Could the way your doctor is paid influence the care you receive? And could someone else's health insurance affect your healthcare, too?

When we think about healthcare, we often focus on our own insurance coverage, including what services are covered, which doctors we can see, and how much we’ll pay. But behind the scenes, the way we pay for healthcare can also shape how care is delivered, from the tests doctors order to the decisions they make with their patients.

In this episode of Make Science Make Sense, we sit down with Dr. Ken Cohen, Chief Medical Officer of Optum Health, to explore the growing shift from traditional fee-for-service healthcare to value-based care, a model designed to reward quality and patient outcomes rather than the volume of services provided.

Dr. Cohen shares how his early experiences as a physician shaped his approach to reducing unnecessary and sometimes harmful medical care. We discuss what it means to deliver patient-centered care, including the importance of balancing evidence-based medicine, quality of care, and responsiveness to patients' individual needs and preferences.

We also break down the differences between Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage and explore Dr. Cohen's research examining whether physicians' participation in value-based payment models may also benefit their Traditional Medicare patients.

From the tests your doctor orders to the conversations you have about your treatment, this episode explores how healthcare payment models may influence the care you receive and what that means for patients, physicians, and the future of healthcare.

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In this episode, we explore the science of baseball pitching with biomechanics researcher Dr. Donna Moxley Scarborough, examining how athletes adapt their movements to optimize performance and potentially reduce injury risk. From professional baseball to everyday activities, discover what the science of human movement can teach us about how our bodies work.

Dr. Donna Moxley Scarborough recognized early on that she didn't fit the typical physical mold of a star softball player. But her father, an avid Boston Red Sox fan, encouraged her to study professional athletes who shared her smaller stature. She became fascinated by how athletes with different body types adapted their movements to excel in their sports, sparking a lifelong interest in the science of human movement.

Now a biomechanics researcher and former lead biomechanist for the Boston Red Sox, Dr. Scarborough joins Make Science Make Sense to challenge the idea that there's one "perfect" pitching motion. In her study, Kinematic Sequence Classification and the Relationship to Pitching Limb Torques, she investigates the kinematic sequence—the coordinated series of movements involved in throwing a baseball—and how variations in these patterns relate to the physical stresses placed on pitchers' arms.

Drawing on her research with elite baseball players, Dr. Scarborough explores how athletes adapt their movements to meet the physical demands of their sport, challenging the assumption that there is a single optimal way to throw a baseball. Could differences in movement patterns actually be an advantage rather than a flaw? And what might this mean for improving athletic performance and reducing injury risk?

The implications extend far beyond baseball. From walking and climbing stairs to lifting everyday objects, understanding how our bodies adapt and move could help inform approaches to improving movement and reducing injury risk for athletes and nonathletes alike.

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About 1 in 9 Americans older than 65 have Alzheimer's Disease, the most common form of dementia. Population health experts predict that the number of people diagnosed with dementia will nearly double by 2050. Medical researchers are urgently seeking solutions and potential therapies to stop the onset of dementia, but its root causes are still not well understood. For decades, researchers have investigated the buildup of two proteins, tau and amyloid-beta, detected in post-mortem brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. Therapies targeting the dysfunction in these proteins have shown minimal benefits to patients suffering cognitive decline.

So Jackson Laboratory scientist Dr. Alaina Reagan started looking elsewhere for answers - specifically in the system she knew best. Alaina studies the cerebrovascular system and how a person's genetics may dictate how blood circulates and flows to the brain. In this episode, she discusses a crucial lab study that established a link between the MTHFR gene variant in 40% of the world's population and blood vessel damage. In a refreshing take on genetic science, Alaina explains how the variant influences the mechanics of blood flow but isn't the singular cause of dementia. She explains how keeping our minds active could help offset the deficiency associated with this one-letter misprint in our genetic code.

For information about the Howell Lab and Jackson Laboratories, visit: https://www.jax.org/research-and-faculty/research-labs/the-howell-lab

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While writing a book on how human civilizations have historically depleted farm soil nutrients with dire consequences, geologist David Montgomery watched his wife, Anne, revive their backyard's “crap” dirt. Through persistence, composting, and trusting natural processes, Anne nourished once hopeless soil back to health, and her garden has flourished ever since.

Combining David's geological knowledge with Anne's biological expertise, the couple launched the Dig2Grow movement and conducted the first national study comparing the nutrient density of crops and livestock raised on side-by-side regenerative and conventional farms. In this episode, Dr. Anne Biklé and Dr. David Montgomery discuss their findings, explain the link between soil health and human well-being, and make the case for why everyone should care about the dirt that grows their food.

To learn more about Dig2Grow, visit: https://www.dig2grow.com/

Order What Your Food Ate, the book that this research was developed for, here: https://bit.ly/4xziF8N

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Dr. Jennifer J. Carroll heard the same story in her interviews with people who overdosed on opioids and were being treated in emergency departments: their supplier was arrested.

In Episode 6, Dr. Jennifer J. Carroll discusses research measuring the relationship between police drug seizures and drug overdoses in the city of Indianapolis. Using police records of overdose and public records of overdose, the researchers predicted the chance of an overdose within mere meters and days of a police raid. Understanding this association and the threat of drug supply disruptions helps us rethink the most effective approaches to drug enforcement and preventing death from drug overdose in communities across the U.S.

Read the paper published in the American Journal of Public Health: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2023.307291

Read the CDC guidance document, Evidence-Based Strategies for Preventing Opioid Overdose: What’s Working in the United States, co-authored by Jennifer Carroll: https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/media/pdfs/2018-evidence-based-strategies.pdf

Learn more about evidence-based strategies for overdose prevention here: https://www.naco.org/program/opioid-solutions-center

Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and alcohol or drug problems often co-occur, or exist together, and military veterans experience these challenges at higher rates than civilians. For years, research has suggested that veterans don’t always benefit from PTSD treatments in the same way that civilians do, pointing to a need to learn more about the treatments that work for them. Today, we talk with clinical psychologist and mental health researcher Dr. Shannon Blakey, who breaks down new research on what actually works for veterans confronting these dual disorders.

Read Shannon's article in Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy: https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0002043

Learn more about different types of therapy for mental health and addiction here:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/prolonged_exposure.asp

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/cognitive_processing.asp

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/cooccurring/tx_sud_va.asp

https://strongstartraining.org/upcoming-events/

For healthcare providers: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/consult/index.asp

For patients/families: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/

In our media-saturated world, our kids are impressionable targets for advertisements for foods that are “high in” ingredients linked to obesity and nutrition-related disease: saturated fats, sodium, sugar, and calories. Children who see these ads have poorer health trajectories and higher rates of obesity. Unhealthy food ads contradict every parent’s best intentions to provide their child with a nutritionally balanced diet, turning daily choices into hair-pulling battles and grocery aisle meltdowns.

In this episode, we are joined by nutritional epidemiologist Dr. Lindsey Smith Taillie and media effects researcher Dr. Francesca Dillman Carpentier, who teamed up to understand the impact of global food policies that restrict advertising of unhealthy foods toward children. The study examines a case study of new regulations that rolled out in Chile, and how the country took a stand against food advertising for the sake of preserving the health of children. Lessons from Chile are spreading across the world and could serve as a model for reducing the influence of advertising on poor dietary choices for kids in the United States, where one in five children are obese.

Learn more about the UNC Global Food Research Program here: https://www.globalfoodresearchprogram.org/

Read the paper published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12966-023-01454-w

In today’s world, children are surrounded by stressors that can jeopardize their mental health. National statistics show a troubling increase in mental health disorders and a growing incidence of suicide among younger populations over the past decade. Many parents and caretakers hesitate to discuss critical topics like death and suicide, fearing that such conversations may do more harm than good. But what does the science say about having talks about suicide with young kids?

In this episode, we tackle this important issue and highlight a research project focused on suicide prevention among children under 10 with experiences that put them at risk of mental health problems. Child psychologists Dr. Adam Bryant Miller of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dr. Caroline Oppenheimer of RTI International discuss their study adapting a suicide risk assessment for young children and examining its impact on children and parents. They provide insights from their research and offer actionable guidance for families seeking to support their children’s mental health and prevent suicide.

Read the article in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

#childadversity #youthmentalhealth #suiciderisk #suicideprevention #youthsuicide #stopyouthsuicide #988helpline #sciencetranslation #sciencecommunication

This episode addresses a sensitive yet important topic and may not be suitable for all listeners. Anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide should dial 988 for immediate support.