Yangqingfeg Yang

The obesity epidemic is not only impairing the health of millions of Americans but also giving rise to billions of added dollars in health care spending. Climbing rates of obesity over the past decades are one of the predominant determinants behind the surging progression of health care expenses in the United States. Moreover, the less fit and less productive U.S. workforce has gradually eroded the nation’s industrial competitiveness. Since the early 1970s, adult obesity rates have doubled and childhood obesity rates have more than tripled, while health expenditures have risen two percentage points faster than the Gross Domestic Product, burgeoning from 8.8 percent in 1980 to a projected 17.9 percent in 2011. Studies analyze that greater than a quarter of America’s health care expenses are attributed to obesity. The stunning growth in obesity has been imputed for 20 to 30 percent of the increase in health care costs since the late 1970s. If the proportion of obese population had stayed unchanged, then health care expenditures in America would be approximately 10 percent less on a per capita average than they are today.

The call for family and medical leave reform in the United States was largely the result of sweeping demographic shifts that occurred in the workforce after the 1950s, coupled with an ever-increasing life expectancy and changing social norms concerning the role of women as caretakers. By the early 1990s, the number of women in the workforce had nearly tripled from 1950. During that same period, life expectancy increased by six years for males and seven for females. Meanwhile, the first wave of the Depression-era generation began to reach the age of retirement. In short, the parents of American workers were living longer and retiring in greater numbers while more women, who were more likely to be informal caregivers, decided to join the workforce. As a result, many families with ill or elder parents began to turn to institutional long-term care.

Recent developments in the health care industry have precipitated a new wave of interest in expanding the scope of practice for nursing. This is because the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, broadly designed to increase access to health insurance, will inevitably result in increased demand for primary care providers. And with compensation for primary care physicians already lagging far behind that of specialists, the role of nurse practitioners is once again receiving increased attention as a viable means by which to ease the pressure for access to health care.But the economics of this trade-off are controversial. On one hand, it sets primary care physicians at odds with specialists; namely, if the ultimate goal is to “bend the cost curve downward,” should specialist compensation be reduced in order to increase spending on primary care?

As we journey into the fourth year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Americans express relief at a “return to normal,” experience pandemic fatigue, or embrace the idea of living with COVID-19 in much the same way we live with the seasonal flu. But transition to a new phase of life with SARS-CoV-2 does not diminish the importance of vaccination. The US Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration recently recommended another round of booster dose for persons age 5 and up, or an initial series for those not previously vaccinated, with an updated bivalent formula that protects against both the original virus strain and Omicron subvariants that are now the dominant source of infection. By most accounts most of the population has been or will become infected with SARS-CoV-2. Suboptimal uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines among the approximately 25 million adolescents in the United States is a significant obstacle to population coverage, public health, and the health and well-being of adolescents. A major cause of low adolescent uptake is parental vaccine hesitancy. This article discusses parental vaccine hesitancy and argues that permitting independent adolescent consent to COVID-19 vaccination should be an ethical and policy priority as we continue to confront the threat of Omicron and other variants of the coronavirus. We discuss the central role of the pediatric healthcare team in caring for adolescent patients who disagree with their parents about vaccination.