News by Subject Policy & Ethics

In the largest mental health survey of gender minority college students, BU researchers Sarah Lipson and Julia Raifman find that transgender, gender-nonconforming, genderqueer, and nonbinary college students face enormous mental health disparities. Their national study across 71 US colleges and universities reinforces the urgent call for schools to improve mental health resources and implement gender-inclusive policy changes.

New research published this week in JAMA Oncology has found a lack of racial and ethnic diversity in clinical trials for cancer drugs.

If you end up needing to go to the hospital, often times you're hoping to get a bed without having to wait hours, but a new study shows you may want to wait a little longer, so that you are placed in the best ward for your needs. New research in the upcoming INFORMS journal Management Science shows that among patients admitted to the hospital, 19.6% are placed in beds in a ward outside the area of care they require.

Countries that relax regulations for regenerative medicines, like stem cell 'treatments', could be causing a downward spiral in international standards.

More than a trillion dollars was spent on healthcare in the United States in 2018, with Medicare and Medicaid accounting for some 37% of those expenditures. With healthcare costs expected to continue to rise by roughly 5% per year, a continued debate in healthcare policy is how to reduce costs without compromising quality.

Historically, conversion therapies have used electroshock therapy, chemical drugs, hormone administrations and even surgery. While these extreme practices are becoming rarer, many other harmful actions are still taking place, negatively impacting both children and adolescents as well as adults in the US, according to a perspective in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Forty percent of female doctors in a new study stopped working or moved to working part time within a few years of finishing their medical training. In contrast, all of the male doctors kept working full time.

Several countries have combated low organ donor counts by implementing a priority rule that pushes registered donors to the front of the line if they ever need a transplant. However, according to a study from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin published today in Management Science, this model has drawbacks.

More than 1 million sepsis survivors are discharged annually from acute care hospitals in the United States. Although the majority of these patients receive post-acute care (PAC) services, with over a third coming to home health care (HHC), sepsis survivors account for a majority of readmissions nationwide. Effective interventions are needed to decrease these poor outcomes.