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A future in which precision medicine benefits everyone is not guaranteed. For that to happen, UCSF experts argue, the health care industry must first tackle today’s health disparities, including differences in disease outcomes and access to care based on race, gender, and socioeconomic status.
A survey found that fewer than half of California pharmacies provided antibiotics and opioids disposal instructions meeting U.S. FDA guidelines, and just 10 percent followed the FDA’s preferred recommendation to take back unused medications from their customers.
The first rigorously controlled study of a 2016 California law that aimed to increase childhood vaccination rates by eliminating nonmedical exemptions has found the law worked as intended.
A skin-lightening cream from Mexico has been found to have had a devastating effect on the central nervous system due to its highly toxic mercury levels, according to a UCSF-led report on a patient who remains unable to care for herself months after ceasing use of the product.
The health care sector accounts for as much as 10% of the U.S. carbon footprint and 5% globally, according to recent studies. This sobering statistic has an upside: It means that changes in the industry can play a major role in addressing the climate crisis.
Hurricane. Fires. Disease and allergen outbreaks. Heat waves. These climate-fueled events kill, they pack ERs, and they leave lingering legacies of toxic pollution, pulmonary complications, and post-traumatic stress – but they are just a glimpse of what’s to come unless the world makes an extraordinary course correction.
Browse the stories that most engaged our readers in 2019.
E-cigarette use significantly increases a person’s risk of developing chronic lung diseases like asthma, bronchitis, emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to new UC San Francisco research, the first longitudinal study linking e-cigarettes to respiratory illness in a sample representative of the entire U.S. adult population.
Children and young adults with pediatric cancer are less likely to be alive five and 10 years following diagnosis if their health insurance is public, compared to those with private insurance.
Researchers at the University of California will serve as expert policy guides for the Healthy California for All Commission, which has been charged by the governor and state legislature with developing a path toward universal health coverage in California, including a possible single payer system.
Problem drinkers are more likely than teetotalers and moderate drinkers to take benzodiazepines. When taken by heavier drinkers, benzodiazepines may heighten the risk for overdoses and accidents as well as exacerbate psychiatric conditions.
The brief surveys evidence from more than 20 studies on the safety of abortion, the harms of denying women abortions when they seek them, and what happens when abortion providers are required to obtain admitting privileges.
