This week: for children in foster care, love is truly the best medicine. Indiana is tackling HIV, but what about the drug use behind it? Endometriosis researchers hope a newfound link to heart disease brings visibility to the neglected reproductive disorder.
For Kids In The System, Foster Parents Are The Ultimate Therapy
Parenting a foster child is like "normal [parenting] on steroids," says foster and adoptive mom Stephanie Zielinski. It is parents, not professionals, experts say, who do the most to help children heal from the traumas that placed them in the foster system. Side Effects' Michelle Faust reports.
Endometriosis Linked To Heart Disease In New Report
Women with endometriosis — abnormal growth of uterine tissue outside of the uterus that can cause extreme pain and infertility — have a 60 percent increased risk of heart disease, according to a new report by doctors at Bringham and Women's Hospital. Researchers hope the new finding will bring new attention to endometriosis, a disease that affects 10% of reproductive-age women, but receives little funding. WBUR's Commonhealth has more.
A Year After Indiana's HIV Outbreak, Addiction Treatment Lags Behind Need
Scott County, Ind. now has an HIV clinic and a needle exchange. But the area is still drastically under resourced when it comes to addressing the problem behind the HIV outbreak -addiction to prescription opioids. Side Effects' Jake Harper has this update. (Find all of our reporting on the Southern Indiana HIV outbreak here.)
Policy-Makers Widen Access To Medications For Treating Addiction
As the opioid epidemic continues, the tide has been shifting away from the abstinence-based model of recovery to physician-supervised medical treatment. But access to medicines to treat addiction - like methadone and buprenorphne - and the doctors who can prescribe them, is limited. The Obama administration and the State of California are moving to fill the gap. Kaiser Health News reports.
