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The Health Wrap: strange times in the United States, Ebola updates, tackling misinformation – and celebrating wildflowers

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The impacts of extreme heat, updates on vaccine matters, challenges for science in the United States and elsewhere, innovation in the community controlled sector, and good news for coffee drinkers are among the topics covered in The Health Wrap.

The quotable?

Journalists are least trusted to tell the truth about health issues and how to protect public health. It’s encouraging to see doctors and medical scientists and experts are most trusted but disheartening to see friends and family trusted ahead of global health authorities.”

Lesley Russell writes:

This past week, the United States has been celebrating the 250th anniversary of its independence.

It’s been a strange, not particularly celebratory time, with the news dominated by an increase in fighting between Ukraine and Russia, the impact of severe heat in Europe and parts of the United States, Taylor Swift’s wedding, and, of course, President Trump’s determination to have the celebrations be all about him.

Here in Colorado, there were no fireworks to mark the occasion as extreme fire emergencies have been declared in much of the state and wildfires are burning out of control.

Perhaps we should be grateful that we were spared more particulate matter from the fireworks! A draft analysis conducted by the National Park Service predicted that Trump’s huge fireworks display would  create hazardous levels of fine of particulate matter at a level one hundred times that of Washington’s usual Independence Day display.

If, like me, you are fascinated with American history and its many contradictions, then I recommend Nick Bryant’s SubStack report on the myths of American history and the magnificent Ken Burns series, The American Revolution. I have also just started to read An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

We are enjoying hiking every day, but the views are often blurred by wildfire smoke and we feel it in our lungs as we pant up the mountain trails. (You can follow our hiking adventures with photos on BlueSky @lrussellwolpe.bsky.social.)

The ongoing drought is shown most clearly and sadly in the lack of wildflowers, which are usually out in massed glory at this time of year. We are really missing the breathtaking profusions in the mountain meadows and many of the flowers that are blooming are small and appearing earlier than usual.

We celebrated 4 July with a hike up to 3,500m along the Deer Creek Trail

Leadership and democracy

At a time when nearly every edition of The Health Wrap has something about the Trump Administration’s assaults on science and health, it’s insightful to look at what was happening at the time the Founding Fathers were working on the Declaration of Independence.

The New England Journal of Medicine published an article about the five doctors who were among the 56 signatories of the American Declaration of Independence, calling this a “high-water mark in the history of medical representation in American political leadership”.

This article is behind a paywall, but you can access the NEJM’s interview on this topic here.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2600945

Science has an article about the enduring pursuit of science in America, reminding us that Congress chartered the National Academy of Sciences in 1863 under President Lincoln. This was four months before the Battle of Gettysburg, at a time when the nation was in crisis.

Another article in Science looks at the promise America has always seen in science. “Although the lofty ideals associated with establishing the country have mostly to do with personal liberty and equality, the founders were very aware of the importance of new knowledge, and scientific knowledge, in particular. Benjamin Franklin perhaps best exemplified the broad curiosity about both principles of the natural world and the ideals of political philosophy when forging the foundation of a new democracy.”

It goes on to explore the issue of today: “It’s hard to see through the political turmoil whether the promise of knowledge and education envisioned by the founders is still alive.”

The article concludes: “But rather than continuing to discuss the problem of public trust in higher education and science, the semiquincentennial is an opportunity for both institutions to acknowledge that Americans can be disappointed in the impact of higher education and science on society but still believe that both can be better. The scientific community can recognise this by committing to what it says it can do and living up to those aspirations in a way that is rigorously documented and provides benefits to all.”

As the Australian Academy of Science is promulgating the Restore Science campaign, calling for urgent action to restore investment in Australian science, this is advice Australian scientists might well take to heart.

See also:

Science in the United States

There is no good news here!

I have previously reported (see The Health Wrap, 23 June 2026) on sweeping proposals from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that would make dramatic changes to how the US Government oversees research.

Most seriously, this includes downgrading the role of peer review and allowing political appointees to make final decisions on what to fund, restrict foreign collaborations, and cancel grants deemed to be at odds with Trump’s priorities. Efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in science would thus be at risk.

This proposal has received nearly 50,000 public comments, demonstrating the levels of concern

An article in Science points out a little-noticed paragraph in the 400-plus-page document could also have major implications for researchers. This would allow the Department of Justice (increasingly politicised under Trump) to join private suits by individuals or organisations who want to block what they see as inappropriate spending.

One researcher told Science that she fears the Trump Administration will use this provision to back suits filed against scientists “because of the researcher’s personal political action, professional affiliations, or the perception that the research is too DEI”.

OMB has said these new requirements will go into effect on 1 October, the start of the next fiscal year. Research advocates are hoping OMB will extend the current 13 July deadline for comments and will revise the proposed rules to reflect the concerns raised.

But there’s a lot of timidity from science organisations dependent on government funds. The National Science Foundation is not waiting for the OMB rule to be finalised. It has already announced plans to incorporate the OMB requirements into its guidance to grantees.

Meanwhile, there is the news that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) plans to close its flagship scientific campus, the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC).

USDA announced plans to close BARC a year ago, citing several dilapidated buildings and a desire to increase “efficiency” as the reasons and the transition was supposed to take place over “multiple years,” according to a USDA memo.

Now the agency dramatically accelerated the timeline. Last week bee researchers, busy working on the impact of varroa mites, were told their lab will relocate to Fargo, North Dakota and were given just 30 days to decide whether to accept the new posting.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also been reworking its scientific expertise.  In April this year, more than a year after the Trump Administration “reset” the Science Advisory Board (SAB) by firing the scientists on it, the EPA announced the appointment of a number of players in the chemical, pesticide, and energy industries to the SAB. These will service alongside a number of newly appointed academics.

“The Trump EPA has an unwavering commitment to Gold Standard Science. Reconstituting the Science Advisory Board will provide rigorous, independent, evidence-based, scientific advice consistent with its legal obligations to advance our core mission of protecting human health and the environment,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Last week the EPA announced new appointments to its Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals, the expert panel that peer-reviews the agency’s chemical risk evaluations under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Many of the new committee members have deeply conflicting interests, histories of downplaying the risks of toxic chemicals, or are directly employed by companies with an interest in weakening chemical protections.

Organisations like the Environmental Protection Network have publicly voiced concern that the structural makeup of the panels blurs the lines between expert scientific advice and stakeholder lobbying.

Sign of crises ahead

One aspect of science that none of us can escape is the growing impact of global warming and what this means for health, commerce, food supplies and quality of life.

I recently published a piece at Inside Story Magazine that looked at what the predicted El Niño effect will bring, and why the growing warming of the earth and its oceans is already delivering thousands of excess deaths.

A recent study estimates that a single day of extreme heat causes approximately 3,400 excess deaths nationally in India. The heatwave that engulfed Europe at the end of June caused at least 3,700 excess deaths in France, Belgium and The Netherlands.

Last weekend at least 25 people died in the United States as a result of the heatwave that engulfed much of the country.

Urgent action is now imperative.

This warming is largely driven by increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels.

A study from World Weather Attribution finds that: “This heat wave would have been virtually impossible even 50 years ago without human-caused climate change.”

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has stated it is “unequivocal” that human influence has caused “unprecedented” global warming, increasing the threat of floods, drought, and heatwaves globally.

The El  Niño effect will have serious consequences for Australia (see, for example, this article in The Conversation) and now, to quote a headline in The Washington Post, “the Pacific Ocean is running a fever” – an ominous condition that will fuel serious storms and extreme heat.

It goes without saying that there will be no efforts, either national or global, from the Trump Administration to help drive solutions to these concerns.

An analysis published in The Guardian estimates that the additional emissions caused by Trump’s climate policy over the next ten years could result in an additional 1.3 million heat-related deaths by 2115, with the majority of these deaths are expected to occur outside the United States.

The current mindset of the key US policy makers is exemplified by the remarks of the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, as Europe baked under a record heat wave this week.

“Always more people die in the winter than die in the summer, because cold is a vastly larger killer than heat is,” he told the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference, which included many conservative figures who dispute mainstream climate science.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has addressed the accuracy of Wright’s statement: “This is true but highly misleading without context. While more people currently die from cold than heat, that balance only holds below the 1.5–2 degrees Celsius warming threshold that scientists warn we must avoid.”

Wright also told the conference: “Understand climate change for what it is: a slow-moving phenomenon that ultimately will be addressed by better technologies.”

His statement ignores the fact that, while experts see that technology has a small part to play in lowering atmospheric CO2 levels, it cannot replace addressing the use of fossil fuels.

https://www.croakey.org/media-under-fire-for-poor-coverage-of-catastrophic-heatwaves/

Ebola updates

The Ebola outbreak appears contained in Uganda but continues in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As of 1 July, the DRC had reported 1460 confirmed cases and 452 confirmed deaths. There has also been one confirmed case in France (a doctor who had visited DRC, who has since recovered).

A trial sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) (with collaboration between DRC’s National Biomedical Research Institute, Britain’s Oxford University, Antwerp’s Institute of Tropical Medicine and other international health groups) is now looking at whether the antiviral remdesivir, the experimental antibody treatment MBP134, or a combination of both can improve survival among patients infected with the Bundibugyo virus. Read more in this ABC News story here.

But researchers will have to overcome pockets of deep mistrust in the community.

Meanwhile, with the healthcare system overwhelmed by Ebola, malaria cases are rising in DRC. And Ugandan officials have reported an outbreak of the deadly Marburg disease in the western part of the country, which could affect the Ebola response in the region.

It is encouraging to see that the United States is stepping up here with aid and (perhaps) efforts towards a more coordinated national response.

To date the United States has committed more than US$220 million in direct State Department funding and US$107 million in emergency funds through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Sara Brenner, a top advisor to Health Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has been detailed to the White House as Director of the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response (a position that has been vacant since the end of the Biden Administration.

It seems that Brenner isn’t leading the Trump Administration’s pandemic responses but was brought in as “an additional body to help out”.

But – to add to the confusion over responsibilities – the White House has also brought in Dr Rachel Idowu, from the US Public Health Service, (she was part of the US team during the 2014 Ebola outbreak) to be Director for Bioresponse at the National Security Council (to which the Office of Pandemic Preparedness reports).

A perspective article in The New England Journal of Medicine reminds us that it is now 50 years since the first recognised Ebola outbreaks in central Africa – and yet the ongoing Bundibugyo virus disease outbreak in the DRC and Uganda is “a stark reminder that critical gaps in epidemic preparedness remain”.

Misinformation requires global response

The Lancet has announced a new Commission on rethinking misinformation, health, and human security.  The Commission will convene experts from a wide array of sciences to “rethink a systems approach to misinformation and disinformation threats to human health and security”.

A recent global survey, the 5th annual Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health, which took place across 16 developed countries including Australia, found that divisive beliefs about health are extremely common: seven in ten people globally had at least one view contrary to medical science.

These views cut across age, political, and educational spectrums but were more common among younger survey respondents and those with right-leaning political beliefs.

Here are some key findings:

  • 63 percent of those surveyed felt that their country is divided over healthcare (56 percent of Australians feel this way)
  • 52 percent of those surveyed say people are losing trust in the healthcare system (55 percent of Australians)
  • Only 46 percent of those surveyed rust the media to report accurate information about healthcare, such as diseases, treatments, and prevention. This is up from 43 percent in 2023 but much less than 57 percent in 2019
  • Journalists are least trusted to tell the truth about health issues and how to protect public health. It’s encouraging to see doctors and medical scientists and experts are most trusted but disheartening to see friends and family trusted ahead of global health authorities
  • Healthcare professionals compete with AI, peers, and other uncredentialed sources to influence clinical and lifestyle decisions.

And here are some shocking numbers from the report:

  • 32 percent believe fluoride in the water supply is harmful or unhelpful to health
  • 31 percent believe the risk of childhood vaccinations outweighs benefits
  • 25 percent believe vaccines are used for population control
  • 28 percent believe raw milk is healthier than pasteurised milk.

It’s encouraging to see so many science and health organisations tackling this crucial issue:

Vaccine matters

There’s always lots of news around vaccines; here is a summary of recent issues.

Concerns over new charter for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices

A new charter for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) – the panel that advises the CDC on vaccine use – substantially refocuses the responsibilities of the committee, downplaying its role in recommending the use of new vaccines and giving it responsibility to assess alternatives for disease prevention.

It also downplays the importance of vaccine research-relevant experience in the selection of its members, opening the likelihood of appointments of vaccine-sceptical representatives.

Critics warn these changes will increase political influence and that this is no more than an attempt to rewrite the rules broken by Secretary of Health and Human Dervices Robert F Kennedy Jr.

There is a good article here about the issues with the new ACIP charter and some background to why and how this was put forward.

Furthermore, while there is a new charter, ACIP has not been lawfully reconstituted or reconvened.

An article in MedPageToday highlights how problematic this is as vaccine recommendations are needed for the 2026-2027 flu season.

CDC leadership manufactures a debate on vaccine safety and effectiveness

Recent actions and seminars by CDC leadership have drawn strong criticism from public health experts, who argue the agency is attempting to manufacture controversy and sow doubt regarding long-standing vaccine safety and efficacy.

For example, CDC recently held a Public Health Grand Rounds that focused on methodological debates over measuring vaccine effectiveness that was views by many as an attempt to artificially revive scientific debates in vaccine research and data collection when the global and historical consensus is firmly established.

Most egregiously, the CDC refused to publish research that demonstrated the effectiveness of the US 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccine. It found that this updated booster reduced COVID-related emergency visits by 50 percent and hospitalisations by 55 percent.

There’s an outline of this unprecedented move here.

The study was finally published, without CDC authorisation, in JAMA Network Open in late June.

A separate study from Europe found similar results: the 2025-26 booster reduced health care visits for symptomatic COVID-19 by 59 percent among older adults during the first two months after vaccination, with waning protection over time.

There’s a good opinion piece here in The Washington Post (paywall) on why the CDC’s refusal to publish the study and its later publication in another journal doesn’t erase the troubling questions raised by its suppression.

See also this BMJ article: A study showing the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines, initially pulled from publication by the US Government, has finally been published.

Good news about mRNA vaccines

Much of the increase in vaccine scepticism is due to mistrust specifically directed at mRNA vaccines.

Now a study published in The Lancet reaffirms that the risk of serious side effects such as anaphylaxis or myocarditis from an mRNA COVID-19 shot were “consistently outweighed by the substantial protection” the vaccines provide against severe disease, hospitalisation, and death. This holds for pregnant women and those who are immunocompromised.

Because mRNA vaccines are faster to produce and easier to customise, these findings have promising implications for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and other infectious diseases and personalised cancer vaccines.

However, currently there are challenges to their global use: mRNA vaccines require ultra-cold storage and are high cost.

A study published last year in the NEJM highlights the promise of mRNA vaccines by demonstrating that an mRNA seasonal influenza vaccine for adults was 27 percent more effective than a standard flu shot.

Despite sustained criticism of vaccines from Trump and Kennedy (last year, Kennedy pulled back almost $500 million in contracts to develop mRNA vaccines), it’s encouraging to see that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee has voted unanimously to recommend Moderna’s mRNA influenza vaccine, mFlusiva, for adults 50 and over for the 2026-2027 winter.

It seems public pressure had some positive effects. In February, the FDA declined to review Moderna’s application for the mRNA flu vaccine but then reversed its decision two weeks later after criticism.

Read more about FDA’s contorted decision-making on this vaccine here.

Vaccine hesitancy

(This relates back to the section on misinformation above)

A new poll from KFF sheds light on which Americans are more likely to believe vaccine myths. Those who lack a trusted healthcare provider or who often use social media or AI are more likely to believe vaccine myths, it found.

Childhood vaccination rates in the United States continue to decline as measles cases are rising across the nation. Read more here (paywalled).

I also found this analysis of vaccine scepticism (or is it better called hesitancy?) from the US-based Council on Foreign Relations –highlighting the extent to which health is a national security measure.

It found that since 2015, trust in vaccine safety has declined in most countries, a trend that deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic, when debates over mandates intensified and spread to routine vaccinations, amplified by a surge of misinformation.

It also notes that “Growing distrust in vaccines casts a shadow over what has otherwise been a story of global public health success: a decades-long convergence toward higher immunization coverage across both higher- and lower-income regions.”

The conclusion is succinct and worrying: “The consequences of eroding confidence are no longer hypothetical. Global health systems that eradicated smallpox and eliminated diseases like polio and diphtheria in many countries took generations to build. The conditions that sustain them – grounded in trust and political will – may be harder to rebuild than the infrastructure itself.”

Flu vaccines and the US military

Here’s a perfect example of where vaccine scepticism leads – and it also demonstrates how protective vaccines ensure military readiness.

In April, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the annual flu vaccine optional for US military personnel, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom.

Then in June there was a severe outbreak of influenza at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. More than 275 cases were reported, and at least one person died.

The Army, Navy and Air Force have each been granted exceptions to the new optional annual flu vaccine policy (the exceptions granted are in line with standard Department of Defense practice for “adapting force health protection measures to critical operational realities”) and are once more mandating  flu shots for some personnel.

Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) has implemented significant changes effective 1 July.

These include:

This “bumper month” claim is offset by the fact that two Multiple Sclerosis (MS) drugs, Ocrelizumab (Ocrevus, Roche Australia) and ofatumumab (Kesimpta, Novartis) which were listed on the PBS In 2018 and 2021 respectively, could be removed from the PBS by the manufacturers due to government price reduction policies.

This situation came about because PBS listed a new MS therapy, ublituximab (Briumvi, Neuraxpharm Australia) in late 2025 at a substantially lower price than Ocrevus and Kesimpta). Under the PBS reference pricing framework, this triggered a review of pricing for other medicines in the same therapeutic class.

There are fears this could lead to price reductions of up to 50 percent for the two drugs. If they are delisted, patients prescribed these medicines would face out-of-pocket costs of up to $30,000 per course. Read more on this issue here.

A media release from MS Australia is here. As I write this, I note an article in The Australian (paywalled) that drug price disputes are swamping the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC).

Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan is urging the Albanese Government to confirm the drug will remain PBS-listed, and to accelerate the Health Technology Assessment review reforms so this situation is not repeated for other high-cost medicines.

It is likely that much of this is driven by American-based pharmaceutical companies responding to Trump’s Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) policy, which requires drug manufacturers to offer American patients and Medicaid programs the lowest price they offer in other developed countries.

Tackling over-prescribing  

A new program called SUPPORT-Meds, a deprescribing program supported by Monash University, will help Australians taper off sleeping pills such as benzodiazepine, and cut back on the prolonged use of opioids for people with chronic pain unrelated to cancer.

The push to reduce opioid use applies to all adults, the focus on cutting back sleeping pills will initially be aimed at Australians aged 65 and older.

The two-year program will involve training about 7,000 healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses and pharmacists.

The program is funded by a $5 million grants from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing under the Quality Use of Diagnostics, Therapeutics and Pathology program.

Health Technology Assessment Review

What is happening with implementation of the recommendations from the Health Technology Assessment Review?

As I was writing the section above, I wondered what was happening with the implementation of the recommendations from the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Review.

With my cynical hat on, I see this as work that is proceeding away from public oversight, with industry and other financial stakeholders actively involved but with little or no consumer input. Am I wrong?

The HTA Review, released  in September 2024, included 50 recommendations for policies, funding and approvals for emerging health technologies.

An Implementation Advisory Group was established in November 2024, tasked with mapping out ways to put the recommendations in place.

Its interim report was released in September 2025. At that time, Health Minister Butler committed to several immediate actions ahead of the Final Report submission:

  • Commencing a rolling review of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC Guidelines), starting with comparator selection and the discount rate
  • Initiating consultations on new ways to streamline the assessment process for medicines
  • Developing formal definitions and conducting research into areas of high unmet clinical need.

The communique from the final meeting of the Implementation Advisory Group, held on 11 December 2025, indicates that the HTA Reform Roadmap and the Final Report was to be presented to the Minister (it was due January 2026).

I can find no trace of the roadmap or the final report. The Department’s webpage on HTA reforms and reviews (last updated 23 April 2026) does not reference these documents.

What is happening? Maybe nothing.

A media release from Medicines Australia in the wake of the May Federal Budget complained that the 2026–27 Federal Budget did not include a funded plan to implement the HTA system.

Consultation on private health reforms

The cost and profitability of private health insurance (PHI) and private hospitals has been much in the news this year.

The Albanese Government is making some moves in this regard. Are they the right moves?

In a consultation paper just released, the first in a promised series, the Government outlines changes aimed at simplifying private health insurance tiers, improving access to regional private hospitals, prioritising contemporary models of care for maternity and mental health care and hospitals in the home.

Public consultation is open until 13 August. Read more here at Health Services Daily.

It’s not clear where and how these proposed reforms eventuated given that the Private Health CEO Forum, established in 2024, was described by the Private Hospitals Association as a “flop” that did not yield a single solution to the issues outlined in its Terms of Reference.

Bowel cancer screening campaign

NACCHO has launched Australia’s first national, community-controlled bowel cancer awareness and screening campaign. Called Strong Inside, it will be driven by the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (ACCHO) sector.

The campaign targets community members in the 45-to-74 age group through awareness-raising activities and health promotional materials and supports healthcare professionals with tools to engage in conversations with community about bowel cancer screening and encourage people to take the test.

Best of Croakey

Recent Croakey articles offer suggestions for primary care reforms, including financing models.

And an earlier Croakey article outlines a critical reason why reforms are needed: Melissa Sweet: It’s time for action in primary care reform, with a focus on communities in greatest need.

https://grattan.edu.au/news/the-perfect-blend-getting-flexible-gp-funding-right/

Good news

I know many readers have been waiting for this!

According to data from the United Kingdom Biobank presented in a recently published paper, a higher intake of coffee (five or more cups a day) is associated with lower risks of cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and liver-related mortality.

These associations persisted for both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee, and for unsweetened and sweetened coffee. Read more about this study here and here.

Hundreds of studies show that coffee may be protective against some major diseases, including several cancers. These benefits are outlined in a recent article in The Washington Post (paywalled):

  • A boost for liver health (as outlined above).
  • A lower risk of Type 2 diabetes.
  • A lower risk of Parkinson’s Disease.
  • More physical activity.

Note: While this field is well-studied via long-term observational cohorts, future research should focus on randomised controlled trials, randomisation studies, and granular analyses of coffee types and additives. See, for example, the points made in this peer-reviewed publication on coffee’s impact on health and wellbeing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2026/07/02/4-proven-health-benefits-drinking-coffee/?utm_campaign=wp_main&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

And more good news

At the start of this column, I bemoaned that poor winter snows and a dry summer have meant that the Rocky Mountain wildflowers I so love are in short supply this year.

But then I took some time off from writing and we hiked Ptarmigan Loop Trail at the top of Game Creek Bowl at Vail Mountain – and there we found wonderful views and plenty of beautiful wildflowers.

The view down into Sun Down Bowl from Ptarmigan Ridge. The ski runs just visible in the distance are in Blue Sky Bowl. In winter we ski these areas. The wildflowers here are mostly Colorado Tansy-asters (purple) and several species of Arnica (yellow).

Croakey thanks and acknowledges Dr Lesley Russell for providing this column as a probono service to our readers. Follow her on Twitter at @LRussellWolpe.

Previous editions of The Health Wrap can be read here.