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The images of a police officer in Miami-Dade County taking a 7-year-old boy — in handcuffs — for a psychiatric exam after he hit a teacher sparked outrage in 2018. That’s not what the Florida Mental Health Act of 1971, known as the “Baker Act,” was intended to do. It allows law enforcement, courts or health professionals to commit a person, with or without their consent, for psychiatric evaluation if they present a danger of bodily harm to themselves or others or are likely to suffer neglect because of mental illness. (4/7)

We’re more than a year into the pandemic and COVID-19 has impacted nearly every facet of San Diegans’ lives. As our communities combat SARS-CoV-2 transmission across the city, we are simultaneously, and quite literally, in the fight of our lives against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV in the region. For the last five years, STDs have been on the rise in San Diego. So much so that in 2018, a study by AIDSVu found that residents of the San Diego metropolitan area were diagnosed with chlamydia at a rate of 656.5 per 100,000 people — bestowing America’s Finest City with the No. 1 chlamydia rate among major cities in the American West. (Susan Little, 4/7)

In Philadelphia today, your zip code determines your life expectancy. Neighborhoods just one mile apart can see average life expectancies that differ by 20 years. And this was before COVID-19 killed over 3,000 Philadelphians, the vast majority of whom are Black and brown people. There are a multitude of factors that play into community health: social and economic conditions, the environment, the accessibility of healthy products, like fresh and nutritious food, behavioral choices, and the healthcare system. Nearly all of these factors are impacted by systemic racism. For generations, policies and programs influenced by systems ingrained with racial bias and outright discrimination have created the situation we find ourselves in today. Black and brown people are more likely to live in poverty, are more likely to have chronic health conditions, and are more likely to live near toxic pollution, all leading to lower lifespans. (Katherine Gilmore Richardson, 4/7)

More than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, our country is still grappling with numerous crises. With the vaccine rollout underway, conversations are starting to shift from management to recovery. Nowhere is this truer than in the health and housing sectors, where a vaccine won't magically fix one's ability to pay for long-term health issues or rent. Given the breadth of the recovery, policymakers must be strategic, but also identify opportunities to promote long-term stability. That begins with treating housing instability, including homelessness, as a public health crisis. As policymakers and professionals in the health and housing sectors embark on a post-pandemic recovery process, they must work together to deliver solutions that simultaneously promote a person's health and housing stability. This will help speed up the recovery by allowing experts to share resources, align efforts and more purposefully address systemic root causes of illness and housing instability. (Erin Kelly, 4/8)

Business as usual has not been the mantra for companies developing Covid-19 vaccines and drugs. Instead, biopharma companies and their partners pursued various transformational approaches to get vaccines and treatments to market at unprecedented speeds. These included adaptive trials, master protocols, real-world evidence, and other approaches powered by advanced statistical techniques, data science, and analytics using curated datasets. (Andrew Bolt and Sonal Shah, 4/8)

If you’re thinking about the COVID pandemic as an assault against physical health alone, you’ve got it all wrong. The statistics on illness and death are staggering—but there’s been an equally staggering toll exacted on our mental health. Nearly one third of Americans are experiencing symptoms of clinical depression or anxiety, and the Well Being Trust estimates we will suffer up to 150,000 additional deaths tied to the social isolation and economic stressors associated with COVID-19. In nonpandemic times, making choices that benefit both physical health and mental health was relatively straightforward, for these choices were often one and the same. Doing good for your body has tangible benefits for your mood and psychological well-being. For example, exercise significantly reduces anxiety and depression—at rates comparable to pharmacotherapy. Likewise, healthy sleep habits that foster physical homeostasis and more efficient immune system functioning also significantly reduce our risk for depression, anxiety and bipolar illness. (June Gruber and Jessica L. Borelli, 4/7)