GPs turn to AI to help with patient workload
Deepali Misra-SharpThis is the fifth feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments.
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More U.K. Abortion Patients Relying on Cycle Tracking Over Hormonal Contraception
Over a 5-year period, fewer patients seeking abortion in the U.K. reported relying on hormonal contraception at the time of conception, while the use of fertility awareness-based methods increased, according to a cross-sectional study.
Use of fertility awareness-based methods around the time of conception rose from 0.4% in 2018 to 2.5% in 2023, while use of hormonal methods decreased from 18.8% to 11.3%, and use of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) from 3% to 0.6% (P
Docs Organize Against, and for, RFK Jr.’s Nomination to Run HHS
With controversy continuing to swirl around President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as HHS secretary, physicians against and in support of the nomination are organizing to try to persuade lawmakers to vote their way.
For groups opposing Kennedy, his skepticism on vaccines is among their biggest objections. Kennedy “has stated that he doesn’t think any vaccine is safe and effective,” Rob Davidson, MD, MPH, executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, which opposes the nomination, said in a phone interview with a press person present. “To propose that this guy should lead the biggest health agency in the U.S., dictating policy and just having a mouthpiece — being the official government spokesperson for how we should run our health system — I think it’s terrifying. It will erode trust in this critical tool we have to prevent disease.”
The group has more than 19,000 signatures on a letter opposing Kennedy, more than 15,000 of which are physicians, while a number of the rest are healthcare professionals, Davidson said.
“As physicians who care deeply about the health and safety of our patients and communities, we are appalled by Donald Trump’s reckless decision to appoint Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” the letter says. “RFK Jr. is not only unqualified to lead this essential agency — he is actively dangerous. We urge the Senate to protect and defend our patients’ access to quality healthcare by rejecting his appointment.”
“This appointment is an affront to the principles of public health, the tireless dedication of medical professionals, and the trust that millions of Americans place in the healthcare system,” the letter continues. “RFK Jr. has a well-documented history of spreading dangerous disinformation on vaccines and public health interventions, leaving vulnerable communities unprotected and placing millions of lives at risk. His appointment is a direct threat to the safety of our patients and the public at large.”
The physician signatures have all been vetted by staff members at the organization, Davidson said. “Our team is vetting these names day by day … We do confirm the signatories are doctors. Our team goes through [the list] multiple times a day and pulls out those that are clearly not real.” He noted that there has been “a lot of pushback from right-wing folks” to the letter, adding that “there seem to be marching orders to try and attack it.” One detractor, Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, tweeted that the group is trying to “go against the will of the American people” who elected Trump.
The group is also asking doctors to email their senators and to contact their professional societies, including the American Medical Association. “We’ve also provided a list of maybe 100 professional specialty societies [so physicians can] send emails to the government affairs folks within those organizations, just to say to these groups, ‘Hey, we know how business usually works — you write a PAC [political action committee] check to a senator because you want access — but we think they should be withholding these $5,000 PAC checks if people are supporting this guy, because it’s against what we all truly believe,'” said Davidson, an emergency physician in Michigan. “So we’re hopeful that kind of pressure can also help sway some of these senators that may be on the fence and may be considering not supporting him.” Davidson said his group also has met with Republican senators, such as Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), who haven’t committed to supporting Kennedy.
He noted that his organization is not necessarily opposed to a non-physician running HHS. “We’re not saying it has to be a doctor,” Davidson said. “I think people with good administrative experience — people with rational, mainstream views on healthcare in this country, people who want to lower the price of healthcare for everyday Americans, people who want to support reproductive freedoms — those are the kinds of people that we believe should be in this type of position. Certainly, [current HHS] Secretary [Xavier] Becerra fits that; previous secretaries certainly have.”
On the other side of the issue is Make America Healthy Again, a pro-Kennedy organization. That group has collected signatures from more than 800 doctors on a letter supporting Kennedy’s nomination. “We, the undersigned physicians, write to urge you to seize this historic opportunity to confront America’s chronic disease crisis by confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services,” the letter says. “The stakes could not be higher. The chronic disease epidemic now threatens our nation’s future — undermining human capital, compromising national security, and straining our economy to the breaking point.”
“In the early 1980s, fewer than 13% of U.S. children suffered from a chronic condition,” the letter continues. “Today, that figure has soared to nearly 60%, and an alarming 77% of young adults are ineligible for military service due to health issues. Chronic disease and mental health now account for 90% of the nation’s $4.3 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures. These trends are not just unsustainable — they are existential.”
“This letter reflects the collective voice of physicians and medical professionals committed to reversing these devastating trends. We believe Robert F. Kennedy Jr. possesses the vision, integrity, and leadership essential for this critical moment in public health,” the letter says. “His unwavering commitment to scientific transparency and his determination to address the root causes of illness make him uniquely qualified to lead HHS.” It adds that the nomination “represents an unparalleled chance to restore our nation’s health and renew trust in our public health institutions … His commonsense policy priorities — including removing harmful substances from our food, water, and medicines — are grounded in the urgent need to combat the chronic disease epidemic and to Make America Healthy Again.”
“America stands at a crossroads,” the letter reads. “The conventional approaches of the past have failed to reverse our declining health outcomes. By confirming Mr. Kennedy, you will empower a leader prepared to tackle these challenges head-on, delivering the bold, systemic reforms our public health system desperately needs.”
The Make America Healthy Again organization was unable to provide someone by press time to discuss the group’s effort to get Kennedy confirmed. (If the group provides a spokesperson later, the story will be updated.)
Joyce Frieden oversees MedPage Today’s Washington coverage, including stories about Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, healthcare trade associations, and federal agencies. She has 35 years of experience covering health policy. Follow
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Read more →Getting Lung Cancer Screening Staff Involved Improved Tobacco Cessation
Integrating smoking cessation into a lung cancer screening program had the biggest benefit for patients who wanted to quit, a randomized trial showed.
Self-reported tobacco abstinence was greater at both 3 and 6 months with higher levels of integration of smoking cessation assistance in the lung cancer screening program, reported Paul Cinciripini, PhD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Patients who received 12-week nicotine replacement therapy or prescription pharmacotherapy and counseling by tobacco treatment specialists within the lung cancer screening program had the highest rate of abstinence (37.1% at 3 months and 32.4% at 6 months).
This was significantly better than the 25.2% and 20.5% rates among those given nicotine replacement therapy and counseling through the quitline without any lung cancer screening program clinician involvement (OR 1.75 at 3 months and 1.86 at 6 months, both P=0.01).
A hybrid intervention with quitline referral plus 12 weeks of nicotine replacement therapy or pharmacotherapy prescription by the lung cancer screening clinician also led to higher self-reported quit rates than the least integrated intervention at 3 months, but this didn’t differ significantly from either other group at 6 months (27.1% and 27.6% at the two time points).
“For those who smoke, lung cancer screening presents a critical opportunity for us to support them in quitting,” Cinciripini said in a statement.
In an accompanying editorial, Judith Prochaska, PhD, MPH, of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, wrote that the trial “lends strong support for intensive, integrated tobacco cessation treatment within [lung cancer screening] programs and for considering integration more broadly.”
Smoking cessation counseling is already recommended for people who meet criteria for annual lung cancer screening, as approximately 60% of U.S. patients eligible for this screening currently use tobacco, she noted.
While it’s been known that formal smoking cessation programs increase the likelihood of quitting, “and evidence is strongest for interventions that provide multiple contacts with patients,” the most effective way of delivering this assistance hasn’t been clear, Prochaska added.
The quitline (1-800-QUIT-NOW) along with nicotine replacement therapy and medications like varenicline (Chantix) and bupropion (Zyban) are foundational tools, commented Joseph Spanier, MSPAS, PA-C, the lung nodule coordinator at Fox Chase Cancer Center’s lung cancer screening program in Philadelphia.
“However, in addition to these tools, this study highlights the importance of trained tobacco treatment professionals for the best chance of helping patients stop smoking and stay abstinent,” he said in a statement. “This includes intensive counseling, evaluation of psychological and social causes of smoking, and development of both a medical plan for treatment and a behavioral plan that is individualized for each patient.”
Cinciripini argued that facilities that can provide such dedicated and integrated smoking cessation care should prioritize doing so.
However, Prochaska acknowledged, the integrated care model is resource intensive and not available in many settings.
“The program staff was composed of a dedicated tobacco treatment team consisting of trained counselors and clinicians,” she wrote. “Patients underwent an initial intake and eight counseling sessions that used cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing techniques. Patients were offered the full range of medications, including combination therapies.”
Thus, the finding that the less resource-intensive hybrid approach also appeared effective was important, she suggested, as it may be more feasible in lower-resource settings.
Indeed, Cinciripini noted that it could be effective in other settings as well. “Given our results, it is conceivable that this approach could also be highly effective outside a screening environment, such as post-traumatic stress clinics and among patients with cancer, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes.”
The trial was conducted at a hospital-based tobacco treatment clinic in Houston, but the timing necessitated some changes. As the trial ran from July 2017 to June 2022, the original primary outcome of biochemically verified 7-day point prevalence abstinence at 6 months was changed to self-reported abstinence during the conduct of the study due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
The 630 participants (50.8% male, median age 59) who smoked a median 20 cigarettes per day were randomized in equal proportions to treatment with one of the three interventions.
The median number of counseling sessions was four for both the quitline-only and hybrid groups and eight for the integrated intervention.
In a bayesian analysis, the integrated intervention had a 98% to 99% probability of being better for smoking abstinence than the other interventions at 3 months and a 86% to 99% probability of maintaining that advantage at 6 months.
“Our exploratory analysis did not reveal a statistically significant interaction between treatment and psychiatric comorbidities, suggesting the [integrated care] model has similar efficacy across both subgroups, which might be related to the mental health expertise available in the [integrated care] condition,” Cinciripini and team wrote.
Limitations to the study included a predominantly non-Hispanic white population and a lack of exhaled carbon monoxide verification of abstinence for the entire cohort, “although the overall results between the subsamples with and without verification were similar,” the researchers noted.
Disclosures
The research was supported by the National Cancer Institute, the MD Anderson Lung Cancer Moon Shot program, and the State of Texas Permanent Health Funds. Varenicline was supplied by Pfizer, and quit line services were provided by RVO Health.Cinciripini was partially supported by the Margaret & Ben Love Chair in Clinical Cancer Care and MD Anderson’s Cancer Center Support Grant. He also reported nonfinancial support from Pfizer, which provided varenicline for various NIH-funded studies.Prochaska reported receiving personal fees from Achieve Life Sciences, Oneleaf Health, and plaintiff legal firms in lawsuits against tobacco companies.
Primary Source
JAMA Internal Medicine
Source Reference: Cinciripini PM, et al “Smoking cessation interventions in the lung cancer screening setting: a randomized clinical trial” JAMA Intern Med 2025; DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.7288.
Secondary Source
JAMA Internal Medicine
Source Reference: Prochaska JJ “Treating tobacco use within lung cancer screening programs is optimal” JAMA Intern Med 2025; DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.7297.
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Read more →How Nurses, Doctors Rank in Gallup’s Poll of Most Trusted Professions
Nurses once again earned the top spot as the most trusted profession in America, with pharmacists and physicians ranking fourth and fifth on Gallup’s annual Most Honest and Ethical Professions Poll.
Of those surveyed, 76% rated nurses as having “high” or “very high” ethical standards. Grade-school teachers ranked second, with 61% of respondents saying they have high or very high ethical standards, followed by military officers (59%), pharmacists (57%), and physicians (53%).
“For 23 years running, the American public continues to trust nurses not only as the most honest and ethical within healthcare, but across industries and professions,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN, president of the American Nurses Association, in a press release.
“This acknowledgement is an undeniable reflection of the positive impact nurses have on the patients they diligently care for and on the healthcare system they support,” Mensik Kennedy said. “What nurses do every day is nothing short of incredible. As the representative of the interests of [the] nation’s more than 5 million nurses, I give my word that we will continue to vigorously advocate for meaningful policies and solutions to the issues that inhibit a healthy workplace culture and quality patient care delivery throughout 2025 and beyond.”
Nancy Hagans, RN, the president of National Nurses United, also weighed in, noting that “nurses are incredibly honored that the sacred bond of trust we have with our patients has once again been recognized in the Gallup poll.”
“Especially during these uncertain times, our patients know we will always be there to advocate for them, whether that means standing up to our employers’ corporate greed and demanding safe patient care conditions in our workplaces — or speaking up at the highest levels of power on issues that impact public health and safety,” she said. “Year after year, nurses will always fight to ensure our patients come first.”
Polling for this survey was conducted from Dec. 2-18, 2024. Gallup first began surveying the public on trust in different professions in 1976, looking at 14 different occupations. Beginning in 1999, however, it tracked 11 core professions annually — nurses, pharmacists, medical doctors, police officers, clergy, bankers, lawyers, business executives, members of Congress, advertising practitioners, and car salespeople — with others being included every several years.
Nurses, who were first included in Gallup’s annual survey in 1999, have taken the top spot every year since, except 2001, when firefighters (included in that year only) had a record-breaking 90% following the 9/11 attacks, the polling company noted.
Looking at the bigger picture, the average “very high/high” ratings for the 11 core professions fell from roughly 40% or higher in the early 2000s to around 35% in the 2010s, before inching up to a 7-year high of 38% in 2020 — primarily due to increased trust in healthcare workers and teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, the average has fallen every year, hitting 30% in 2023 and staying flat in 2024 — reflecting “the long-term decline in Americans’ confidence in U.S. institutions,” Gallup suggested.
These 2 years in particular saw lower scores for a handful of professions including physicians, for whom trust has now diminished by 14 percentage points since 2021.
“After reaching a historical high of 77% in 2020, physicians’ ethics rating not only returned to its 2019/pre-pandemic level of 65% but, at 53%, is now the lowest since the mid-1990s,” the polling company said.
Even at number one, nurses’ ratings of “very high/high” have declined from a record 89% in 2020.
Additionally, pharmacists, day care providers, and nursing home operators — all professions that celebrated high marks during the first year or two of the pandemic — saw their ratings dip below their pre-pandemic averages to 57%, 42%, and 21%, respectively.
Ratings for clergy have declined the most of any profession since the polling company began rating all 23 professions in the early 2000s, with a 26-percentage point drop. The second greatest decline was for judges, who experienced a 21-percentage point plunge since the early 2000s.
“The high court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, as well as various legal cases against Donald Trump since 2020, could explain declines in these ratings by both major parties,” Gallup noted.
Shannon Firth has been reporting on health policy as MedPage Today’s Washington correspondent since 2014. She is also a member of the site’s Enterprise & Investigative Reporting team. Follow
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Read more →RFK Jr.’s MAHA Movement Obscures America’s Unhealthy Past
Medical historians say that the phrase “Make America Healthy Again” obscures a past during which this country’s people ate, smoked and drank things that mostly left them unwell.“We will make Americans healthy again,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has declared. A political action committee that has promoted Mr. Kennedy, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, says his movement is “igniting a health revolution in America.”But the word “again” presumes a time in the country’s past when Americans were in better health. Was there ever really a time when America was healthier?For historians of medicine, there is a short answer.“No,” said Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University.John Harley Warner, a historian at Yale, said, “It’s hard for me to think of a time when America, with all the real health disparities that characterize our system, was healthier.”Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, asked: “Which particular era does R.F.K. want to take us back to?”Probably not the 19th and early 20th century.Rich men smoked cigarettes and cigars, the poor chewed tobacco. Heavy drinking was the norm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Read more →Attempted murder charge after nurse stabbed
A man has been charged with attempted murder after a nurse was stabbed at a hospital and left with life-changing injuries.
Read more →Dementia Cases in the U.S. Will Surge in the Coming Decades, Researchers Say
By 2060, new dementia cases per year could double to one million because of the growing population of older Americans, a study predicts.The number of people in the United States who develop dementia each year will double over the next 35 years to about one million annually by 2060, a new study estimates, and the number of new cases per year among Black Americans will triple.The increase will primarily be due to the growing aging population, as many Americans are living longer than previous generations. By 2060, some of the youngest baby boomers will be in their 90s and many millennials will be in their 70s. Older age is the biggest risk factor for dementia. The study found that the vast majority of dementia risk occurred after age 75, increasing further as people reached age 95.The study, published Monday in Nature Medicine, found that adults over 55 had a 42 percent lifetime risk of developing dementia. That is considerably higher than previous lifetime risk estimates, a result the authors attributed to updated information about Americans’ health and longevity and the fact that their study population was more diverse than that of previous studies, which have had primarily white participants.Some experts said the new lifetime risk estimate and projected increase in yearly cases could be overly high, but they agreed that dementia cases would soar in the coming decades.“Even if the rate is significantly lower than that, we’re still going to have a big increase in the number of people and the family and societal burden of dementia because of just the growth in the number of older people, both in the United States and around the world,” said Dr. Kenneth Langa, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, who has researched dementia risk and was not involved in the new study.Dementia already takes an enormous toll on American families and the country’s health care system. More than six million Americans currently have dementia, nearly 10 percent of people 65 and older, research has found. Experts say that each year in the United States, dementia causes more than 100,000 deaths and accounts for more than $600 billion in caregiving and other costs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Read more →Childhood Vaccination Rates Were Falling Even Before the Rise of R.F.K. Jr.
After years of holding steady, American vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases have been dropping. Share of U.S. kindergartners vaccinated […]
Read more →How Lagging Vaccination Could Lead to a Polio Resurgence
In its original form, the virus survives in just two countries. But a type linked to an oral vaccine used in other nations has already turned up in the West.Most American parents hardly give thought to polio beyond the instant their child is immunized against the disease. But there was a time in this country when polio paralyzed 20,000 people in a year, killing many of them.Vaccines turned the tide against the virus. Over the past decade, there has been only one case in the United States, related to international travel.That could change very quickly if polio vaccination rates dropped or the vaccine were to become less accessible.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic who may become the secretary of health and human services, has said the idea that vaccination has nearly eradicated polio is “a mythology.”And while Mr. Kennedy has said he’s not planning to take vaccines away from Americans, he has long contended that they are not as safe and effective as claimed.As recently as 2023, he said batches of an early version of the polio vaccine, contaminated with a virus, caused cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” The contamination was real, but research never bore out a link to cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
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