letter to the editor

WHO responds to STAT essay on its internal problems 

Molly Ferguson for STAT

Last week, physician and former White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha wrote a First Opinion essay about his belief that the World Health Organization needs “deep reforms,” but that exiting the organization is not the way to enact any needed change. (On Monday, Trump signaled his intent to withdraw through an executive order.)

Yesterday, WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove wrote a letter to the editor in STAT, responding to Jha’s criticism of the organization. “The scant evidence he cites vastly oversimplifies complex scientific issues and completely overlooks the comprehensive multiyear response that WHO led,” Van Kerkhove wrote. Read the whole letter here.

hospitals

In emergencies, distance makes disease grow stronger

People who live farther from emergency care facilities are more likely to have more complex medical problems when they finally get there, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. The study analyzed data from more than 190,000 adults in Florida and California who went to the emergency room for five common general surgical concerns including appendicitis, hernias, and bowel obstruction. 

People in the study who lived more than an hour away from a clinic were more likely to require an operation, get admitted to the hospital, have a longer stay, or require a transfer to another facility as compared to those who lived closer. They also racked up bigger bills.

The study suggests that timeliness could be considered one of the “essential components of health care access,” the authors write. It’s an urgent problem as rural hospitals continue to close all over the country. The authors added that in these areas, future research might be better off using travel time to measure access than ZIP codes. 

first opinion

New guidelines could take a cue from Native American diets

If you’ve kept up with Liz Cooney’s coverage of the 2025 dietary guidelines, then you know that the experts have pointed to plant-based foods as a major component of healthy eating. For generations, many Indigenous communities have already lived this way, relying on what some call the “Three Sisters”: corn, beans, and squash. These veggies in particular have been treated as second-class foods in past dietary guidelines, former Navajo Nation president Jonathan Nez argues in a new First Opinion essay.

That could finally be changing. A scientific report from the committee advising on the new guidelines gives special prominence to plant sources, especially when it comes to protein. Nez argues that codifying this change can right historic wrongs done to Indigenous communities and upgrade federal food policies for everybody. And it’s not just symbolism — the guidelines are used as the basis for many federal nutrition programs, affecting what foods people have access to across the country. Read more.