks in school contributed to an estimated 21,800 COVID deaths that year — a shocking 9% of the total COVID deaths in the U.S. that year. COVID-19 is less of a threat to children than accidents or the common flu. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya (2022) gets an assessment of child health dead wrong "We were surprised by that too," says Scott A. Imberman, a professor of economics and education policy at Michigan State and a co-author of the paper. On reflection, he says, given the mixing of children and staff in the close quarters of a classroom, "it's pretty easy to see how COVID could propagate to the wider community." In February 2022, about 50% of public school children, or more than 20 million pupils, were in districts with mask mandates; then, over a period of six weeks, almost all those districts rescinded their mandates. "You can see how that would create a pretty substantial surge in infections." Most of the surge, Imberman told me, was a "spillover effect" in the communities outside the schools themselves. The Michigan State finding undermines several myths and misrepresentations about COVID spread by the right wing. These include the claim that children are virtually impervious to COVID, which has been refuted by the injury and death toll among children. A related misrepresentation was that children can't pass on the infection to adults. In fact, because many children didn't show symptoms of the infection or had only mild, flu-like symptoms, they functioned almost like an undetected fifth column in spreading the virus to adults. Read more: Hiltzik: Stanford throws a party for purveyors of misinformation and disinformation about COVID Among those who vociferously promoted these myths is Jay Bhattacharya, the former Stanford medical professor who is now director of the National Institutes of Health, a subagency of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Department of Health and Human Services. In a July 2022 op-ed originally published in the Orange County Register, for example, Bhattacharya and a co-author asserted that "COVID-19 is less of a threat to children than accidents or the common flu"; that's debatable, and irrelevant, since those are themselves major threats to child health. The article advocated discontinuing mask-wearing for all children, regardless of their vaccination status. But it was self-refuting, since it also acknowledged that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that mask mandates in school had produced "a roughly 20% reduction in COVID-19 incidence." The authors also acknowledged that masking in schools could help to shield adults from COVID. But they asked, "Since when is it ethical to burden children for the benefit of adults?" That was the wrong question. Reducing COVID infections for children was certainly not a "burden" on them, but a sound public health goal. How heavy was that "burden," anyway? Bhattacharya and his co-author posited that "masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning," and "it is likely that masking exacerbates the chances that a child will experience anxiety and depression." This sounds like guesswork derived from pop psychology, since the authors didn't point to any actual research to validate their conclusions about masking. Nevertheless, they argued that the drawbacks of masking exceeded the benefits. Yet the Michigan State estimate that the removal of mask mandates in the schools contributed to 21,800 deaths in 2022 alone turns the balance of costs and benefits on its head. I asked Health and Human Services for Bhattacharya's response to the study but received no reply. Read more: Hiltzik: These 'experts' sold the U.S. on a disastrous COVID plan, and never paid a professional price Much of the mythmaking about our pandemic response — indeed, the global pandemic response — is rooted in the absurd conviction that everything we now know about COVID was self-evident from the outset. But COVID was a novel human pathogen. As I wrote in 2022, there was little consensus about how it spread, at what stage of sickness it was most contagious, or who was most susceptible. As a result, most anti-pandemic policies in 2020-22 arose from an excess of caution. Mitigation measures were uncertain, but it did make sense to limit gatherings in small spaces, i.e., classrooms. Many such steps turned out to be effective, including social distancing and, yes, mask-wearing. The subsequent hand-wringing over school closings, accordingly, has the unmistakable smell of hindsight. Not 20/20 hindsight, mind you, but hindsight clouded by ideology, partisan politics and persistent ignorance. For example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican champion of letting COVID-19 freely rip through his population, crowed that the results 'prove that we made the right decision' to keep schools open. Is that so? When Florida reopened its schools in August 2021 and banned remote teaching, child COVID deaths in the state more than doubled. One month into the reopenings, the heightened spread of COVID prompted districts across the state to shut down schools again and impose quarantines affecting thousands of pupils. This is how manifestly deadly decisions get redefined as "the right decision" in the partisan narrative. The Michigan State team documented the speed at which school mask mandates were dropped. The timeline begins in July 2021, when the CDC recommended universal masking in schools to enable a return to in-person instruction rather than fully remote or hybrid classes. The CDC's guidelines, the Michigan State study says, applied to all students whether they were vaccinated or not and all school districts, whatever the levels of COVID infection and transmission within their community. In the fall of 2021, about 65% of all students were subject to a state or local mask mandate. The mask mandates were highly controversial: "Many schools encountered pushback from politicians, parents, and community members" who questioned the efficacy of masking, the study relates. The districts that rejected the mandates tended to be "less urban, less diverse, and more likely to have voted for Trump in the 2020 election." On Feb. 25, 2022, the CDC eliminated its recommendation for universal school masking. Its rationale was that the exceptionally contagious Omicron variant of COVID had passed its peak and thus immunity had increased. But many districts had removed their mandates starting several weeks before the CDC revised its guidance, suggesting that the CDC was following, rather than leading, state and local preferences. The removal of mask mandates ran counter to scientific evidence that masks did indeed reduce the spread of COVID. Indeed, a study from Boston and Chelsea, Mass., found that the removal of mask mandates resulted in an increase of 45 COVID cases per 1,000 students and school staff — nearly 12,000 new cases — over the following four months. But in this particular, as in others related to pandemic policies, politics and ideology trumped the hard evidence, warping the public health response. Bhattacharya's record as an authority on pandemic measures is not encouraging. He was one of the original three authors of the 'Great Barrington Declaration,' a manifesto for herd immunity published in October 2020. The core of the declaration was opposition to lockdowns. Its solution was what its drafters called 'focused protection' — allowing 'those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk,' chiefly seniors. Read more: Hiltzik: COVID deniers claim a new study says mask mandates don't work. They should try reading it Focused protection, the drafters wrote, would allow society to achieve herd immunity and return to normality in three to six months. The declaration was essentially a libertarian fantasy. It contemplated sequestering seniors at home, without addressing how they would be kept fed and healthy. Nor did it address multigenerational households, in which millions of vulnerable elders live. Older family members, the declaration authors wrote, 'might temporarily be able to live with an older friend or sibling, with whom they can self-isolate together during the height of community transmission. As a last resort, empty hotel rooms could be used for temporary housing.' These never sounded like credible options. In his op-ed, Bhattacharya engaged in hand-waving about the toll of COVID on children, nearly 1,700 of whom died of COVID, according to the CDC. Bhattacharya calculated that school masking "might prevent one child death ... a tiny fraction of the approximately 900 deaths of children 5 to 17 years old in 2019. If the aim is to save children's lives, other interventions — like enhanced pool safety — would be much more effective." Yet death is not the only serious outcome from COVID. More than 14,000 children were hospitalized for COVID during the pandemic, according to the CDC. An untold number of them may suffer from long COVID or other lifelong manifestations of the disease. That should have given Bhattacharya pause before dismissing the efficacy of mask-wearing in schools, but there's no evidence that it has done so. The most important question raised by the Michigan State study is what it tells us about pandemic policies for the future. School closures and more general pandemic effects wreaked havoc on learning in the U.S. "The politics of masking got conflated with school closures," Imberman says. But masking was a "much lower-cost intervention than closing the schools." In fact, it was "a way out of closing the schools." So lumping it in with school closures is a mistake. Will we learn from the experience? Considering the current level of policymaking at Kennedy's Health and Human Services, sadly, there's reason to be doubtful. Get the latest from Michael HiltzikCommentary on economics and more from a Pulitzer Prize me up. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
