Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Katelyn Richard, Ph.D. Candidate in Analytical Chemistry, Colorado State University

I have a health goal for the new year that doesn’t require me to get out of bed earlier or eat fewer cookies. I am an atmospheric chemist and will be committing to clean air at home.

People in the U.S. spend as much as 90% of their lives indoors. Overall, air pollution is responsible for approximately 135,000 premature deaths per year in the U.S. And levels of some chemicals can be two to five times higher in indoor air than outdoors.

Fortunately, there are some straightforward ways to improve your home’s air quality this year, in three major categories of activity.

Cooking

Cooking is a major source of indoor air pollution.

Not all chemicals that cooking produces are bad, but some react to form other chemicals that like to clump together to form particulate matter. When inhaled, these particles enter the lungs and can then pass into the bloodstream, increasing people’s risk of heart disease and decreasing lung function.

The amount of particulate matter produced from your cooking depends on the food type, oil used and cooking temperature. High-fat-content foods, such as cheese, pork and bacon, emit the most particles, especially when cooked at high temperatures. Sunflower oil produces the least amount of particulate matter, followed by vegetable oil and then olive oil.

Cooking with a gas stove produces more particulate matter than with an electric stove, and the gas stove also emits other hazardous chemicals such as nitrogen dioxide and benzene.

Two simple and effective measures to keep kitchen air clean and prevent particulate matter from spreading through the home are using your range hood fan and opening nearby windows while cooking. The suction will move harmful chemicals out of your home and away from your lungs, and the fresh air will dilute what remains.

Personal care

In large cities such as Los Angeles and New York City, there are enough volatile organic chemicals from consumer products – paints, adhesives and personal care products – in the outdoor air to rival those produced by traffic and industry. Many of those products are first used indoors before they escape outside.

Government regulations limit the amount of chemicals allowed in some kinds of consumer products, such as adhesives and construction materials, because of their contribution to smog, but personal care products that contain fragrances remain largely unregulated.

Many common options for shampoo, conditioner, mousse, body wash, deodorant, lotion, laundry detergent and dryer sheets contain fragrance mixes composed of several chemicals, with the sole purpose of providing a pleasant aroma to consumer products. Fragrances release volatile organic compounds such as limonene, linalool, galaxolide, eugenol and diethyl phthalate that can react to form particulate matter. In addition to health risks from particulate matter formation, strong fragrances can trigger headaches, difficulty breathing, skin irritation and other physical responses that warrant concern.

I’m not suggesting you be smelly or live an unscented life. But consider whether you could choose perhaps three products that have your very favorite scents, and for the others buy fragrance-free versions when you need to resupply. That would reduce the volatile organic compounds and the ensuing potential for particulate matter formation without really changing how you smell.

Cleaning

Cleaning your home can improve indoor air quality by temporarily reducing the amount of chemicals on surfaces that can find their way back into the air. For example, oleic acid from cooking, squalene from human skin and bisphenol A from hard plastics can remain on surfaces for years if undisturbed.

But there’s a caveat: Cleaners are made of strong chemicals, designed to disinfect, degrease and eliminate odors, that may do more harm for air quality than good. To that end, the healthiest option may be found by carefully choosing the right cleaner for the job. For less intensive tasks like dusting or cleaning crumbs off the counter, consider avoiding strong disinfectants like bleach, hydrogen peroxide and a category of chemicals called quaternary ammonium compounds that can often be found in disinfectants, hair products and fabric softeners.

However, if you are cleaning the bathroom or a forgotten, moldy leftovers container, you may prefer a stronger disinfecting product. Be aware that studies have found bleach cleaners can produce harmful chlorinated byproducts, such as chloroform and carbon tetrachloride, which are possible carcinogens and worth avoiding altogether.

Still, nearly all commercially available cleaning products contain volatile organic compounds – like limonene for citrus scent, lactic acid for limescale and bacteria removal, and 2-phenoxyethanol for product preservation – that will increase chemical and particulate matter concentrations in the immediate area.

In this case, dilution is key to limiting your exposure. Increase ventilation while using these products by running the bathroom fan, opening windows while you clean, and using only as much of a cleaning product as is really required to do the job.

Overall improvements

Opening windows is an effective and often overlooked solution to improve indoor air quality. Chemicals that may be harmful to you in a closed space, where they are more concentrated, become less harmful when they are diluted and spread throughout the massive outdoor atmosphere. But avoid opening windows when smog, ozone or wildfire smoke levels are high outside, which would create an opportunity for outdoor air pollution to come indoors.

Luckily, your city or your neighbors are likely collecting outdoor air quality data that is publicly available to you, so you can track whether to open your windows.

If air pollution is too high outside, an indoor air cleaner may be a better option. And you don’t have to shell out big bucks, either. Air quality engineers have shown that a homemade air cleaner using a box fan, four air filters and duct tape – all commonly available at hardware stores or online – can cost under $70 and be as effective at cleaning the air as factory-made appliances.

Overall, the best way to improve air quality is to put fewer harmful chemicals into the air in the first place. While scientists and policymakers can measure and regulate outdoor air quality, it’s up to us all to keep the air in our own homes clean and healthy.

Katelyn Richard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Live healthier in 2026 by breathing cleaner air at home – https://theconversation.com/live-healthier-in-2026-by-breathing-cleaner-air-at-home-271474

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Y. Tony Yang, Endowed Professor of Health Policy and Associate Dean, George Washington University

When federal health officials announced on Jan. 5, 2026, that they were taking six out of 17 vaccines off the childhood immunization schedule, they argued that the move would give parents and caregivers more choice.

Instead of all U.S. children routinely receiving them, these six vaccines are now optional – available to families who request them after consulting a clinician, through a process called shared clinical decision-making, officials said. All six – hepatitis A, hepatitis B, influenza, rotavirus, meningococcal disease and COVID-19 – will still be covered by federal programs such as Medicaid and the Vaccines for Children program, and by private insurers, at least through 2026.

I’m a health policy researcher and the co-author of the book “Vaccine Law and Policy.” I’ve spent years studying how vaccine laws and regulations affect uptake – and who gets left behind when policies change.

Shared decision-making sounds straightforward: a patient and their doctor putting their heads together to make an informed choice. But when applied to routine childhood vaccines, the concept shifts the burden of deliberation onto already-stretched clinicians and parents.

What is shared decision-making?

Shared decision-making is an approach doctors use when there’s genuinely more than one reasonable choice – say, weighing two cancer treatments with different side effects – and the “right” answer depends on what matters most to the patient. The idea is that doctor and patient talk it through together to help make the decision that feels right for that patient.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses this term for vaccines that aren’t automatically recommended for everyone but that might make sense for some people after a conversation with their doctor.

The key difference is what happens if no conversation takes place. For routine vaccines, the default is yes. Children get the shot unless there’s a medical reason not to. For shared clinical decision-making vaccines, there’s no default. If the conversation doesn’t happen, neither does the vaccine.

That distinction matters because the federal vaccine advisory committee has historically reserved shared decision-making for narrow situations. One example is the HPV vaccine for adults 27 to 45. Most people in that age group have already been exposed to HPV, so the vaccine helps some individuals but won’t change infection rates overall. In that case, a conversation with your doctor makes sense: The benefit depends on your personal circumstances.

Childhood vaccines against rotavirus and hepatitis B are different. They’re not for a small subset of people who might benefit – they prevent tens of thousands of hospitalizations a year.

When a vaccine is routine, it pops up as an alert in a child’s medical records and becomes part of the clinic’s standard workflow. The nurse draws it up, the doctor gives a heads-up to the parent, and the shot happens before the family leaves. Parents and other caregivers typically encounter it as part of normal pediatric care rather than as a separate decision to weigh.

That’s important because even in well-resourced practices, pediatricians already have limited time to cover many priorities – growth, feeding, sleep, development, safety and any questions the family may have. For lower-income families, who often face even shorter appointments and have fewer options for follow-up visits, that limitation can get magnified.

Studies have found that many low-income families do not receive all recommended care, in part because their time with the doctor during routine visits is so short.

What this looks like for a family coming in for a checkup

Even before this policy change, lower-income children in the U.S. were falling behind on vaccines. From 2011 to 2021, kids in higher-income families got more of their shots on time, while kids in lower-income families didn’t keep pace – and that gap kept widening.

Here’s how the new policy could make things harder:

A mother brings her 2-month-old to a clinic that serves mostly low-income families – the kind of practice that sees 25 or 30 kids a day for well-child visits. Under the old schedule, the visit runs on rails: The nurse pulls up the baby’s chart, sees that six vaccines are due, draws them up, and the doctor gives them during the exam. By the time Mom is buckling the car seat, the shots are done. The whole vaccine portion takes a few minutes.

Under the new policy, two of those vaccines – rotavirus and hepatitis B – are no longer automatic. Now, the doctor has to stop and have a conversation to explain what rotavirus and hepatitis B are, walk through the risks and benefits of each vaccine and ask what the parent wants to do.

That’s fine if there’s time. But this visit is 15 minutes long, and the doctor still has to check the baby’s growth, ask about their feeding and sleep habits and make sure development is on track. If the mother has questions or feels unsure, the clinic might ask her to come back or wait for a phone call. But she took two hours off her shift to get here and she doesn’t have paid leave. There may not be a next visit.

Now multiply that by every baby on the schedule that day. And this is just the 2-month visit. The same thing will happen at other ages when other vaccines that moved out of the “routine” category come due. Something has to give. Often, it’s the vaccines that no longer happen automatically.

Why more ‘choice’ can mean less access

Talking with families about vaccines already takes time. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, more than half of pediatricians report spending from 10 to 19 minutes counseling parents about vaccines, and nearly 1 in 10 spend more than 20 minutes – often several times per day.

Shared decision-making takes even longer. When vaccines are routine, the system does most of the work. When they require shared decision-making, that work lands on the doctor and parent in an already-packed appointment. The doctor must walk through the disease and the vaccine’s benefits and risks, ask what concerns the parent has, make sure they understand, and then document the whole conversation.

That’s one more barrier to vaccination, and one that won’t fall evenly. Getting medical care can take more time for families with fewer resources. When a policy change adds steps, those families feel it most.

The data might end up showing that some parents “chose” not to vaccinate. But for many families, it won’t really be a choice – it will be a reflection of who had time to come back, and who didn’t.

Y. Tony Yang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Shared decision-making’ for childhood vaccines sounds empowering – but it may mean less access for families already stretched thin – https://theconversation.com/shared-decision-making-for-childhood-vaccines-sounds-empowering-but-it-may-mean-less-access-for-families-already-stretched-thin-272815

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Cristina Palacios, Professor and Chair of Dietetics and Nutrition, Florida International University

Every five years, the U.S. government releases an updated set of recommendations on healthy eating. This document, called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, has served as the cornerstone of nutrition policy for almost half a century.

On Jan. 7, 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture released the 2025-2030 edition of the guidelines. The updated guidelines recommend that people consume more protein and fat, and less ultraprocessed foods.

These guidelines are the foundation for governmental nutritional programs – for example, they are used to determine which foods are covered by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as well as how school lunches are prepared. Eldercare centers and child care centers use them when providing meals, as do clinical nutritionists working with patients to help them achieve a healthy diet. And because the guidelines are so scientifically rigorous, many countries around the world base their own nutritional guidelines on them.

I’m a nutrition scientist specializing in developing interventions for preventing obesity. Between 2022 and 2024 I served on the scientific advisory committee tasked with assessing the best available evidence on a wide range of topics in nutrition in order to inform federal officials in updating the guidelines.

But most of the committee’s recommendations were ignored in developing the latest dietary guidelines.

On the surface, these guidelines share a lot of similarities with the previous version, published in 2020, but they also have a few important differences. In my view, the process followed was different from the norm.

How are the Dietary Guidelines for Americans developed?

For each update, HHS and USDA establish a scientific advisory committee like the one I served on. Members with expertise in different aspects of nutrition are carefully selected and vetted. They then spend two years reviewing the latest scientific studies to assess evidence about specific nutrition-related questions – such as the relationship between saturated fats in foods and cardiovascular disease and what strategies are most effective for weight management.

For each question, the committee first prepares a protocol to answer it, identifies the most rigorous studies and synthesizes its findings, discussing the evidence extensively. It then produces specific recommendations about the topic for the HHS and USDA. At each step, the public and the scientific community are invited to provide comments, which the committee considers.

All this scientific information is put together in a massive report, which the federal agencies then use to create the updated guidelines, translating the expert recommendations for the public and health professionals.

A departure from the norm

The advisory committee I served on functioned as usual – our report was published in December 2024.

But the dietary guidelines released on Jan. 7 were mainly not based on that report. Instead, they were based on a different scientific report that was also published on Jan. 7. That report drew some material from ours but went through a completely different process.

It was created by a group of people who were not vetted in the usual way, and although they repeated some of the same questions we did, they also explored other topics that were chosen with no input from the wider community of nutrition researchers or from the public. It was not based on a publicly available protocol, with no input from the scientific community, and it’s unclear how and to what degree it was peer-reviewed.

The updated dietary guidelines were developed through a different process compared with the established methodology that’s been used to assess nutrition science behind the guidelines for many years.

What’s new in the 2025-2030 guidelines

Many of the recommendations in the 2020 guidelines and the ones released on Jan. 7 are broadly the same: that Americans should consume three servings of vegetables, two servings of fruits and three servings of dairy products per day, as well as replacing refined grains with whole grains, and limiting intake of sugar and sodium.

The main differences relate to recommendations about protein and dairy products.

The 2020 guidelines recommended that Americans focus on protein such as poultry and other lean meats, seafood, eggs, legumes, nuts and seeds. The updated version instead emphasizes eating protein at every meal from different protein sources – not specifically lean ones.

The most recent guidelines also recommend a higher amount of protein – specifically 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, up from 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight recommended in the Dietary Reference Intakes for the U.S, the official guidelines for nutrient recommendations. Recommending a higher protein intake goes beyond the mission of the dietary guidelines.

Also, the updated dietary guidelines now recommend full-fat dairy products, rather than low-fat ones as they did previously. But in my view, this recommendation isn’t practical, because it doesn’t raise the level of recommended saturated fat, which remains at 10%. To understand how this would work in practice, I roughly translated these recommendations into a typical menu based on my weight and calorie requirements. These changes would raise my saturated fat consumption well above this limit, so the messages are inconsistent.

Naming ultraprocessed foods

Another difference is that the new recommendations specifically call out avoiding ultraprocessed foods. The previous guidelines did not explicitly name ultraprocessed foods but instead recommended consuming nutrient-dense foods, which means foods that have a lot of nutrients while also having relatively few calories. That is, in essence, less processed or whole foods.

Food scientists still lack a solid definition of ultraprocessed foods. Our committee actually spent a long time discussing this, and the Food and Drug Administration is currently working on creating a clear definition of the term that can guide research and policy.

Also, solid research on ultraprocessed foods has been limited. Most studies available for our review took a snapshot of people’s eating habits but didn’t track their effects over a long time or compare groups in randomized controlled trials, the gold-standard research method.

That’s changing, however. The committee did its assessment two years ago, but evidence linking ultraprocessed foods to chronic diseases is getting stronger.

Can Americans trust the science behind the 2025-2030 guidelines?

In my view, some of the changes in the 2025-2030 guidelines, such as limiting ultraprocessed foods, are beneficial. But the problem is that it’s not possible to determine whether the necessary scientific rigor was applied in developing them.

Much of the research on saturated fat consumption is still unsettled and controversial. That’s why it’s important to have a systematic and transparent process for evaluating the research, with input from experts with multiple perspectives who review the entire body of research published about a particular topic.

If you don’t do it properly, you can select the evidence that you prefer. That makes it easy for bias to creep in.

This article was updated to more accurately reflect the author’s views.

Cristina Palacios has received funding from NIH, USDA, RCMI and RTRN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Children’s Trust, Caplan Foundation, and National Dairy Council for various research projects. She was part of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee from 2022-2024. She has also been a consultant for the World Health Organization in several of their guidelines. Currently, she is part of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Latin American Dairy Nutrition Congress.

– ref. New US dietary guidelines recommend more protein and whole milk, less ultraprocessed foods – https://theconversation.com/new-us-dietary-guidelines-recommend-more-protein-and-whole-milk-less-ultraprocessed-foods-272990

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ben Jones, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State

Minneapolis is once again the focus of debates about violence involving law enforcement after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother, in her car.

The incident quickly prompted dueling narratives. Trump administration officials defended the shooting as justified, while local officials condemned it.

The shooting will also likely prompt renewed scrutiny of training and policy of officers and the question of them shooting at moving vehicles. There has been a recent trend in law enforcement toward policies that prohibit such shootings. It is a policy shift that has shown promise in saving lives.

Decades ago, the New York City Police Department prohibited its officers from shooting at moving vehicles. That led to a drop in police killings without putting officers in greater danger.

Debates over deadly force are often contentious, but as I note in my research on police ethics and policy, for the most part there is consensus on one point: Policing should reflect a commitment to valuing human life and prioritizing its protection. Many use-of-force policies adopted by police departments endorse that principle.

Yet, as in Minneapolis, controversial law enforcement killings continue to occur. Not all agencies have implemented prohibitions on shooting at vehicles. Even in agencies that have, some policies are weak or ambiguous.

In addition, explicit prohibitions on shooting at vehicles are largely absent from the law, which means that officers responsible for fatal shootings of drivers that appear to violate departmental policies still often escape criminal penalties.

In the case of ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, its policy on shooting at moving vehicles – unlike that of many police agencies – lacks a clear instruction for officers to get out of the way of moving vehicles where feasible. It’s an omission at odds with generally recognized best practices in policing.

ICE’s policy on shooting at moving vehicles

ICE’s current use-of-force policy prohibits its officers from “discharging firearms at the operator of a moving vehicle” unless it is necessary to stop a grave threat. The policy is explicit that deadly force should not be used “solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.”

That point is relevant for evaluating the fatal shooting in Minneapolis. Videos show one officer trying to open the door of the vehicle that Good was driving, while another officer appears to be in front of the vehicle as she tried to pull away.

Shooting to prevent the driver simply from getting away would have been in violation of agency policy and obviously inconsistent with prioritizing the protection of life.

ICE’s policy lacks clear instruction, however, for its officers to get out of the way of moving vehicles where feasible. In contrast, the Department of Justice’s use-of-force policy makes it explicit that officers should not shoot at a vehicle if they can protect themselves by “moving out of the path of the vehicle.”

Notably, President Joe Biden issued an executive order in 2022 requiring federal law enforcement agencies – like ICE – to adopt use-of-force policies “that are equivalent to, or exceed, the requirements” of the Department of Justice’s policy.

Despite that order, the provision to step out of the way of moving cars never made it into the use-of-force policy that applies to ICE.

The rationale for not shooting at moving vehicles

Prioritizing the protection of life doesn’t rule out deadly force. Sometimes such force is necessary to protect lives from a grave threat, such as an active shooter. But it does rule out using deadly force when less harmful tactics can stop a threat. In such cases, deadly force is unnecessary – a key consideration in law and ethics that can render force unjustified.

That’s the concern involved with police shooting at moving vehicles. It often is not necessary because officers have a less harmful option to avoid a moving vehicle’s threat: stepping out of the way.

This guidance has the safety of both suspects and police in mind. Obviously, police not shooting lowers the risk of harm to the suspect. But it also lowers the risk to the officer in the vast majority of cases because of the laws of physics. If you shoot the driver of a car barreling toward you, that rarely brings a car to an immediate stop, and the vehicle often continues on its path.

Many police departments have incorporated these insights into their policies. A recent analysis of police department policies in the 100 largest U.S. cities found that close to three-quarters of them have prohibitions against shooting at moving vehicles.

The gap between policy and best practices for protecting life

The shooting in Minneapolis serves as a stark reminder of the stubborn gap that often persists between law and policy on the one hand and best law enforcement practices for protecting life on the other. When steps are taken to close that gap, however, they can have a meaningful impact.

Some of the most compelling examples involve local, state and federal measures that reinforce one another. Consider the “fleeing felon rule,” which used to allow police to shoot a fleeing felony suspect to prevent their escape even when the suspect posed no danger to others.

That rule was at odds with the doctrine of prioritizing the protection of life, leading some departments to revise their use-of-force policies and some states to ban the rule. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional for police to shoot a fleeing suspect who was not a danger.

Banning that questionable tactic notably led to a reduction in killings by police.

This history suggests that clear bans in law and policy on questionable tactics have the potential to save lives, while also strengthening the means for holding officers accountable.

Ben Jones does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ICE killing of driver in Minneapolis involved tactics many police departments warn against − but not ICE itself – https://theconversation.com/ice-killing-of-driver-in-minneapolis-involved-tactics-many-police-departments-warn-against-but-not-ice-itself-271907

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Cristina Palacios, Professor and Chair of Dietetics and Nutrition, Florida International University

Every five years, the U.S. government releases an updated set of recommendations on healthy eating. This document, called the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, has served as the cornerstone of nutrition policy for almost half a century.

On Jan. 7, 2026, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture released the 2025-2030 edition of the guidelines. The updated guidelines recommend that people consume more protein and fat, and less ultraprocessed foods.

These guidelines are the foundation for governmental nutritional programs – for example, they are used to determine which foods are covered by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as well as how school lunches are prepared. Eldercare centers and child care centers use them when providing meals, as do clinical nutritionists working with patients to help them achieve a healthy diet. And because the guidelines are so scientifically rigorous, many countries around the world base their own nutritional guidelines on them.

I’m a nutrition scientist specializing in developing interventions for preventing obesity. Between 2022 and 2024 I served on the scientific advisory committee tasked with assessing the best available evidence on a wide range of topics in nutrition in order to inform federal officials in updating the guidelines.

But most of the committee’s recommendations were ignored in developing the latest dietary guidelines.

On the surface, these guidelines share a lot of similarities with the previous version, published in 2020, but they also have a few important differences. In my view, however, irregularities in the process the government followed raise questions about the guidfelines’ final conclusions.

How are the Dietary Guidelines for Americans developed?

For each update, HHS and USDA establish a scientific advisory committee like the one I served on. Members with expertise in different aspects of nutrition are carefully selected and vetted. They then spend two years reviewing the latest scientific studies to assess evidence about specific nutrition-related questions – such as the relationship between saturated fats in foods and cardiovascular disease and what strategies are most effective for weight management.

For each question, the committee first prepares a protocol to answer it, identifies the most rigorous studies and synthesizes its findings, discussing the evidence extensively. It then produces specific recommendations about the topic for the HHS and USDA. At each step, the public and the scientific community are invited to provide comments, which the committee considers.

All this scientific information is put together in a massive report, which the federal agencies then use to create the updated guidelines, translating the expert recommendations for the public and health professionals.

A departure from the norm

The advisory committee I served on functioned as usual – our report was published in December 2024.

But the dietary guidelines released on Jan. 7 were mainly not based on that report. Instead, they were based on a different scientific report that was also published on Jan. 7. That report drew some material from ours but went through a completely different process.

It was created by a group of people who were not vetted in the usual way, and although they repeated some of the same questions we did, they also explored other topics that were chosen with no input from the wider community of nutrition researchers or from the public. It was not based on a publicly available protocol, with no input from the scientific community, and it’s unclear how and to what degree it was peer-reviewed.

Essentially, the updated dietary guidelines were developed through a shadow process that bypassed the established methodology that’s been used to assess nutrition science behind the guidelines for many years.

What’s new in the 2025-2030 guidelines

Many of the recommendations in the 2020 guidelines and the ones released on Jan. 7 are broadly the same: that Americans should consume three servings of vegetables, two servings of fruits and three servings of dairy products per day, as well as replacing refined grains with whole grains, and limiting intake of sugar and sodium.

The main differences relate to recommendations about protein and dairy products.

The 2020 guidelines recommended that Americans focus on protein such as poultry and other lean meats, seafood, eggs, legumes, nuts and seeds. The updated version instead emphasizes eating protein at every meal from different protein sources – not specifically lean ones.

The most recent guidelines also recommend a higher amount of protein – specifically 1.2 to 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, up from 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight recommended in the Dietary Reference Intakes for the U.S, the official guidelines for nutrient recommendations. Recommending a higher protein intake goes beyond the mission of the dietary guidelines.

Also, the updated dietary guidelines now recommend full-fat dairy products, rather than low-fat ones as they did previously. But in my view, this recommendation isn’t practical, because it doesn’t raise the level of recommended saturated fat, which remains at 10%. To understand how this would work in practice, I roughly translated these recommendations into a typical menu based on my weight and calorie requirements. These changes would raise my saturated fat consumption well above this limit, so the messages are inconsistent.

Naming ultraprocessed foods

Another difference is that the new recommendations specifically call out avoiding ultraprocessed foods. The previous guidelines did not explicitly name ultraprocessed foods but instead recommended consuming nutrient-dense foods, which means foods that have a lot of nutrients while also having relatively few calories. That is, in essence, less processed or whole foods.

Food scientists still lack a solid definition of ultraprocessed foods. Our committee actually spent a long time discussing this, and the Food and Drug Administration is currently working on creating a clear definition of the term that can guide research and policy.

Also, solid research on ultraprocessed foods has been limited. Most studies available for our review took a snapshot of people’s eating habits but didn’t track their effects over a long time or compare groups in randomized controlled trials, the gold-standard research method.

That’s changing, however. The committee did its assessment two years ago, but evidence linking ultraprocessed foods to chronic diseases is getting stronger.

Can Americans trust the science behind the 2025-2030 guidelines?

In my view, some of the changes in the 2025-2030 guidelines, such as limiting ultraprocessed foods, are beneficial. But the problem is that it’s not possible to determine whether the necessary scientific rigor was applied in developing them.

Much of the research on saturated fat consumption is still unsettled and controversial. That’s why it’s important to have a systematic and transparent process for evaluating the research, with input from experts with multiple perspectives who review the entire body of research published about a particular topic.

If you don’t do it properly, you can select the evidence that you prefer. That makes it easy for bias to creep in.

Cristina Palacios has received funding from NIH, USDA, RCMI and RTRN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Children’s Trust, Caplan Foundation, and National Dairy Council for various research projects. She was part of the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee from 2022-2024. She has also been a consultant for the World Health Organization in several of their guidelines. Currently, she is part of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Latin American Dairy Nutrition Congress.

– ref. I served on the expert committee that advised the government on new dietary guidelines – most of our recommendations were ignored – https://theconversation.com/i-served-on-the-expert-committee-that-advised-the-government-on-new-dietary-guidelines-most-of-our-recommendations-were-ignored-272990

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alejandro N. Flores, Associate Professor of Geoscience, Boise State University

Much of the western U.S. has started 2026 in the midst of a snow drought. That might sound surprising, given the record precipitation from atmospheric rivers hitting the region in recent weeks, but those storms were actually part of the problem.

To understand this year’s snow drought – and why conditions like this are a growing concern for western water supplies – let’s look at what a snow drought is and what happened when atmospheric river storms arrived in December.

What is a snow drought?

Typically, hydrologists like me measure the snowpack by the amount of water it contains. When the snowpack’s water content is low compared with historical conditions, you’re looking at a snow drought.

A snow drought can delayed ski slope opening dates and cause poor early winter recreation conditions.

It can also create water supply problems the following summer. The West’s mountain snowpack has historically been a dependable natural reservoir of water, providing fresh water to downstream farms, orchards and cities as it slowly melts. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that up to 75% of the region’s annual water supply depends on snowmelt.

Snow drought is different from other types of drought because its defining characteristic is lack of water in a specific form – snow – but not necessarily the lack of water, per se. A region can be in a snow drought during times of normal or even above-normal precipitation if temperatures are warm enough that precipitation falls as rain when snow would normally be expected.

This form of snow drought – known as a warm snow drought – is becoming more prevalent as the climate warms, and it’s what parts of the West have been seeing so far this winter.

How an atmospheric river worsened the snow drought

Washington state saw the risks in early December 2025 when a major atmospheric river storm dumped record precipitation in parts of the Pacific Northwest. Up to 24 inches fell in the Cascade Mountains between Dec. 1 and Dec. 15. The Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Oceanographic Institute documented reports of flooding, landslides and damage to several highways that could take months to repair. Five stream gauges in the region reached record flood levels, and 16 others exceeded “major flood” status.

Yet, the storm paradoxically left the region’s water supplies worse off in its wake.

The reason was the double-whammy nature of the event: a large, mostly rainstorm occurring against the backdrop of an uncharacteristically warm autumn across the western U.S.

Atmospheric rivers act like a conveyor belt, carrying water from warm, tropical regions. The December storm and the region’s warm temperatures conspired to produce a large rainfall event, with snow mostly limited to areas above 9,000 feet in elevation, according to data from the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes.

The rainfall melted a significant amount of snow in mountain watersheds, which contributed to the flooding in Washington state. The melting also decreased the amount of water stored in the snowpack by about 50% in the Yakima River Basin over the course of that event.

As global temperatures rise, forecasters expect to see more precipitation falling as rain in the late fall and early spring rather than snow compared with the past. This rain can melt existing snow, contributing to snow drought as well as flooding and landslides.

What’s ahead

Fortunately, it’s still early in the 2026 winter season. The West’s major snow accumulation months are generally from now until March, and the western snowpack could recover.

More snow has since fallen in the Yakima River Basin, which has made up the snow water storage it lost during the December storm, although it was still well below historical norms in early January 2026.

Scientists and water resource managers are working on ways to better predict snow drought and its effects several weeks to months ahead. Researchers are also seeking to better understand how individual storms produce rain and snow so that we can improve snowpack forecasting – a theme of recent work by my research group.

As temperatures warm and snow droughts become more common, this research will be essential to help water resources managers, winter sports industries and everyone else who relies on snow to prepare for the future.

Alejandro N. Flores receives funding from the National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, NASA, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Henry’s Fork Foundation.

– ref. The western US is in a snow drought, and storms have been making it worse – https://theconversation.com/the-western-us-is-in-a-snow-drought-and-storms-have-been-making-it-worse-272549

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Anna Storti, Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies and Asian American Studies, Duke University

The Department of Homeland Security in September 2025 said that 2 million undocumented immigrants had been forced out of the United States since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Through its use of the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law from 1798, the Trump administration has bypassed immigration courts and the right to due process to more easily detain and deport immigrants.

The Trump administration has, in part, reached these numbers by arresting immigrants in courthouses and at their workplaces. It has also conducted raids in schools, hospitals and places of worship.

And the Supreme Court in September, in its Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo decision, lifted a federal court order that barred agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement from racially profiling suspected undocumented immigrants. For now, ICE agents can use race, ethnicity, language and occupation as grounds for stopping and questioning people.

This form of targeting has disproportionately affected Latino communities, which represent 9 in 10 ICE arrests, according to a UCLA study published in October.

Targeting immigrants is a centuries-old American practice. In particular, Asian Americans have drawn parallels between the attacks on Latinos today and the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Notably, the passage of the War Brides Act, passed just three months after the end of WWII, in December 1945, broke with the nation’s centuries-long practice of exclusionary immigration policy. The act allowed American servicemen to bring their non-American spouses and children to the United States. The measure seemed to inaugurate a new era of inclusive immigration policy.

As a feminist studies scholar and author, I know the War Brides Act forever altered the nation’s racial demographics, increasing both Asian migration to the U.S. and the birth of biracial children.

On the 80th anniversary of the War Brides Act, I’ve also noticed an alarming contradiction: Although America may be more multiracial than ever before, the U.S. immigration system remains as exclusive as it has ever been.

Exclusionary immigration policy

The racial profiling of Latino people by ICE agents today is not unlike what took place during World War II in the U.S.

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the forced removal of anyone deemed to be a national security threat. Anyone, that is, who was Japanese. From 1942 to 1945, the U.S. government incarcerated approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps.

To determine who was a national security threat, the government used overt racial profiling. Similar to today, when the U.S. government often misidentifies Latino Americans as noncitizens, a majority of the Japanese people incarcerated in WWII were U.S. citizens.

Amid the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants, it’s worth recalling the exclusionary origins of U.S. immigration policy.

The first restrictive immigration law in the U.S., the Page Act of 1875, barred Chinese women from entering the country. The assumption the law was based on was that all Chinese women were immoral and worked in the sex trade.

The Page Act laid the groundwork for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned all Chinese immigration into the U.S. for 10 years. This was the first federal law to ban an entire ethnic group, launching an era of legalized and targeted exclusion.

With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, the U.S. created its first border control service, which enforced new immigration restrictions. It also implemented a quota system, which banned or limited the number of immigrants from specific regions, including Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe.

The act stemmed from nativism – the policy that protects the interests of native-born residents against those of immigrants – and a desire to preserve American homogeneity.

The 1945 War Brides Act largely diverged from these previous measures, helping to dismantle the Asian exclusion made commonplace in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From 1945 until 1948, when the War Brides Act expired, more than 300,000 people entered the country as nonquota immigrants, people from countries not subject to federal immigration restrictions.

Exclusionary tendencies

Decades later, in 1965, the U.S. formally abolished the quota system. America opened its doors to those who President Lyndon B. Johnson deemed most able to contribute to the nation’s growth, particularly skilled professionals.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 eliminated racial exclusion. As a result, the U.S. population diversified. Immigrants deepened the multiracialism initiated by the War Brides Act.

This trend increased later in the 1960s when the Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, overturned anti-miscegenation laws, which criminalized marriage between people of different races. The justices ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violated the 14th Amendment.

Multiracialism further increased after the Vietnam War. Subsequent legislation such as the 1987 Amerasian Homecoming Act facilitated the entry of biracial children born in Vietnam and fathered by a U.S. citizen.

By the 1960s, however, exclusion was taking on a different shape.

After 1965, immigration policy initiated a preference system that prioritized skilled workers and relatives of U.S. citizens. Quotas related to race and national origin were abolished. Nonetheless, preferences for families and professionals excluded people from Latin America.

For the first time, immigration from the Western Hemisphere was limited. This directly affected migrant workers in the farming and agricultural industries, many of whom were Latino.

Recalling the War Brides Act allows Americans to better comprehend the fiction that undergirds the U.S. immigration system: that immigration policy’s preference for certain immigrants is enough to justify the discriminatory policies which deem some families more valuable than others.

Anna Storti has received funding from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the McNair Scholars Program.

– ref. Racial profiling by ICE agents mirrors the targeting of Japanese Americans during World War II – https://theconversation.com/racial-profiling-by-ice-agents-mirrors-the-targeting-of-japanese-americans-during-world-war-ii-271612

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alejandro N. Flores, Associate Professor of Geoscience, Boise State University

Much of the western U.S. has started 2026 in the midst of a snow drought. That might sound surprising, given the record precipitation from atmospheric rivers hitting the region in recent weeks, but those storms were actually part of the problem.

To understand this year’s snow drought – and why conditions like this are a growing concern for western water supplies – let’s look at what a snow drought is and what happened when atmospheric river storms arrived in December.

What is a snow drought?

Typically, hydrologists like me measure the snowpack by the amount of water it contains. When the snowpack’s water content is low compared with historical conditions, you’re looking at a snow drought.

A snow drought can delayed ski slope opening dates and cause poor early winter recreation conditions.

It can also create water supply problems the following summer. The West’s mountain snowpack has historically been a dependable natural reservoir of water, providing fresh water to downstream farms, orchards and cities as it slowly melts. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that up to 75% of the region’s annual water supply depends on snowmelt.

Snow drought is different from other types of drought because its defining characteristic is lack of water in a specific form – snow – but not necessarily the lack of water, per se. A region can be in a snow drought during times of normal or even above-normal precipitation if temperatures are warm enough that precipitation falls as rain when snow would normally be expected.

This form of snow drought – known as a warm snow drought – is becoming more prevalent as the climate warms, and it’s what parts of the West have been seeing so far this winter.

How an atmospheric river worsened the snow drought

Washington state saw the risks in early December 2025 when a major atmospheric river storm dumped record precipitation in parts of the Pacific Northwest. Up to 24 inches fell in the Cascade Mountains between Dec. 1 and Dec. 15. The Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Oceanographic Institute documented reports of flooding, landslides and damage to several highways that could take months to repair. Five stream gauges in the region reached record flood levels, and 16 others exceeded “major flood” status.

Yet, the storm paradoxically left the region’s water supplies worse off in its wake.

The reason was the double-whammy nature of the event: a large, mostly rainstorm occurring against the backdrop of an uncharacteristically warm autumn across the western U.S.

Atmospheric rivers act like a conveyor belt, carrying water from warm, tropical regions. The December storm and the region’s warm temperatures conspired to produce a large rainfall event, with snow mostly limited to areas above 9,000 feet in elevation, according to data from the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes.

The rainfall melted a significant amount of snow in mountain watersheds, which contributed to the flooding in Washington state. The melting also decreased the amount of water stored in the snowpack by about 50% in the Yakima River Basin over the course of that event.

As global temperatures rise, forecasters expect to see more precipitation falling as rain in the late fall and early spring rather than snow compared with the past. This rain can melt existing snow, contributing to snow drought as well as flooding and landslides.

What’s ahead

Fortunately, it’s still early in the 2026 winter season. The West’s major snow accumulation months are generally from now until March, and the western snowpack could recover.

More snow has since fallen in the Yakima River Basin, which has made up the snow water storage it lost during the December storm, although it was still well below historical norms in early January 2026.

Scientists and water resource managers are working on ways to better predict snow drought and its effects several weeks to months ahead. Researchers are also seeking to better understand how individual storms produce rain and snow so that we can improve snowpack forecasting – a theme of recent work by my research group.

As temperatures warm and snow droughts become more common, this research will be essential to help water resources managers, winter sports industries and everyone else who relies on snow to prepare for the future.

Alejandro N. Flores receives funding from the National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, NASA, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Henry’s Fork Foundation.

– ref. The western US is in a snow drought – here’s how a storm made it worse – https://theconversation.com/the-western-us-is-in-a-snow-drought-heres-how-a-storm-made-it-worse-272549

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Valerie L. Myers, Organizational Psychologist and Lecturer in Management and Organizations, University of Michigan

Digital disruption and the climate crisis are often framed as economic or social challenges. But they force crucial moral questions. Who will be held accountable for the human cost? What will it take to transform business culture so that those costs are not treated as inevitable and acceptable?

In my view, the answers will shape not only technology’s impact on humanity and the planet but the moral foundations of democracy itself.

As a management professor who studies the calling ethic – the idea that work can be guided by principles and moral duty – I think this moment is best understood as a contest between two recurring leadership patterns.

One pattern rationalizes exploitation and disguises harm as the price of progress. Drawing on Yale law professor James Whitman’s use of the phrase “moral menace,” I use it here to name this recurring force.

In contrast, some leaders show how it’s possible to pursue principles and profits together. I call such people “moral muses”: leaders whose care and fairness promote flourishing.

The contrast is stark: Menaces dominate. Muses cultivate.

I contend the menace often wins not because it’s right, but because its practices have hardened into management orthodoxy about how to treat people. Yet its dominance can be disrupted by tracing the menace’s ancient roots and, like muses throughout history, learning how to tame it.

The menace: Normalized callousness

The menace isn’t just about greed. It’s a system of cruelty rooted in ancient Roman property law, in which wives, children, enslaved people and animals were treated as possessions and subject to abuses, including violence at the owner’s will. Whitman traces how this legal foundation evolved into a broader moral menace that became a durable template in Western capitalism that was repeatedly reproduced.

Building on that concept, I would argue that the menace adapted and became normalized in business management – from institutional alliances to empire, to everyday practices.

A pivotal development in institutionalized commercial cruelty began in the 15th century, when papal decrees gave religious sanction to menacing conquests – campaigns of land seizure, enslavement and labor theft. Contemporary accounts speak to the cruelty and exploitation that were pillars of economies of the time.

By the 17th century, Dutch traders outpaced their Spanish rivals in turning menace into efficiency. The richest 1% sent sailors on deadly voyages to amass fortunes, while leaving their fellow citizens among the poorest in Europe. Researchers studying this period, sometimes known as the Dutch Golden Age, wrote, “We did not expect to find the ‘pioneers of capitalism’ in the cradle of civil society to have been so stingy.”

Abroad, traders pioneered accounting, logistics and labor-control methods that maximized profit by brutalizing enslaved workers. Historian Caitlin Rosenthal shows how plantation owners refined these methods, the British perfected them, and Americans institutionalized them.

Once normalized, inhumanity – recast as efficiency – arguably became the defining logic of modern management: extracting ever more output to enrich owners, regardless of the human toll. Financial journalists have called this the “dark side of efficiency.” Yet the menace has a cultural halo: Popular TV series like “Billions” and “Yellowstone” valorize exploitation, dominance and dark tetrad tendencies like Machiavellianism.

Studies show that this celebrated style produces lackluster results. Is it any wonder that only 31% of employees report feeling engaged at work?

Even so, the menace has never gone unchallenged. At every stage of its advance, muses have resisted – insisting that fairness and care prevail.

The muse: Transforming institutions of menace

Throughout history, muses have done more than resist the menace; they’ve sought to transform the very institutions that sustained it. Driven by principle, their disruptive actions bent institutions toward more humane and ethical practices – even as the menace adapted to survive.

One early muse-like figure is Martin Luther, who in 1524 sparked a revolution by challenging the church’s influence on commerce. In “Trade and Usury” he condemned “unneighborly” and deceptive business practices, insisting that trade must be guided by law and conscience rather than greed. (In time, of course, Protestants themselves used religion to justify slavery and domination – a reminder that the menace reinvents itself when challenged.)

In the 18th century, American founder and businessman Gouverneur Morris advanced the muse struggle by reimagining power in the new nation. At the Constitutional Convention, he warned that “the rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest” unless restrained by law. He enshrined limits on elite domination and elevated civic principles in the preamble to the Constitution: justice, union, tranquility and general welfare. Over the centuries, other business and policy leaders advanced the ethic.

More recently, Marriott International illustrates how profitable firms operate by muse principles without sacrificing profits. Since its 1927 founding, Marriott valued “putting people first.” In 2010, Chief Global Human Resources Officer David Rodriguez institutionalized this value with the Take Care initiative. In response to the 2020 global pandemic response, under the stewardship of the late Arne Sorenson, it expanded to “Project We Care.” Due in part to its commitments, Marriott had less than half the losses of U.S. peers Hilton and Hyatt.

Empirical studies confirm what Marriott’s leaders modeled: Servant leaders generate stronger employee commitment and performance than charismatic or transformational leaders.

Notably, muse leaders typically aim at intermediate targets – reforming institutions and governance to constrain the menace. But since management itself is built on menace foundations, transformation at scale will require a critical mass of moral muses in business.

Mobilizing moral muses

One-off reforms like family-friendly policies, ESG targets and civility pledges are useful, but they cannot uproot centuries of menace. What’s required is a critical mass of moral muses who refuse to rationalize harm as progress and who lead a culture reset in guiding business logic.

That means uprooting institutionalized callousness and redefining what counts as efficiency, innovation and value. It also means enacting civic principles of care and common good, as Morris envisioned, and amplifying leaders who prove that compassion and profitability can reinforce each other.

History shows that muses are not anomalies, and their stories are instructive for us now. Across eras, they have demonstrated that prioritizing human dignity fosters trust, prosperity and social vitality. But their stories are too often buried or ignored – not by accident, but because they threaten those who profit from menace. Without sustained institutional redesign, the menace reliably reasserts itself under new moral guises.

Reclaiming and amplifying muse stories is essential for transformation. They aren’t just anecdotes of resistance; they are blueprints for a more humane and sustainable capitalism.

Valerie L. Myers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Taming the moral menace at capitalism’s core – https://theconversation.com/taming-the-moral-menace-at-capitalisms-core-266744

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jennifer Singh, Associate Professor of Sociology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Health and medicine is more than just biological – societal forces can get under your skin and cause illness. Medical sociologists like me study these forces by treating society itself as our laboratory. Health and illness are our experiments in uncovering meaning, power and inequality, and how it affects all parts of a person’s life.

For example, why do low-income communities continue to have higher death rates, despite improved social and environmental conditions across society? Foundational research in medical sociology reveals that access to resources like money, knowledge, power and social networks strongly affects a person’s health. Medical sociologists have shown that social class is linked to numerous diseases and mortality, including risk factors that influence health and longevity. These include smoking, overweight and obesity, stress, social isolation, access to health care and living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Moreover, social class alone cannot explain such health inequalities. My own research examines how inequalities related to social class, race and gender affect access to autism services, particularly among single Black mothers who rely on public insurance. This work helps explain delays in autism diagnosis among Black children, who often wait three years after initial parent concerns before they are formally diagnosed. White children with private insurance typically wait from 9 to 22 months depending on age of diagnosis. This is just one of numerous examples of inequalities that are entrenched in and deepened by medical and educational systems.

Medical sociologists like me investigate how all of these factors interact to affect a person’s health. This social model of illness sees sickness as shaped by social, cultural, political and economic factors. We examine both individual experiences and societal influences to help address the health issues affecting vulnerable populations through large-scale reforms.

By studying the way social forces shape health inequalities, medical sociology helps address how health and illness extend beyond the body and into every aspect of people’s lives.

Origins of medical sociology in the US

Medical sociology formally began in the U.S after World War II, when the National Institutes of Health started investing in joint medical and sociological research projects. Hospitals began hiring sociologists to address questions like how to improve patient compliance, doctor-patient interactions and medical treatments.

However, the focus of this early work was on issues specific to medicine, such as quality improvement or barriers to medication adherence. The goal was to study problems that could be directly applied in medical settings rather than challenging medical authority or existing inequalities. During that period, sociologists viewed illness mostly as a deviation from normal functioning leading to impairments that require treatment.

For example, the concept of the sick role – developed by medical sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s – saw illness as a form of deviance from social roles and expectations. Under this idea, patients were solely responsible for seeking out medical care in order to return to normal functioning in society.

In the 1960s, sociologists began critiquing medical diagnoses and institutions. Researchers criticized the idea of the sick role because it assumed illnesses were temporary and did not account for chronic conditions or disability, which can last for long periods of time and do not necessarily allow people to deviate from their life obligations. The sick role assumed that all people have access to medical care, and it did not take into account how social characteristics like race, class, gender and age can influence a person’s experience of illness.

Parsons’ sick role concept also emphasized the expertise of the physician rather than the patient’s experience of illness. For example, sociologist Erving Goffman showed that the way care is structured in asylums shaped how patients are treated. He also examined how the experience of stigma is an interactive process that develops in response to social norms. This work influenced how researchers understood chronic illness and disability and laid the groundwork for later debates on what counts as pathological or normal.

In the 1970s, some researchers began to question the model of medicine as an institution of social control. They critiqued how medicine’s jurisdiction expanded over many societal problems – such as old age and death – which were defined and treated as medical problems. Researchers were critical of the tendency to medicalize and apply labels like “healthy” and “ill” to increasing parts of human existence. This shift emphasized how a medical diagnosis can carry political weight and how medical authority can affect social inclusion or exclusion.

The critical perspective aligns with critiques from disability studies. Unlike medical sociology, which emerged through the medical model of disease, disability studies emerged from disability rights activism and scholarship. Rather than viewing disability as pathological, this field sees disability as a variation of the human condition rooted in social barriers and exclusionary environments. Instead of seeking cures, researchers focus on increasing accessibility, human rights and autonomy for disabled people.

A contemporary figure in this field was Alice Wong, a disability rights activist and medical sociologist who died in November 2025. Her work amplified disabled voices and helped shaped how the public understood disability justice and access to technology.

Structural forces shape health and illness

By focusing on social and structural influences on health, medical sociology has contributed significantly to programs addressing issues like segregation, discrimination, poverty, unemployment and underfunded schools.

For example, sociological research on racial health disparities invite neighborhood interventions that can help improve overall quality of life by increasing the availability of affordable nutritious foods in underserved neighborhoods or initiatives that prioritize equal access to education. At the societal level, large-scale social policies such as guaranteed minimum incomes or universal health care can dramatically reduce health inequalities.

Medical sociology has also expanded the understanding of how health care policies affect health, helping ensure that policy changes take into account the broader social context. For example, a key area of medical sociological research is the rising cost of and limited access to health care. This body of work focuses on the complex social and organizational factors of delivering health services. It highlights the need for more state and federal regulatory control as well as investment in groups and communities that need care the most.

Modern medical sociology ultimately considers all societal issues to be health issues. Improving people’s health and well-being requires improving education, employment, housing, transportation and other social, economic and political policies.

Jennifer Singh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Illness is more than just biological – medical sociology shows how social factors get under the skin and cause disease – https://theconversation.com/illness-is-more-than-just-biological-medical-sociology-shows-how-social-factors-get-under-the-skin-and-cause-disease-270258