Women more hesitant to get mammograms; Moving contributes to depression; Car crashes are a public health crisis – Morning Medical Update

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Women more hesitant to get mammograms

New research suggests that women between the ages of 39 and 49 chose to wait until they turned 50 to get screened for breast cancer. This is a result of women learning the pros and cons of mammograms.

A study published on Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that many women remain unaware of the costs of routine screening in their 40s. Out of 495 women, researchers saw that after informing women of the benefits and harms of mammograms, 18% said they would wait until 50, compared to 8% initially.

“We’re not being honest with people,” Lauren Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon not involved in the study, said. “I think most people are completely unaware of the risks associated with screening because we’ve had 30, 40 years of a public health messaging campaign: Go out and get your mammogram, and everything will be fine.”

Moving contributes to depression

In Denmark, researchers found that adults who moved often in their childhood had a significant risk of suffering from depression than those who did not. Clive Sabel, lead author of the study, also found the risk of moving frequently in childhood was significantly higher than the risk of living in a low-income neighborhood.

“It’s at a vulnerable age — at that really important age — it’s when children have to take a pause and recalibrate,” Sabel said. “We think our data points to something around disruption in childhood that we really haven’t looked at enough and we don’t understand.”

The study highlights the importance of stability in childhood, which can drastically alter one’s mental health when affected. Read more about the implications of the study here.

Car crashes are a public health crisis

Every 12 minutes, someone is killed by a car crash in the US. In 2022, more than 42,500 people died in car crashes, a rate that rivals or surpasses other major public health threats, like the flu and gun violence. Traffic-related injuries and deaths also costed the health care system more than $55 billion in 2022, with pedestrian deaths reaching 7,522 in the same year.

Transportation experts say traffic deaths are the result of reckless driving and less traffic enforcement than before the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as larger and deadlier SUVs and trucks. They also argue that the transportation system was not designed for safety, but instead efficient movement and economic development.

In order to combat this public health crisis, the Biden administration is relying on the “safe system approach,” a transportation strategy that has achieved some adoption across the country. The strategy puts safety at the forefront of road and vehicle design, forcing traffic to move more slowly through communities. Find out more about the increased need to reduce car crashes in this article.