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The ideas and innovators shaping health care | | | | |  | | By Erin Schumaker, Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun and Evan Peng | | | | | 
Fauci is reflective after fighting Covid-19. | Cliff Owen/AP Photo | Thoughts of the pandemic’s aftermath still disturb Dr. Anthony Fauci’s sleep, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director writes in a new editorial. His biggest worry: That we’ll forget the lessons we learned over the last three-plus years.
| | “In my almost 40 years in chasing and preparing for emerging microbes, I have experienced the transient nature of ‘corporate memory’ related to affronts on global health." Anthony Fauci in Science Translational Medicine | | What are the lessons? Fauci puts them in two categories: scientific and public health. The scientific lessons: Investment in basic, translational and clinical science led to a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine that saved millions of lives. A new strategy of intensively studying viruses in certain families and applying those findings to related viruses could help our preparedness efforts, he writes. The public health lessons: The response, Fauci contends, was “less-than-stellar.” Institutional weakness, lack of coordination between states and the federal government, supply-chain issues and political divisiveness all hindered the U.S. response. So did misinformation and disinformation, which “proved to be the enemy of good public health implementation,” he writes. A plea for the future: Memories fade after a public health crisis. To this, Fauci asks that our collective memory of Covid’s scientific and public health lessons endure and allow us to prepare for the next inevitable pandemic. “If not, many of us will be spending a lot of time awake in bed or having nightmares when asleep!” Fauci writes.
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National Arboretum, Washington, D.C. | Shawn Zeller | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Forget dating apps! Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley’s offices in D.C and Iowa produced 20 marriages in the 43 years he’s been a senator, The Washington Post reports. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Evan Peng at epeng@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp. Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Alice Miranda Ollstein talks with POLITICO health care reporter Robert King about why the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is cracking down on Medicare Advantage TV ads.
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Dua wants more Democratic doctors in Congress. | Healthcare for Action | Doctors and other health care workers who are Democrats want to boost their numbers in Congress. Two groups, Healthcare for Action, which raises money for candidates, and Doctors in Politics, which recruits candidates, are merging to put more muscle behind that effort. “To me, it is so obvious, but health care workers should be in that position,” Dr. Anahita Dua, chair of the newly enlarged Healthcare for Action and a vascular surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Daniel. If Congress were to have more Democratic doctors, as well as other health care workers, it would craft better legislation, she contends. “There is a politicization of medicine,” Dua said. “It’s not coming from the medical world, right? It’s coming from external forces that are pushing the medical world into these boxes — and no patient is in a box.” Looking to Election Day: Dua said the merger will enable Healthcare for Action to give more money to more candidates in 2024. The group has already endorsed its first candidate for the coming election: Dr. Brian Williams, a trauma surgeon running for the suburban Dallas House seat that another Democrat, Colin Allred, is leaving to run for Senate.
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AI could transform medicine, but the WHO sees risks. | Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images | The World Health Organization is calling for safeguards as artificial intelligence arrives in health settings, warning that the technology is being rolled out hastily in some cases. New principles from the WHO say that AI should be accompanied by: — quality data to train and clinically validate the technology — documentation and transparency about how it works — risk management to ensure it does — privacy protections for individuals Even so: The group has little power to enforce its principles. In the U.S., regulators and lawmakers have issued loose guidance for AI developers but few concrete rules. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
