Medical Journal News

Weight management programmes for obese or overweight children may be effective, but their impact has been hampered by low uptake and completion rates, an evaluation of eight pilot projects across England has suggested.1A report from the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities evaluated eight projects funded through a £4.2m government grant in July 2021, which piloted extended brief interventions (EBIs) and expansion of behavioural weight management services for children aged 2 to 19 and their families.EBIs involve a practitioner discussing a child’s weight and growth with their parent or carer, and can include the use of behaviour change techniques, tailored support, and onward referral to services. Weight management services usually involve 12 week programmes and include diet and physical activity guidance. Their primary aim is weight maintenance and growing into a healthier weight, rather than weight loss.The pilots were funded for a year and took place across several areas in...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called for an urgent international public health response as tuberculosis (TB) funding cuts threaten to reverse two decades of progress in containing the world’s deadliest infectious disease.The UN health agency said that it was particularly concerned about services in the world’s worst affected nations collapsing, allowing the respiratory disease to spread almost unabated.More than a million people died from TB last year, but that number is expected to rise sharply as public health systems, particularly in Africa, are no longer able to diagnose, treat, and monitor the disease. WHO warned that the situation could quickly deteriorate, as 27 countries faced “crippling breakdowns” in their TB response as funding cuts hit every stage of detection, treatment, and prevention.“The huge gains the world has made against TB over the past 20 years are now at risk as cuts to funding start to disrupt access to services...

A US judge has blocked drastic job cuts to the US Agency for International Development (USAID).On 18 March Judge Theodore Chuang of the US District Court for Maryland ruled that the moves—which effectively shut the agency—had probably violated the US constitution. The case was brought by more than 20 current and former USAID employees and contractors.The fired employees are not back at work but have been placed on paid administrative leave. The judge said the fast shutdown of the agency “deprived the public’s elected representatives in Congress of their constitutional authority to decide whether, when, and how to close down an agency” authorised by Congress.1The cuts were initiated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is headed by billionaire Elon Musk, adviser to President Donald Trump. Around 1600 of USAID’s US employees were fired and most of the rest were placed on administrative leave. USAID had about 13 000...

Liz Calhoun was halfway through her three year emergency physician training when she learnt from a text message that her hospital was closing in three months. She and the other 571 resident physicians at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia did not know how or where they would finish their training. In the end they didn’t have three months to figure it out: the training programme closed 30 days later.Hahnemann, located in the heart of the city, was a “safety net” hospital, meaning that its staff provided care to patients regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. At the time of its closure in 2019, Hahnemann made headlines as the model for what can go wrong when a profit driven private equity firm takes over a hospital. In the years since, several other hospitals bought by private equity firms have abruptly closed, leaving their communities’ health, economies, and resident...

New England Journal of Medicine, Ahead of Print.

by Juan Carlos Salgado, Lilia S. Pedraza, Alejandra Contreras-Manzano, Tania C. Aburto, Lizbeth Tolentino-Mayo, Simon Barquera

Background

In late March 2020, the Mexican government announced an updated norm to include front-of-pack warning labels for packaged foods and non-alcoholic beverages. Warning labels came into effect in October 2020. To avoid displaying warning labels, producers can reformulate their products by reducing the content of calories or critical nutrients targeted by the policy (added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium) or removing non-caloric sweeteners or added caffeine. The objective of this study is to assess changes in the percentage of products above warning-label cutoffs for calories and critical nutrients and changes in the content of calories and critical nutrients associated with warning labels in Mexico.

Methods and findings

We used nutritional panel data collected by the Mexican National Institute of Public Health from ≈1,000 top-purchased products, which represented ≥60% of the market share for each of the included food groups according to household purchases in the Nielsen Consumer Panel commercial dataset for Mexico in 2016. Nutritional panel data is available for three periods: 2016−2017, T0 (pre-policy); Jul–Sep 2020, T1 (post-warning-label announcement); and Feb–Apr 2021, T2 (post-warning-label implementation). We assessed changes in T1 versus T0 (potential anticipatory reformulation before the warning-label implementation) and T2 versus T0 (reformulation after the warning-label implementation) by food group using generalized estimating equations for the percentage of products above warning-label cutoffs or containing non-caloric sweeteners or added caffeine, and fixed-effects linear models and quantile regressions for the content of calories and critical nutrients. Included food groups were cereal-based desserts, bread and other cereals, salty snacks, sweetened beverages, solid dairy, liquid dairy, instant food, and candies. At T0, the food group level with the lowest percentage of products with at least one calorie/nutrient content above warning-label cutoffs was instant food (77.8%); at T2, this fell to 52.6%. Based on our statistical models, we found that all food groups showed reductions in at least one type of warning label. The most common reductions in the percentage of products exceeding warning-label cutoffs were for sodium (up to −63.1 percentage points for bread and other cereals; 95% CI: −77.5, −48.6; p-value < 0.001), saturated fat (up to −26.3 percentage points for salty snacks; 95% CI: −35.8, −16.8; p-value < 0.001), and products containing non-caloric sweeteners (up to −29.0 percentage points for solid dairy; 95% CI: −40.7, −17.2; p-value < 0.001). The reductions in products above warning-label cutoffs were coupled with reductions in products’ content of calories and critical nutrients. According to quantile regressions, these reductions mostly occurred at the 50th–75th percentiles. Product reformulation mainly occurred in T2.

Conclusion

Our findings show product reformulation due to reductions in critical nutrients/calories after the warning-label policy implementation, which entails improving the nutritional profile of the packaged food and beverage supply in Mexico.

“During medical school, I came across a professor who introduced me to research—up until that point, I was content with being an excellent clinician, but that was the moment when I realised that I was missing out on making a larger impact on the population at large”, recalls Assistant Professor Aliasgar Esmail, Pulmonologist at the Groote Schuur Hospital and Deputy Head of the Centre for Lung Infection and Immunity at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Lung Institute in South Africa. As one of two recipients of the 2024 Stephen Lawn TB-HIV Research Leadership Prize, Esmail felt “so overwhelmed and humbled” to have received the award.

“I think what I've really wanted to do since I was a teenager was work on HIV and TB, and conditions that affected people who were disproportionately poor and vulnerable. And research was a nice way into that, but—the purpose of what the research was for, that came before the methods, was justice and solidarity, and a conviction that everybody matters. That was really, genuinely important. That's how I ended up in public health”, says Rachael Burke, joint winner of the 2024 Stephen Lawn TB-HIV Research Leadership Prize.

As Justin Trudeau steps down after a decade as leader of Canada's ruling Liberal Party, Canadians face a pivotal moment. Although attention is focused on trade tariffs and souring relations with the USA, there are important health dimensions to Canada's political transition. Trudeau leaves behind a legacy of initiatives, including the Canada Child Benefit, climate change initiatives through the Pan-Canadian Framework, a National Housing Strategy, legalisation of cannabis, the Early Learning and Child Care plan, and the Canadian Dental Care Plan—which has already benefited 1·5 million Canadians—and passed a universal pharmacare plan to institute publicly funded coverage for medications.

The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021 on oral conditions represents a landmark moment for the community.1 For the first time, a comprehensive analysis of the global, regional, and national burden of oral diseases has been published in The Lancet. Previously confined to dental research journals, this broader platform underscores the increasing significance of oral diseases in global health.

President Subianto's ambitious plan of health checks for all is one of Indonesia's biggest ever health initiatives, but not everyone is convinced it will have the desired effect. Chris McCall reports.

Many Indians are exposed to silica dust, but experts and patients lament the lack of information and health services related to silicosis. Sophie Cousins reports from West Bengal.

Shirin Heidari, the Executive Director of GENDRO and Senior Researcher at the Gender Centre, Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, was born in Tehran 6 years before the 1979 Iranian revolution. Coming from a family with “many strong women as role models, and always a sense of activism”, the revolution, which “resulted in a regime oppressing women, men, as well as any dissidents, followed by political oppression and war”, left her with “a very strong distaste for injustice”, and a profound awareness, “very early on”, of the devastating impacts of “a lack of rights, and the lack of a justice system”.

As a clinician, educator, and emotion researcher, I have long believed that our efforts to optimise the wellbeing of health-care professionals are doomed if we cannot talk openly about the emotional and psychological experience of practising medicine. Hidden behind the more observable forms of distress we can measure, such as burnout, are unpleasant, complex, and entirely human experiences, such as feeling insecure or unlikeable, needing validation, experiencing shame or self-doubt, and wanting to feel loved and accepted.

The Sainsbury Centre is an art museum situated on the University of East Anglia campus near Norwich, UK. Its Living Area—a calm, expansive exhibition space in a hanger-like, purpose-built, Norman Foster designed building—hosts a diverse permanent art collection, including works by modern artists such as Francis Bacon and Henry Moore, alongside historical objects from across the globe. This impressive core collection was donated by British businessman, philanthropist, and supermarket heir Sir Robert Sainsbury and his wife Lady Lisa Sainsbury.

Science editor, journalist, author, and mentor. Born on Oct 9, 1940, in Rawene, New Zealand, he died in Eastbourne, UK, on Feb 10, 2025, aged 84 years.

Africa accounts for only 3% of all medicine production globally, and more than 90% of drugs and 99% of vaccines consumed are imported.1 The continent has not been well positioned to address these gaps due to capacity challenges related to limited research and development (R&D) infrastructure and skilled researchers, the absence of a well defined continental health research governance framework, and scarcity of sustainable financing for R&D.2 Moreover, there is inadequate local funding, and most research conducted on the continent is donor-driven and often not informed by national or regional priorities, underscoring the urgent need for research prioritisation, coordination, and governance.

Canada has joined the world's largest research and innovation programme (Horizon Europe), with its strong life science and technology focus and the launch of a policy dialogue to advance health priorities. Canada and the EU have taken steps towards transnational collaboration, which is paramount to successfully take on global challenges, such as cancer, antimicrobial resistance, health security, rare diseases, and non-communicable diseases.1,2 However, the proposed dialogue does not directly reference the crucial importance of health data access and exchange.