AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 3, November 2023
The Bulletin on Health
Summarizes recent NBER Working Papers pertaining to health topics. It is distributed digitally three times a year and is free.
The Safe Drinking Water Act regulates over 90 contaminants — such as lead and arsenic — in community water systems. These regulations establish maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for each contaminant; levels that exceed MCLs are considered violations. However, even among water systems that meet regulatory standards, the levels of contaminants can vary. In Drinking Water Contaminant Concentrations and Birth Outcomes (NBER Working Paper 31567), researchers Richard DiSalvo and...
More of the Bulletin on Health
Article
In the aftermath of a heart attack, Black patients are less likely than White patients to receive percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a procedure that improves blood flow in the heart. They also have higher one-year mortality rates following heart attacks. In Do PCI Facility Openings Differentially Affect AMI Patients by Individual Race and Community Segregation? (NBER Working Paper 31626), Renee Y. Hsia and Yu-Chu Shen demonstrate that the opening of a new PCI-...
Article
Access to a high-speed internet connection provides patients with a low-cost means of collecting information related to medical decisions and the quality of medical care providers. In Broadband Internet Access and Health Outcomes: Patient and Provider Responses in Medicare (NBER Working Paper 31579), Jessica Van Parys and Zach Y. Brown link information on broadband availability by ZIP code from the Federal Communications Commission to Medicare claims data...
Article
Marcella Alsan’s route to a career researching inequality in healthcare and its possible solutions began when she was a Harvard undergraduate majoring in cognitive neuroscience. During a class on the history of medicine and public health in America, she heard for the first time about the Tuskegee experiment, the infamous effort of the US Public Health Service to learn about syphilis by withholding available treatment for the venereal disease from hundreds of Black men...
Article
Many NBER-affiliated researchers publish some of their health-related findings in journals that preclude pre-publication distribution, and thus do not post them as NBER Working Papers. This is a partial listing of recent papers in this category by NBER affiliates.
Air Pollution and Suicide in Rural and Urban America: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke
Molitor D, Mullins JT, White C. PNAS 120(38), September 2023.
Air pollution poses well-established risks to...
The Bulletin on Health summarizes selected recent NBER Working Papers. It is distributed digitally to economists and other interested persons for informational and discussion purposes. The Bulletin may be reproduced freely with attribution of source.
Prior to creation of the Bulletin on Health, the NBER published the Bulletin on Aging and Health.
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