CDC released two reports this week that may be of interest to a medical humanities audience.
The first Report is a collaboration between CDC and the Milbank Memorial Fund entitled "Improving Population Health: The Uses of Systematic Reviews," by Melissa Sweet and Ray Moynihan. Those uninterested in methodology will nevertheless find much of use in the report, as the Executive Summary presents a nicely complicated account of public health policy discourse. It can be downloaded free of charge, thanks to the Memorial Fund, here (PDF).
The second report is a CDC report on the effects of early stress across the lifespan. We've touched here at MH Blog -- just last week, actually -- on the increasing importance of stress, early childhood, and the neuroendocrine pathway as a significant, if not superior, account of the molecular mechanisms by which social and economic conditions produce health and illness. (Note, of course, this is a medical humanities blog, so please do not think that I deem the social and ethical importance of stress and early childhood to be a function of its possible effects on the neuroendocrine system. Indeed, such objectivizing is a trope I will be critiquing in my research on pain).
In any case, this second report, which I have only skimmed, seems to touch on a similar cluster of concepts, and therefore looks to be worth reading, at least.
(h/ts to LL and SDOH Listserv)
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