Sara Conroy, PhD

if you want 100% nonfictional stories from measles patients and their families, follow voices for vaccines! more: voicesforvaccines.org/resources/blog/

"Homicide, suicide, and drug overdose accounted for more than one fourth of maternal deaths (2018 of the total of 7901) from 2018 through 2023; deaths from these causes nearly equaled the combined toll of cardiovascular disease, infection, hypertension, and hemorrhage." Correspondence "Overdose, Homicide, and Suicide as Causes of Maternal Death in the United States" by H.A. Azad et al. Leading Causes of Death among Pregnant and Postpartum Women in the United States, 2018–2023. Shown is the number of deaths per 100,000 live births according to cause of death among women who were pregnant or no more than 42 days post partum. Violence includes homicide and suicide by any means. Deaths in which the underlying cause was not specified are not included. AFE denotes amniotic fluid embolism, and Covid-19 coronavirus disease 2019.

Analysis of U.S. deaths of pregnant and postpartum women from 2018–2023 indicates that obstetrical complications and disease are no longer the leading causes of maternal death, replaced by homicide, suicide, and overdose. Read the full analysis: nej.md/4a96wPp

#MedSky #Psychiatry #OBGYN

Just cloned Stand With Minnesota for another state.

I am so excited someone finally took me up on the offer. I even made them a little logo and redid the site in their colors.

Yesterday morning kids were sent running from their bus stop in panic because ICE showed up. This guy at today’s ICE Out of Lindenwold protest is a must watch 😭. @maddow.bsky.social

Nonprofit libraries ordered by State Department to stop processing passport applications The agency, which regulates U.S. passports, began issuing cease and desist orders to not-for-profit libraries in late fall, informing them they were no longer authorized to participate in the Passport...

Just when demand for passports is rising…

Public Comment Period Open: White House Ballroom Proposal | National Trust for Historic Preservation The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has opened the public comment period on the East Wing Modernization Project, including the proposed construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom additi...

Happy Valentine's Day!

The National Capital Planning Commission has opened the public comment period on the East Wing Modernization Project, including the proposed construction of a 90,000-square-foot ballroom addition to the White House complex.

Written comments are due March 4, 2026 at Noon ET.

Yeah, hi, I’m a person with “mobility challenges” (excuse me while I hurl). What we want, by and large, are not expensive, heavy devices that will “help us walk again”, but ramps.

I know, it’s not sexy, as technology invented before Christ, but it is overlooked in favor of…this. Repeatedly.

“What is most disturbing is not the specifics of this case but the arbitrariness and capriciousness of the process. The EU, Canada, and Australia have all accepted Moderna’s application for review.”

feeds.issuerdirect.c...
4/4

Another NIH institute loses its director Health department declines to renew Lindsey Criswell, head of arthritis institute, to another 5-year term

The chief of NIAMS, Lindsey Criswell, has told her staff that her 5-year leadership appointment had not been renewed, meaning 16 out of 27 NIH institutes and centers will be operating without a permanent director. https://scim.ag/4cr5wHI

This is amazing.

One of my life goals is to be able to one day say “I whipped up this little site last week”… at the moment, I can make a quarto html 😂

“If you are free, then you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

— Toni Morrison

Screenshot of a question posted to quora: "Why do older people not like putting spaces in file names when saving documents?"

Just put me on a flaming raft and push it out to sea.

In Celebration of Black History Month, we honor Black Nurse Anesthetists whose shoulders we stand on

In 1966, Annette Fuller Hightower, Nurse Anesthetist graduated as the 1st Black student at Charleston Memorial Hospital, WV. Notably, she was the 1st Black CRNA to work in WV.

She also narrates a few kids audiobooks… and I wish she had more!

Estimated effectiveness of this season’s #flu vaccine against medically attended illness in low to mid range

The vaccine is 40% against medically attended infection with influenza A(H3N2) viruses.

www.cidrap.umn.edu/i...

Photo: Argonne National Laboratory / Flickr cc

I think that we (statisticians) can also often do better with explaining/writing the methods and results. So far, my experience is that stat graduate programs don’t typically train students to do this very well.

Stand With Minnesota Stand With Minnesota is a hub for supporting, learning, and taking action to support Minnesotans impacted by ICE and federal enforcement.

There are SO many ways to help support the people of Minnesota: www.standwithminnesota.com

H.R.5658 Child Care for Every Community Act SPONSOR: @mikiesherrill.bsky.social № CO-SPONSORS: 51 STATUS: Introduced LATEST ACTION: House floor - 2026-02-04 ASSUMING FIRST SPONSORSHIP - Ms. ... #Democrats Details at congress.gov

H.R.5658
Child Care for Every Community Act

SPONSOR: @mikiesherrill.bsky.social
№ CO-SPONSORS: 51

STATUS: Introduced

LATEST ACTION: House floor - 2026-02-04 ASSUMING FIRST SPONSORSHIP - Ms. ...

#Democrats

Details at congress.gov

These 10 trials, say Støvring & team, “span a period of 20 years & concern a large number of participating children. Across all 10 studies, the lack of reporting from randomized clinical trials concerns more than 74,000 children in one of the poorest countries in the world, Guinea-Bissau.”

😨😨

END/

“Micro joys are how we survive macro grief”

Thank you for those words @neojusticecollab.bsky.social

Pediatrics published the Vaccine Integrity Project’s hepatitis B birth dose vaccine evidence review online. The review looked at: 400+ studies/reports, 40 years of data—and the conclusion was unmistakable.
There is no evidence supporting a delay in the hepatitis B birth dose.
tinyurl.com/4kbsm49f

Is this where someone has to say “all models are wrong…”
🫣

My family was imprisoned behind barbed wire and armed guards by our own government.

Not for what they did. But because of who they were. I was born in that internment camp.

My family history lives with me every day. It drives me to fight for my neighbors—for their rights and for their dignity.

dplyr 1.2.0 dplyr 1.2.0 fills in some important gaps in dplyr's API: we've added a new complement to `filter()` focused on dropping rows, and we've expanded the `case_when()` family with three new recoding and re...

dplyr 1.2.0 is out now and we are SO excited!

- `filter_out()` for dropping rows

- `recode_values()`, `replace_values()`, and `replace_when()` that join `case_when()` as a complete family of recoding/replacing tools

These are huge quality of life wins for #rstats!

tidyverse.org/blog/2026/02...

Competitive spreadsheeting??

I had no idea this was a thing…
(And am really happy for those who have followed their dreams)

One area of statistical modeling I wish people knew more about:

*The distribution of your right-hand side (independent) variables does not matter.*

It's the distribution of your outcome/response that matters. Your data are fixed. They do not have a distribution.*

So no need to do log GDP/income!

I encourage you to consider that the @cato.org is right about this

Denmark’s generous child care and parental leave policies erase 80% of the ‘motherhood penalty’ for working moms Two researchers found that Danish government benefits do not fully offset moms’ lost earnings. But they do help offset lost income for working women with kids.

“Strong financial support for mothers from the government can make motherhood more affordable and promote gender equality in economic resources.”

Investing in mothers and families - even if it doesn’t raise the birth rates - is worth doing.