3419 - Controversies and Progress in Healthcare (Karen Steinberg)
Course Description
Instructor: Karen Steinberg
What are we to make of constantly changing healthcare messages, messages that directly impact us? Should I get a PSA or a mammogram? Should herd immunity be attempted without the use of vaccines during a pandemic? *When do doctors predict a cure for cancer? To begin, we’ll explain the different types of studies that provide doctors with the necessary information to make screening and treatment recommendations as well as to prevent disease. We’ll then examine three examples of studies that led to important advances in preventing the biggest killers: infectious diseases, heart disease, and cancer. Next, we’ll explore examples of recommendations that continue to change and the reasons behind these changes, including PSA testing and mammography, as well as the evolving messages for prescribing medications to healthy people for disease prevention including statin therapy. We’ll delve into the idea of personalized medicine and separate realistic expectations from exaggerated claims. We’ll discuss pandemics, including Covid-19, which epidemiologists say was not “the big one.” Lastly, we’ll discuss the problem of the politicization of healthcare now and in the past.
Bio: Dr. Steinberg received her doctoral degree in experimental pathology from Emory University and began working at the National Center for Environmental Health, CDC. She served as Chief of the Molecular Biology Branch from 1991 to 2004. She also served as Acting Director, Office of Women’s Health, CDC, from March 1998 through April 1999. Between 2004 and 2010, she was Senior Science Officer for the Coordinating Center for Health Promotion, which housed CDC’s programs in chronic disease, birth defects, and genomics. After taking a break to pursue a degree in English literature, she maintains her role as a health care advocate and teaches at OLLI and other programs. She has authored over sixty peer-reviewed articles on genomics, cancer, osteoporosis, women’s health, ethics, and environmental health.