Hot Spots in the Medical Field

·      State Regulation of Fast Food Chains

Policies that counter fast food consumption might offer governments a way to tackle the growing obesity epidemic. In a study I recently just read, nations with stronger government regulations—such as producer protection, price controls, intervention on competition, and taxes—experienced slower increases in fast food purchases and average BMIs. The lack of regulation of fast food could be fueling our country’s obesity epidemic. (See https://www.futurity.org/fast-food-need-government-regulation/)

·      Mandatory Child Vaccinations

No US federal laws mandate vaccination, but all 50 states require certain vaccinations for children entering public schools. Most states offer medical and religious exemptions; and some states allow philosophical exemptions.Each year, about 2.1 million people die from vaccine-preventable diseases. Many children may not receive their necessary first year vaccinations because of lack of availability, religious beliefs, and safety concerns. Vaccinations have significantly reduced the disease rate throughout the world. (See https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/global-immunization/diseases-and-vaccines-world-view)

·      The Right to Free Health Care

Proponents of the right to health care say that no one in one of the richest nations on earth should go without health care. They argue that a right to health care would stop medical bankruptcies, improve public health, reduce overall health care spending, help small businesses, and that health care should be an essential government service. Opponents argue that a right to health care amounts to socialism and that it should be an individual 's responsibility, not the government 's role, to secure health care. They say that government provision of health care would decrease the quality and availability of health care and would lead to larger government debt and deficits. (See https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/the-state-of-healthcare-in-the-united-states/health-care-as-a-human-right/)

Out of these three topics I feel like I am most passionate about the last. I personally believe that health care should be a basic human right. Because progress towards Universal Health Coverage involves a range of complex technical challenges, it is easy to forget that moving toward it is a political processthat involves negotiation between different interest groups in society over the allocation of health benefits and who should pay for these benefits. Although these are valid concerns, there are much more benefits to the U.S. adopting a dorm of national health care system than to keep its current system. This current health care debate hits close to home for every American.

Hot Spots in Statistics

Hot Spots in Statistics:

• Statistics in Sporting

In the last few years, statistics has played a more prominent role in the decisions of front offices in terms of who they sign and what shots they want players to take. There has been some backlash from players, most notably after CJ McCollum made shot after shot from midrange in Game 7 against the Denver Nuggets and all of those shots that were made were considered "bad shots". Players shot their opinions back and said that if he was not taking those shots, they do not win the game and that a good player will take those shots that might not be statistically good shots, but it was the best shot to take at that time. (More Info)

• Statistics and the Anti-vax movement

There is an overflowing cornucopia of information from veritable sources disproving that vaccines cause autism. Yet that belief remains. For some reason, people put more stock in stories that have been passed down rather than statistics which show that 1 in 500 who contract measles who have not been vaccinated will die from measles-related complications whereas 1 in 1,000,000 who are vaccinated will contract measles. (More Info)

• Lack of Appreciation for Statistics and the Environment

The issue with statistics and the environment stands in stark contrast to that of the anti-vax movement. The biggest issue with statistics and the environment is that there seems to be an impenetrable bubble of apathy surrounding the majority of the human inhabitants of the world. Statistics such as 100,000 marine animals a year die from plastic entanglement and approximately 1,000,000 sea birds die as well, are not enough to motivate people to action. What is sad is that this is the case because it does not increase businesses bottom line to be environmentally aware. (More Info)

Of these three, I am most passionate about statistics and the environment right now. It reminds me of Stephen Covey's theory about quadrant 2 living about focusing on things that are important but are not urgent. We are so trained to think about what is urgent and important or what is urgent and not important, and oftentimes what is neither important nor urgent before we seek to do productive things before they are urgent. The environment has been in the not urgent, but important category for a long time, and if we had started caring a long time ago we could have gotten ahead of the issue. Now it is becoming increasingly more important and urgent, but the need to get to work by taking a car is more urgent and so we still find ourselves taking our car. The need to efficiently carry my groceries is more urgent, so plastic bags are used. The task now is to disarm people of their apathy and replace their apathetic armor and shields with resolute swords and axes to wield drastic changes in how we treat the world we live in.