In case you missed them, here’s what’s happening in the newsletters I co-write this week.
In this week’s InnovationRx, my colleague Katie Jennings looked at a new study finding that despite the promise that consolidation of primary care into larger health systems would contain costs, this largely hasn’t been the case. And outcomes only barely improved as well. Meanwhile, I took a look at the FDA’s exploration of changing its recommendation for Covid vaccinations.
In this week’s Current Climate, I took a look at a new climate model that suggests flooding in coastal regions due to sea level rise will be faster than expected. Why? Because the old models were based on radar measurements of coastlines. But the problem there is that radar measurements can be inaccurate when there’s lots of vegetation. New measurements taken with lidar found that lots of coastal regions are lower than previously thought, and when those measurements are plugged into climate models? Faster flooding is the result.
Meanwhile, my colleague Alan Ohnsman takes a look at a chemical additive to tires that’s polluting waterways. Why? Because as people are driving along, the tires wear, leaving dust on the roads. Rain sweeps that dust into rivers, where it’s toxic to several varieties of fish. This is a known problem, but so far regulators aren’t keen to act on it.