The ideas and innovators shaping health care
| | | | |  | | By Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun, Erin Schumaker and Ruth Reader | | | | | 
| Apart from abortion, health care policy has played a less prominent role in this year’s presidential campaign than it has in past election cycles. Americans wish the candidates would talk about it more. According to a new poll from West Health and Gallup, more than 2 in 3 say health issues should get more attention. How’s that? Protecting Medicare and lowering costs — especially for drugs and mental health care — are top priorities for voters in this election, the poll found. But voters’ faith in the candidates is limited, according to the polling, which found that nearly a third of Americans didn’t trust Harris or Trump. There are slight differences, though, with independents saying they trust Harris slightly more than Trump on health issues. One difference between partisan voters was significant: 58 percent of Democrats were optimistic that access to affordable health care would continue to improve over the next five years — compared with 30 percent of Republicans. Why it matters: Voters’ opinions and outlook on health policy can impact not only elections and candidate platforms but also the priorities of elected officials once they enter office.
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Paris | Jeffrey Diaz | | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Tampa General Hospital was able to keep Hurricane Helene’s storm surge out with a new kind of waterproof barricade called an AquaFence, preserving the hospital bed capacity in the region through the storm. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com, or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  The World Health Organization is making use of TikTok's reach. | AFP via Getty Images | Congress wants to ban the popular social media platform TikTok because it thinks the site’s Chinese owners are gathering data on Americans, but that isn’t stopping the World Health Organization from trying to harness its reach for good. The global health body announced a one-year partnership with the platform last week, with the goal to provide people with accurate health information. The WHO aims to reach the 1 in 4 young adults who seek news content on social media, such as TikTok, and to fight some of the “misinformation and malinformation” regarding health that’s otherwise prevalent online, it said. A network of health influencers that the WHO launched in 2020 will bring “engaging and authoritative mental well-being content” to the platform, said Valiant Richey, TikTok’s global head of trust and safety outreach and partnerships. Even so: That doesn’t mean all WHO officials embrace social media. Governments should consider regulating digital devices like smartphones in a similar way to cigarettes to combat social media’s negative impact on young people’s mental health, Natasha Azzopardi Muscat, the director of country health policies and systems at the WHO’s regional Europe branch, told POLITICO’s Claudia Chiappa in an interview. That comes days after the WHO published a study finding that problematic and “addiction-like” gaming and social media behavior is on the rise among teenagers, based on a survey of nearly 280,000 children ages 11 to 15 across Europe, Central Asia and Canada.
| | | |  A funder of vaccine development is trying to ensure the work doesn't cause a lab leak. | Getty Images | A global partnership funding research into vaccines to combat pathogens capable of causing a pandemic is imposing new safeguards to ensure the research is conducted safely. How so? The Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is managing some $3.1 billion in awards to researchers across 50 countries looking to develop or manufacture vaccines for viruses that could cause pandemics, such as Ebola, Nipah and mpox. The work involves handling risky pathogens and needs to be performed in laboratories capable of working with and storing those pathogens and genomic data, CEPI said in its first biosecurity strategy. Why it matters: Covid-19 has raised doubts about the safety protocols at bio labs worldwide, as some policymakers and biotech experts suspect the virus that caused the pandemic leaked from a research facility in Wuhan, China. In the U.S., Congress is scrutinizing the oversight of risky research, with a Senate committee voting last week to create a new board that would manage its government funding. CEPI says it wants to: — Better understand the risks as researchers incorporate artificial intelligence into their work — Improve the capabilities of its partners to conduct research safely — Accelerate innovation to improve biosecurity | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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