Laudan Aron’s Tweets

Student Borrower Protection Center

Jun 1

NEW TODAY: Our

@medrxivpreprint

has been updated to reflect latest 2021 death counts; two additional peer countries (Australia, Canada); and most importantly, first-time estimates for US Native American and US Asian populations. Details ⬇️ medrxiv.org/content/10.110

So many (working-as-designed) systems intersecting in people’s lives with devastating consequences, while others profit.

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@theSBPC

· Jul 27

An unknown (but huge #) of student loan borrowers become incarcerated each year. When they do, they enter a system totally incompatible with navigating America’s broken student loan system— with limited or no phone access, internet connection or income, they are set up to fail.

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"I am a military veteran . . . and spen[t] thousands beyond my GI Bill. [A university] falsely promised me job opportunities. I tried to have my family send me the Borrower Defense packet. I am lost in the mess of forms and attachments. I have no access to email, internet, and limited phone calls, so any research or help is non-existent."

- An incarcerated student loan borrower

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ALT

“Today, she owes $329,309.69 in student debt. She is ninety-one years old.”

newyorker.com

The Aging Student Debtors of America

In an era of declining wages and rising debt, Americans are not aging out of their student loans—they are aging into them.

“However, bone marrow transplants are not going to revolutionise HIV treatment for the 38 million people in the world currently infected.”

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BBC Health News

@bbchealth

· Jul 27

Fourth patient seemingly cured of HIV bbc.in/3zvZEbp

Topics to follow

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Networks of opportunity: Social capital and economic mobility

Next week,

will be hosting a presentation of new findings by Raj Chetty

@OppInsights

, Johannes

@stroebel_econ

and their research team as they measured social capital by ZIP code across the US and its impacts on economic mobility. RSVP here:

brookings.edu

Social capital—the strength of an individual’s social network and community—has been identified as a potential determinant of outcomes ranging from education to health. However, efforts to un…

Catastrophic Spending On Insulin In The United States, 2017–18

Jul 26

“Among Americans who use insulin, 14.1 percent reached catastrophic spending [spending more than 40 percent of their postsubsistence family income on insulin alone] over the course of one year, representing almost 1.2 million people”

healthaffairs.org

Insulin is considered an essential medicine for people with diabetes, but its price has doubled during the past decade, posing substantial financial barriers to patients in the US. In this article we...

A Path to Fair and Equitable Infrastructure Spending

Jul 26

“Small businesses and those owned by women and people of color don’t receive a fair share of government contracting. With infrastructure money flowing, now is the time for public agencies to take a pledge to improve procurement practices.”

governing.com

Small businesses and those owned by women and people of color don’t receive a fair share of government contracting. With infrastructure money flowing, now is the time for public agencies to take a...

It’s Time for Public Pharma

Jul 25

“public pharma might appeal as much to conservatives looking to minimize public spending on social services, like prescription drugs in Medicare, as it does to progressives looking to get the profit motive out of care”

prospect.org

Medicare for All would take the profit motive out of insurance; public manufacturing of prescription drugs would take it out of providing care.

Jul 21

“Instead of building complex arguments that required heavy work from the audience, she focused her narrative lens on specific claims. It was more than data visualization—it was data storytelling.”

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Scientific American

@sciam

· Jul 21

Florence Nightingale improved public health through her groundbreaking use of graphic storytelling. Surviving drafts of her diagrams give a rare peek into the celebrated nurse's creative process. | By @infowetrust bit.ly/3OqTcI7

Important 🧵 about life and death in the USA

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Ed Yong

@edyong209

· Jul 21

I wrote about a new study that makes clear just how exceptional America is, compared to other wealthy nations, at killing its own people--in large numbers & at young ages, during the pandemic and long before it. 1/ theatlantic.com/health/archive

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America Was in an Early-Death Crisis Long Before COVID

Jul 21

“COVID simply did more of what life in America has excelled at for decades: killing Americans in unusually large numbers, and at unusually young ages” via

@edyong209

⁩

theatlantic.com

Even before the pandemic began, more people here were dying at younger ages than in comparably wealthy nations.

America Was in an Early-Death Crisis Long Before COVID

Jul 21

Research article (pre-print) at the center of this piece: medrxiv.org/content/10.110

⁦

⁩ hits it out of the ballpark once again…

theatlantic.com

Even before the pandemic began, more people here were dying at younger ages than in comparably wealthy nations.

Monica McLemore PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN #HuskyNurse

@mclemoremr

Jul 20

Now this has been fixed, I am happy to post this on my own feeds.

consider joining us

“a highly lucrative industry is capitalizing on patients’ inability to pay. Hospitals… are pushing millions into credit cards and other loans. These stick patients with high interest rates while generating profits for the lenders that top 29%”

sacobserver.com

100 Million People in America Are Saddled With Health Care Debt

By Noam N. Levey | Kaiser Health News | Word In Black (WIB) - Elizabeth Woodruff drained her retirement account and took on three jobs after she and her

A dire moment in the pandemic ... was the chance he'd been waiting for

Larry Levitt

@larry_levitt

Jul 18

Here's a clearer map showing that most of the states that have banned abortion have NOT taken up the federal option to extend Medicaid coverage to women for 12 months after birth.

“If the vision comes to fruition, in future pandemics, it would save hundreds of millions of lives in low- and middle-income countries. It would also amount to a tectonic shift in the way science is done.”

npr.org

How Sotiris Missailidis, head of R&D in Brazil's vaccine agency, used the COVID crisis to push through a game-changing effort for middle-income countries to invent their own mRNA vaccine.

Drug Overdose Deaths, by Selected Sociodemographic and Social ..

Jul 19

“Health disparities in overdose rates continue to worsen, particularly among Black and AI/AN persons; social determinants of health, such as income inequality, exacerbate these inequities.” cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/7 via

@CDCgov

cdc.gov

This report describes increases in drug overdose death rates among non-Hispanic black and American Indian or Alaska Native persons from 2019 to 2020.

Policies for Action and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Jul 19

Policy research funding opportunity—US-based researchers please apply! policiesforaction.org/call-proposals

The fight for reparations has stalled in Congress. Here's what they look like in state and local...

CNN

@CNN

Jul 14

State and local governments are leading reparations efforts across the country to address the racial wealth gap and compensate Black Americans for the harms of slavery and institutional racism.

cnn.com

State and local governments are leading reparations efforts across the country to address the racial wealth gap and compensate Black Americans for the harms of slavery and institutional racism.

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Jul 18

Please share widely — within the US!

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Policies for Action

@Policies4Action

· Jul 13

Call for Proposals

Details: @Policies4Action will fund research on policies that can build & sustain economic security & wealth for families & communities of color

Apply: bit.ly/2GkwHHi

Deadline: 9/7/22

Questions: policies4Action@urban.org

The system is working as designed

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STAT

@statnews

· Jul 18

The CEOs of about 300 #health care companies collectively took home more than $4.5 billion in 2021. That's seven times what the #CDC spent on studying, surveilling, and managing emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases in the same year. statnews.com/2022/07/18/hea

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Opinion | It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam

Jimmy Jenkins

@JimmyJenkins

Jul 14

Arizona Department of Corrections Director David Shinn just told the state legislature we can't shut down private prisons because too many communities rely on the cheap labor they provide and they would "collapse" without it

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Jimmy Jenkins

@JimmyJenkins

· Jul 14

Shinn: "The Department does more than just incarcerate. There are services this Dept provides to local jurisdictions (prison labor) at a rate most jurisdictions can't afford. If you were to remove these workers, some of those jurisdictions would collapse."

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“Through the internet, we could peer enviously at our neighbors in civilized countries, who get monthlong vacations, don’t have to devote decades to paying for their college degrees, and aren’t terrified of going broke if they get sick.”

nytimes.com

We’ve been “productive” enough — produced way too much, in fact. And there is too much that urgently needs to be done.

“there’s an America that lives in a very comfortable world, out of touch of the rest of the country. There’s also a lot of hypocrisy in the U.S.”

governing.com

A European’s Perspective on Gun Violence in America

Our mass shootings confuse and dismay international observers. A journalist and scholar explains why Europeans cannot understand our inability to control gun violence and how that makes them uncomf...

Jul 15

“The false narratives we collectively hold are a key barrier in understanding the root causes of racial wealth inequality.” socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/upl

The Cook Center

Andrew Davenport

@AM_Davenport

Jul 11

Enslaved people--men, women, and children--represented an estimated 90% of the appraised value of Thomas Jefferson's estate, including Monticello and all its thousands of acres of land, upon his death. monticello.org/slaveauction/

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Smithsonian NMAAHC

@NMAAHC

Jul 13

In the 1830s the first African Americans came to the Oklahoma Territory with Native Americans along the Trail of Tears. Some were enslaved, and some were free. After Emancipation, they settled throughout the territory & founded several all-Black towns: s.si.edu/3RrsfXp

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The

encourages anyone messaging about 988 to use the new #988MessagingFramework to help inform your messages about the upcoming July 16th transition to 988 as the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Learn more via 988messaging.org #988Lifeline #mentalhealth

Alister Martin and 5 others

David Velasquez

@davidevelasqu

Jul 9

How are hospitals shaping policy and politics? Should they be influencing broader societal structures by acting on the Political Determinants of Health? We (+

@DanielEDawes

@joefigs2

) tackled these questions & more in

@AmJPrevMed

In short.. 1/7 authors.elsevier.com/a/1fNx12gOwG8S

“We are sounding the alarm: the Bahá’ís in Iran are suffering the worst coordinated attack we have seen in many years.”

news.bahai.org

44 Iranian Bahá'ís arrested, arraigned, or jailed as leading human rights figure says situation is...

The Iranian government’s systematic campaign to persecute Iran’s Bahá’ís accelerated again with the arrest, court hearing, or imprisonment of more Bahá’ís.

Jul 11

“India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country during 2023” un.org/development/de

“insulin has become a symbol of the high cost of American health care. Its prices have shot up in recent years, for reasons that are opaque at best, with those who can least afford it often paying the most” rand.org/blog/rand-revi

RAND Corporation