US Supreme Court Limits on the Power of US Health Agencies

This Viewpoint describes how the overturning of Chevron deference would shift the ability to make policy decisions about public health and the environment from administrative agencies to the courts.

Consumer Protection, Agencies, and the Supreme Court

This Viewpoint discusses an upcoming US Supreme Court case that could result in the termination of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects the financial well-being of consumers.

Lawsuits Over the Price of Insulin-State Efforts for Insulin Access

This Viewpoint discusses the litigation strategy of state-initiated lawsuits alleging illegal and immoral conduct regarding the pricing of insulin by pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers.

The Supreme Court's 303 Creative Decision and the Threat to LGBTQ+ Health Care

This Viewpoint examines the importance of the Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative and its possible effects on legislation safeguarding nondiscriminatory health care.

Including E-Cigarettes in the FDA Rule Limiting Nicotine

This Viewpoint discusses why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should include e-cigarettes in its proposed cap of the nicotine concentration in combustible cigarettes to address the public health problem of vaping among adolescents.

The FDA Struggle to Withdraw Makena: Problems With the Accelerated Approval Process

This Viewpoint discusses the controversy surrounding the FDA’s efforts to withdraw Makena from the market and the broader implications for the accelerated approval pathway.

Medicine, structural racism, and systems

Medicine is having a reckoning with systemic racism. While some continue to believe medicine is apolitical and grounded purely in science, history and research reveal that medicine is inseparable from underlying systems, laws, and policies. Obesity is a useful case study. Weight loss trials have shown the immense difficulty in achieving and sustaining weight loss without addressing overlying systems. Barriers are double for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) with obesity, who must contend with multiple layers of oppressive systems. Increasingly, illness is not a matter of bad luck, but is a function of oppressive structures. COVID-19 likely originates in a deteriorating environment, we have an increasing global burden of disease from oppressive sales of food, sugar, alcohol, guns, nicotine, and other harmful products, and social inequality and resource hoarding are at a peak. Medicine can and must participate in redefining these systems. In doing so, it must center the experiences of BIPOC and push change that alleviates power disparities.

Is obesity a manifestation of systemic racism? A ten-point strategy for study and intervention

In the recent past, there has been rising attention to systemic racism. The ensuing discussions have largely focused on COVID-19 and policing. Despite long-standing disparities in obesity across racial and ethnic groups and obesity's important role in COVID-19 disparities, there has been minimal attention to whether obesity itself could be a manifestation of systemic racism. Nor has there been serious policy attention dedicated to alleviating obesity and its disproportionate burden on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color). We discuss whether obesity's disproportionate harms to BIPOC may be attributed to systemic racism, and we provide a ten-point strategy for studying and solving the core public health issues at the intersection of obesity and systemic racism.