Vaccine hesitancy spills over to pets

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Vaccine hesitancy hits the veterinarian’s office

In a country where dogs outnumber children, routine canine vaccinations are critical for protecting animal and human health. And yet a new study published in Vaccine finds that 52 percent of dog owners in the U.S. expressed some skepticism about the safety, efficacy, or necessity of vaccinating their dogs against rabies. That skepticism, the study’s authors write in Harvard Public Health, may mean fewer vaccinated pets and more opposition to important vaccine mandates for dogs.

• Vaccine hesitancy spills over to pets | Dominik Stecula, Matt Motta, Gabriella Motta

More on vaccines:

• We can’t let misinformation kill the new Lyme disease vaccine | Matt Motta
• Cholera outbreaks surge worldwide, renewing debates on vaccines | Simar Bajaj
• Vaccines: a victory and a failure | Lisa Doggett

Endemic: A Post-Pandemic Playbook

Perhaps COVID-19’s “wrongest woman” wasn’t as wrong as her critics claimed.

In the first months of the pandemic, HIV researcher and physician Monica Gandhi emerged as a vocal critic of some public health tactics like closing parks and beaches, restricting people’s access to doctor’s offices and hospitals, and prolonged school closures—all measures some people in the public health community have since argued may have done more harm than good.

Her new book, Endemic: A Post-Pandemic Playbook, is both a retrospective analysis of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic and a “playbook” for future pandemics. “Harm reduction is the heart of this book,” she tells HPH. “I hope people will approach it with an open mind…it supports a pandemic response that prioritizes equality, justice, and education.”

• Our next pandemic’s playbook | Christine Mehta

Managing diabetes without health insurance

Texas is one of ten states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid—a move that would cut the number of the state’s uninsured by nearly half. Experts say wider Medicaid coverage helps people diagnose and better manage chronic conditions including diabetes, which affects more than 2.5 million Texans. A new Public Health Watch investigation, published in collaboration with The Texas Tribune, finds that rates of diabetes among Texas residents is higher than the national average, and it’s no accident that one in six Texans also don’t have health insurance—the highest uninsured rate of any U.S. state.

• Living with diabetes and without health insurance | Kim Krisberg and Hannah Levitan

What we’re reading this week

• Indoor air systems crucial to curbing spread of viruses | CBS News
• 150 women give birth in Gaza daily, no clean water or electricity | NPR
• A UK-India trade deal could threaten generic medications globally | Devex
• We’re making adult immunization too hard | STAT News
• Government report finds food insecurity is on the rise | CNBC
• What happens when nurses are hired like Ubers | The Markup

Thanks for reading. See you next week.

—Christine