When birth rates fall in the United States, experts try to figure out what’s happening. The fertility rate is at its lowest since the 1970s — 1.71 per woman, according to a new study. But it’s not that young people today don’t want children, new research suggests. In fact, they want about as many as their parents had. Instead, young Americans may simply be having more difficulty achieving life goals in order to have kids, said study co-author Sarah Hayford, director of the Ohio State University Institute for Population Research. “You see a lot of things of like, ‘Oh, young people just aren’t interested in having children’ or ‘young people have better things to do.’ And we don’t find that,” Hayford said. “We find that young people are interested in having children and people want children. They’re planning to have children. It’s just other things that are making it hard to carry out those plans.” The U.S. fertility rate peaked during the post-World War II baby boom, at 3.58 in 1958 and reached a low of 1.77 in 1972. After a rebound, birth rates plummeted during the Great Recession starting in 2008 and continued to drop even after, Hayford said. For the study, Hayford and co-author Karen Benjamin Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used…  read on >  read on >

Hundreds of rural hospitals across the United States are teetering on the edge of closure, with their financial status increasingly in peril, a new report reveals. More than 200 rural hospitals are at immediate risk of closure because they aren’t making enough money to cover the rising cost of providing care, and their low financial reserves leave them little margin for error, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform report states. Overall, more than 600 rural hospitals — nearly 30% of rural hospitals nationwide — are at risk of closing in the near future, according to the report. “Costs have been increasing significantly and payments, particularly from commercial insurance plans, have not increased correspondingly with that,” said Harold Miller, president and CEO of the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR). “And the small hospitals don’t have the kinds of financial reserves to be able to cover the losses.” The COVID-19 pandemic actually provided temporary relief to cash-strapped hospitals, thanks to federal grants that helped keep them open and serving patients. More than 150 rural hospitals nationwide closed between 2005 and 2019, the CHQPR report noted. Another 19 shut down in 2020, more than any year in the previous decade. But only six more closed in 2021 and 2022, because of the financial assistance hospitals received while the pandemic raged. Now that federal…  read on >  read on >

People suffering from depression or anxiety may be able to help themselves by helping others — even in small ways, researchers report. In a recent study of 122 people with depression or anxiety symptoms, those who started fitting small acts of kindness into their day showed an improvement in their symptoms. And when it came to boosting feelings of social connectedness, those kind gestures worked even better than two techniques used in standard “talk therapy,” the study found. Experts said the findings point to the power of simply being kind — possibly because it helps people with mental health symptoms get out of their own heads, even temporarily. “When you have these symptoms, you can become preoccupied with your own suffering — understandably,” said David Cregg, one of the researchers on the study. So intentionally focusing on others’ well-being, and choosing to support them in some small way, can free people from that mindset for a while, according to Cregg. He conducted the study as part of his PhD dissertation at Ohio State University, and is now a clinical psychologist with the South Texas Veterans Health Care System. Past research has shown that acts of kindness — writing a supportive note to a friend or buying someone a cup of coffee — can not only make the recipient feel good, but also be a boon…  read on >  read on >

Cannabis use in U.S. states where recreational use is legal could be contributing to children’s asthma, according to new research. A study found increases in asthma in teens where cannabis is legal, compared to states where it remains banned for medicinal and recreational use. The study also found increased asthma in children in some minority and ethnic groups. “Our findings suggest that state-level cannabis policy could have downstream impacts on children’s respiratory health,” said study first author Renee Goodwin, an adjunct associate professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Cannabis use on the rise among adults with children in the home, particularly in states that have legalized it for medical or recreational use, she noted. “Exposure to secondhand smoke is a key risk factor for asthma among children,” Goodwin said in a university news release. “This study offers a critical first step in identifying a key children’s health concern emerging in the context of rapid, ongoing changes in cannabis policy that are unaccompanied by clinical or public health guidelines for parents.” Researchers used data from the 2011-2019 National Survey on Children’s Health. It offers a snapshot of the physical and mental health of non-institutionalized U.S. children through age 17. Nationwide, they found a statistically significant drop in pediatric asthma between 2011-2012 and 2016-2017. They saw no decline since then. Asthma rose slightly…  read on >  read on >

Doctors already test seniors’ hearing and vision. Sense of smell could be added to screenings one day, according to researchers who found links between its loss and risk of frailty in older adults. “We use our sense of smell to identify the threat of a fire or to enjoy the fragrance of flowers on a spring day. But just like vision and hearing, this sense weakens as we age,” said study co-author Dr. Nicholas Rowan. He is an associate professor of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery at Johns Hopkins Medicine, in Baltimore. “We found that both impaired olfactory identification and sensitivity functions are associated with frailty, which is interesting because it shows that it’s not just your aging brain at work here, but it may also be something peripheral, like something at the level of your nose that is able to predict our impending frailty and death,” Rowan added in a Hopkins news release. For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 1,160 older adults enrolled in the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project between 2015 and 2016. Participants, average age 76, were exposed to five scents to measure olfactory identification and six scents to measure sensitivity levels. Olfactory sensitivity is the ability to detect an odor’s presence. Olfactory identification is the ability to detect and name an odor. The latter relies on higher-order brain…  read on >  read on >

Worries that clergy will urge depressed congregants to rely on prayer and not other mental health care appear to be unfounded. A nationwide survey found that 90% of clergy members embraced a medical understanding of the causes and treatment of depression. About 10% said they would recommend using religious means alone to address depression. “We consider this good news,” said study co-author Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology, religious studies and divinity at Duke University in Durham, N.C. “We’ve known for a while that a lot of people bring their mental health challenges to clergy,” he said in a university news release. “There’s been concern about what clergy have been telling them. Have they been telling them just to pray, or to see a doctor? This should allay concerns.” Clergy can often be the first point of contact for a person with depression, the study authors noted. The survey results largely held true across denominations, said study co-author Anna Holleman, a postdoctoral research associate. “We couldn’t find any subset of clergy in which anything but a small minority rejected medical wisdom,” she said. For the study, the researchers used data from Duke’s National Survey of Religious Leaders, which includes U.S. clergy across the religious spectrum. The survey was conducted in 2019 and 2020, largely before the COVID-19 pandemic. It drew responses from about 1,600 congregational…  read on >  read on >

Social isolation is a substantial risk factor for dementia in older adults, according to a pair of studies that add evidence to past research on this threat. But these new studies offer a potential solution: using technology to encourage older adults to text and email to stay in touch. Although the studies don’t prove lack of regular social contact causes dementia, researchers said they do strengthen observations that isolation increases the risk. They suggested that relatively simple steps to increase social support may reduce that risk. About 1 in 4 people over age 65 in the United States is socially isolated. “Social connections matter for our cognitive health, and it is potentially easily modifiable for older adults without the use of medication,” said Dr. Thomas Cudjoe, senior author of both studies. He’s an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. The first study used data collected on more than 5,000 Medicare beneficiaries for a long-term study of health and aging trends that began in 2011. Participants were asked to complete an annual two-hour, in-person interview to assess their mental functioning, health status and overall well-being. About 23% reported social isolation at the start. They showed no signs of dementia. After nine years, 21% of participants had developed dementia. And the risk was 27% higher among socially isolated older adults,…  read on >  read on >

Cancer deaths continue to decline, dropping 33% since 1991 and saving an estimated 3.8 million lives, according to the American Cancer Society’s annual statistics report. But individual trends within that overall success story highlight the struggle to find the best ways to prevent, detect and treat cancer for all Americans, the society said. On the positive side, the United States saw an “astounding” 65% reduction in cervical cancer rates among 20- to 24-year-old women between 2012 and 2019, a direct result of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination, said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society (ACS). “The effort that our children went through over the last 20 years or so to go through vaccinations have actually saved lives,” Dahut said, noting that the plummeting case level “totally follows the time when HPV vaccines were produced.” Chief executive officer Karen Knudsen added that “this is some of the first real-world evidence that HPV vaccination is likely to be effective in reducing cancer incidence and [death rates].” Unfortunately, rates of advanced prostate cancers are on the rise, likely driven by confusion and conflict over screening guidelines, ACS officials said. The second-leading cause of cancer death for U.S. men, prostate cancer cases rose 3% a year from 2014 through 2019 after two decades of decline, the report found. There’s also been a 5% year-over-year increase…  read on >  read on >