Kathleen Bachynski

“For someone who has been following this for so long, it practically brings tears to my eyes,” said Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society who worked on the first two studies. “To see this steep increase in early-stage diagnosis… it means these young lives are being saved.”

Screening guideline change led to more colorectal cancers being detected early in younger adults Two new studies show that colorectal cancer screening sharply increased for people ages 45 to 49 after the age recommendation changed in 2021.

Good public health news: two new studies published today “show that the portion of people between the ages of 45 to 49 who got screened sharply increased after the task force recommendation changed in 2021, and it had the hoped-for result: More cancers in this age group are being found early.”

Top medical organizations kicked out of CDC vaccine recommendations process call decision "dangerous" The nation's top medical organizations are speaking out after U.S. health officials told them they will no longer help establish vaccination recommendations.

“We are deeply disappointed & alarmed that our organizations are being characterized as 'biased' and therefore barred from reviewing scientific data & informing the development of vaccine recommendations that have long helped ensure our nation's vaccine program is safe, effective, & free from bias”

Fire Breaks Out Beneath PATH Train in Jersey City

“The fire began shortly after 6 a.m. at the Newport PATH station in Jersey City. The fire ignited below one of the train cars, Port Authority officials said…
Thirteen people were treated for smoke inhalation at the scene, officials said. Nine of them were hospitalized for further evaluation.”

It's syllabus-writing time for many of us! If you assign anything I've written, I'm always happy to zoom into your class or even just share slides about the work.

Welcome and so glad to see you here!

Trying to find the people from the before times….
#medtwitter #histmed #publichealth #epi #microbiology #healthcoms #healthhum #medhum #victorianstudies

Waving my profile flag from Twitter to find the friends

Canada wildfires cause poor air quality in the midwest and northeast U.S. Health officials from Minnesota to Maine have issued alerts warning of poor air quality from wildfires burning in Canada. People are advised to limit outdoor exposure.

Health officials from Minnesota to Maine have issued alerts warning of poor air quality from wildfires burning in Canada. People are advised to limit outdoor exposure.

No, You Can’t Design Your Baby—And Trying Would Be a Terrible Idea A genomics firm saying they can help parents with “genetic optimization” of their embryos is tone-deaf Silicon Valley marketing trampling over legitimate science. Parents should be wary

“The cinematic analogy to Nucleus Embryo isn’t GATTACA. It’s The Dropout—the 2022 miniseries about the rise and fall of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.” By @artcap.bsky.social and James Tabery

I gasped

Will health insurance pay for Covid vaccines this fall? HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has upended the way Covid vaccines are approved and for whom they’re recommended, creating uncertainty around coverage.

Here’s hoping: “I think in 2025 it’s highly likely that the employer plans will cover” the Covid vaccines, said Dr. Jeff Levin-Scherz, a primary care doctor… They’ve already budgeted for it, “and it would be a large administrative effort to try to exclude coverage for those not at increased risk”

Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit.

the trump administration is selling its war on higher education as a strike against the elites who have disadvantaged ordinary americans. in actuality, the administration is destroying advanced education for *everyone* in pursuit of its effort to deskill the american public

I’m not (at all) sold on the framing of “Trump is only TRYING to hurt the Ivies, but he’s also hurting the students where working-class students and students of color find social mobility BY MISTAKE” but the facts are very important

Incredible! I love the article title alone. I know I keep saying it, but every time I start prepping a class session I stumble across more fascinating rabbit holes… in some alternative universe where we had the time, we really could be teaching this as a full year/two semester class.

Community college literally saved me. I would not be where I am today without it

It has been so embarrassing to watch them do this, and say "people should get technical education." Like where the hell do they think people get that? The technical education tree?

Opinion | You Are Contaminated

“The dose matters, which is why it might be safer to eat food from an industrial farm than to live next door…But each element of the contagion field, growing or shrinking, is also governed by what I call the rule of little numbers in a big world, which explains how even small effects quickly add up”

“Grants had ended that channeled community-college students to jobs in U.S. cybersecurity, semiconductors and automotive technology. Rural community colleges didn’t know about the future of Department of Agriculture support… Local economies throughout the country couldn’t thrive without them”

“Get care at a local doctor’s office, or prepped for surgery at a hospital, or treated after an accident, or have someone come to your home to do repairs — “those are all community-college grads, all of them,” the community-college leader told me.”

“Why short-circuit the schools that were the local engines of building the work force? Community colleges already subsisted on budgets that most four-year schools would find laughable, lean operations that delivered hefty returns on investment for their areas.”

“The Trump administration talked about expanding manufacturing at home. But across the country, 400,000 factory jobs were currently vacant. “That’s what’s so crazy about this,” I was told by another community-college leader who asked not to be identified, out of fear of retaliation”

“Federally, the Republican spending bill that was signed into law in July decreases funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and to Medicaid; those cuts, along with plans to further restrict access to these social-service programs, will wallop low-income community-college students.”

“They’re after the Ivy League institutions, but we’re affected by the same legislation, the same executive orders,” [said] George Boggs… “Except it can be worse for us, because our students are more diverse, and they need different kinds of support.”

“When four-year institutions were starved of resources, students from community colleges hoping to matriculate there suffered. But federal grants had also been axed at other [big] employers in the Triangle region, threatening not just college campuses but also the entire local research economy.”

“Durham Tech’s president, JB Buxton, …told me he had long-term concerns about the “downstream, collateral-damage impacts” of Trump-administration policies that could reach his students. Community colleges were part of the same postsecondary ecosystem as their transfer partners.”

“In the Trump administration’s attempts to “vanquish” elite schools, it seemed to overlook what it might also be smashing in community colleges, which aren’t just an essential part of the country’s complex network of higher education but integral to the health of a thousand local economies.”

Trump Went to War With the Ivies. Community Colleges Are Being Hit.

“Like their four-year counterparts, community colleges are grappling with disappearing federal grants, shuttered D.E.I. offices, eliminated programs… many of the grants that fund financial aid for low-income students and the staff that support them have been eliminated or threatened”

An image of the FDR Hope Memorial. Seated in a wheelchair, FDR reaches his hand out to a young girl on crutches

“Infected with the polio virus at age 39, FDR never walked again unaided…
Now, in the first memorial to FDR that focuses on his disability, the FDR Hope Memorial accurately depicts FDR's condition, as captured in a joyful moment greeting a similarly disabled young girl.” www.fdrhopememorial.org

lol me too!!

Opinion | Behind Trump and Vance Is This Man’s Movement

My take away from this interview [gift link] is that Vance's "National Conservatism" is a form of blood and soil nationalism that is deeply invested in claiming (and possibly actually believing) that it is NOT a form of blood and soil nationalism.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/o...