Decision of the Month

Books





My Neighborhood Made Me Do It

February 4th, 2010

 My Center at CBDSM regularly posts what we call the “Decision of the Month.” Our most recent DoM highlights some research I conducted with Sarah Gollust, a UM graduate student now working at Penn.
 
Click on this link, http://www.cbdsm.org/doms/diabetes-lobby, to find out what happens when people learn about how neighborhoods influence people’s health.
 
And click [...]

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Megan Fox’s Belly Button: The Key to Understanding Politics?

January 28th, 2010

Okay, as fine as is her midriff, most of you probably don’t list Megan Fox’s belly button as her first, um, attribute worth pondering. But bear with me–her belly button IS key to understanding why the Massachusetts senate seat just went to a Republican, and why Democratic efforts to reform our healthcare system are now [...]

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Fixing Healthcare Means Maintaining Infrastructure

January 21st, 2010

It is pothole season in Michigan, with roads crumbling under the pressure of winter cold. Then again, with the condition of our state’s dismal economy, pothole season is becoming a year-round phenomenon here in the Great Lake State. Michigan’s government can no longer afford to fix roads like it used to, and the same goes [...]

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Mark McGwire: New Poster Child for Cognitive Dissonance

January 14th, 2010

Answer = Himself
Question = Who is Mark McGwire trying to deceive?
It’s laughable, isn’t it.
• He took steroids for “health reasons”• The drugs “didn’t help him” hit home runs• The “steroid era” made him do it
Mark McGwire’s belated confession to using performance enhancing drugs was only surprising in his determination to call them “health enhancing drugs.” And even that [...]

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Underwear Bombers and the Politics of Invisibility

January 6th, 2010

Easy to criticize the Obama administration, isn’t it?
Look at the unemployment rate, for example. And have you seen the tax hikes they’re going to need to pay for healthcare reform? Oh yeah, and they did a great job with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab didn’t they?-his dad told us he was going rogue, and then when he [...]

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Nine Blessings from 2009

December 22nd, 2009

1.  I didn’t turn 50
            Rinse and repeat that blessing for two more years!
 
2.  Healthcare reform has provided plenty to blog about for the whole year!
            Rinse and repeat for  . . . ?  
 
3.  Neither of my children are adolescents
            . . . yet!
 
4.  Two of my three books weren’t pulled from the [...]

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The Cost of Human Nature

December 9th, 2009

Is a test that costs $800,000 to add one year of life worthwhile? In one survey, most physicians said yes-evidence that controlling costs will require overcoming very powerful, and irrational, psychological forces.
Imagine for a moment that you are in charge of the U.S. health care system, and must decide whether to pay for a new [...]

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Obama is to a Colostomy like Hope is to a …?

November 8th, 2009

Would you rather experience a bad situation forever or for just six months? Any sane person would choose the temporary situation. And yet, according to a study I published this week, if you chose the temporary situation, you’d be more likely to suffer over the next six months-so focused on the hope that your situation [...]

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Fat Lazy Neighborhoods?

October 26th, 2009

If I told you that neighborhoods cause people to develop diabetes, would you believe me? And would that make you more or less willing to see your tax dollars spent researching ways to treat and prevent diabetes?
That is essentially the question my colleagues and I posed to a wide swath of Americans, and a question, [...]

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When Good Medical Care is All or Something

October 12th, 2009

One of the greatest joys of practicing medicine is for me to understand where my patients are coming from, so I can best help them through their medical journey. I was reminded of this fact recently, when talking with a patient who had just come back to my primary care clinic after visiting the liver [...]

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I am a physician and behavioral scientist. My research and writing explores the quirks in human nature that influence our lives -- the mixture of rational and irrational forces that affect our health, our happiness and the way our society functions....

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