end-of-life care
A new kind of doula
Katrina Zimmerman for STAT
Clergy often guide people through many of life’s major moments. In a moving video for STAT produced by Hyacinth Empinado, Rev. Beth Stotts talks about a new way she’s helping her congregants: as an end-of-life doula.
End-of-life or death doulas provide advanced care planning and other non-medical services to support the dying and their loved ones. For Stotts, that means talking about funeral arrangements, counseling family members, tying up loose ends or goals, and discussing small details about their final moments. Do they want music? Maybe a candle? “I think it’s actually very empowering for individuals to be able to say, ‘I don’t want this or I do want that,’” Stotts said. “You feel less of a victim to the end of your life.”
It may be an unfamiliar role today, but end-of-life doulas are becoming more common. The number of certified end-of-life doulas has significantly grown after the pandemic, from about 250 in 2019 to more than 1,500 in 2024.
mental health
SAMHSA employees detail an agency in shambles
The Trump administration has cut around 100 employees, or roughly 10%, of the federal agency that oversees mental and behavioral health — a move that could imperil efforts to curb suicides and drug overdose deaths, Rose Broderick reports.
Primarily a grantmaking agency with an $8 billion budget, SAMHSA channels funds and training that the federal government doles out to on-the-ground service providers. The organization deals with “life and death issues,” one former employee notes.
Drug overdose deaths have dropped in recent years, but still top 80,000 annually, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The country’s mental health crisis is similarly troubling: the suicide rate increased by roughly 30% from 2002 to 2022.
bacteria
A genetic clue into TB transmission
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified genes that the tuberculous bacteria rely on to survive and spread — genes that could be useful in curing the disease or stopping its spread.
Until now, very little was known about how tuberculous bacteria survived temperature changes, oxygen levels, humidity, and other environmental factors during the journey from one person’s lungs to another’s. “Now we have a sense, through these genes, of the tools tuberculosis uses to protect itself,” said Dr. Lydia Bourouiba, who was co-senior author of the paper, which was published in PNAS.
Photo illustration: STAT; Photo: Wikimedia Commons