The ideas and innovators shaping health care
| | | | |  | | By Ruth Reader, Daniel Payne and Erin Schumaker | | | | | 
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has agreed to join a bill that would require social media platforms to protect kids. | Jonah Elkowitz for POLITICO | The pressure is building on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer now that he’s agreed to join more than 60 other senators in co-sponsoring legislation to impose federal regulations on social media to protect kids. Some 5,000 New York parents have sent him a letter telling him to bring the Kids Online Safety Act to the floor for a vote in April. In tandem, a coalition of 55 organizations took out an ad last week in The New York Times asking the same. Why it matters: The bill, by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), would require social media platforms to protect kids from online predators and from getting served content that promotes suicide, eating disorders, and ads for certain products like tobacco and alcohol. It would mandate tough default privacy settings for children’s accounts, give parents new tools to monitor their kids’ activity on the sites, and require online companies to ensure their products are designed in a way that doesn’t harm children. State of play: Following a January Judiciary Committee hearing at which senators grilled five big tech CEOs, momentum for the bill has grown. A throng of parents attending the hearing held up images of children who died because, they said, of a lack of protections online. Schumer is among 19 additional senators to co-sponsor the bill since January, bringing the total to 66. He said he’d work with Blumenthal and Blackburn to advance the bill but hasn’t said whether he’ll schedule a vote. The Senate Commerce Committee approved the bill last July. “It’s veto-proof — there’s no reason to wait to bring this to the floor,” said Shelby Knox, campaign director for advocacy organization ParentsTogether.
| | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Downtown Dallas is about to get friendlier. The city is launching an urban design contest to remake a public plaza called Thanks-Giving Square into a more welcoming and pedestrian-friendly space, Bloomberg reports. The goal: combating loneliness and divisiveness and promoting social interaction between community members. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  Health care workers delivering care might have the best ideas for improving their workplaces, a new study suggests. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images | The “bottom-up” approach to innovation — seeking advice on how to improve care from those delivering the care — holds promise for health care providers. That’s what researchers from UCLA, New York University and Stanford concluded as they followed a group of health workers who formed frontline innovation teams at federally qualified health centers. The teams were charged with improving the patient and provider experiences in the clinics. How so? Over 20 months, the researchers considered the barriers the teams encountered when trying to modernize their practices and the techniques they used to overcome the barriers. Though not all the team’s plans were implemented successfully, the researchers suggest the teams created an environment where new ideas could flow from the people best suited to improving their workplaces. The method has the potential to significantly improve the way health care is provided, they said. Sound familiar? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently offered a guide to hospital executives on how to fight burnout among their staff with similar advice: Engage your workers.
| | | |  President Joe Biden is still pushing for his cancer moonshot initiative, while Congress tightens the reins on health research spending. | Evan Vucci/AP | The Biden administration is trying to rally support for the president’s cancer moonshot, even as Congress has just decided to keep a tight rein on research funding in fiscal 2024. “Eliminating cancer as we know it is a goal that unifies the country,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said during an event at NASA headquarters last week. “We all know someone, and most of us love someone, who has battled this terrible disease. As we did during the race to the moon, we believe our technology and scientific community are capable of making the impossible a reality.” Non-health agencies like NASA are also stepping up to aid in Biden's effort. During the event, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson pointed to experiments by astronauts on the International Space Station that benefit cancer research and treatment, including protein crystal growth, nanoparticle drug delivery, tissue engineering and stem cell research. Even so: Congress just gave the National Institutes of Health, which leads the cancer moonshot, its tiniest budget increase in years, at less than 1 percent. State of play: That could make it harder to achieve the moonshot's ambitious goals, like reducing the cancer death rate by half over the next quarter century. While the U.S. has made big strides in cancer prevention and treatment over the past three decades, the disease remains America’s second leading cause of death. Bird’s-eye view: In his 2025 budget proposal this month, President Joe Biden requested $2.9 billion in moonshot money across the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes NIH. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
