A weekly roundup of public health news
Wait times increasing for cancer care
Many cancer patients in the U.S. are being forced to wait longer before their potentially lifesaving treatment begins, a new study reports.
Published Aug. 12 in JAMA Surgery, the study found that waiting times for first-course cancer treatment — such as radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy or surgery — have steadily increased over a decade.
Across the six types of cancer examined in the study — breast, colon, lung, pancreatic, gastric and esophageal — 72% of patients on average experienced delays of at least 30 days before they began treatment in 2022-2023. That rate is a sharp increase from 2012-2015, when about 54% of patients faced similar delays.
The study examined data on more than 2.7 million cancer patients who received treatment-related surgery during their care. Longer waits to start treatment were more common among patients with Medicaid or no insurance, those with low incomes or longer distances to travel for care, and Black patients. Compared with white or privately insured patients, Black patients and people with Medicaid faced a higher likelihood of delays of 60 days or more across all cancer types.
People with esophageal, lung and gastric cancer were most likely to face delays as of 2022-2023, with 84%, 83% and 79%, of such patients, respectively, experiencing wait times of at least 30 days. Extreme delays, characterized by wait times of 60 days or more, were most common for lung cancer patients.
Waiting times also varied by where people received treatment. Patients treated at academic or research institutions faced longer waits than those treated at community hospitals and integrated care systems. Patients referred elsewhere for treatment also waited longer, particularly those referred to high-volume hospitals. By region, longer wait times were found in the Northeast and West.
Centralization of surgical care may be contributing to bottlenecks in some health settings, researchers said. Another factor may be advances in science, such as molecular diagnostics and staging workups, which can lengthen the time between diagnosis and start of treatment.
Delays in cancer treatment can lead to anxiety and stress for patients, researchers said. Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., with 2.1 million people newly diagnosed each year.
Women in ‘maternity deserts’ travel 3x farther for care
More than a third of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts where millions of women lack access to pregnancy and birthing care, according to a new report from the March of Dimes.
The 2.4 million women of reproductive age who live in the counties, which are primarily in rural areas, must travel three times farther than women in areas of high access for maternity care, the Aug. 11 report said.
Besides taking more time and cost, longer travel times are tied to delayed start of prenatal care, a greater likelihood of unplanned out-of-hospital births, higher rates of maternal deaths and more neonatal intensive care unit admissions for babies.
Maternity care deserts, defined as counties without obstetric clinicians or birthing facilities, account for about 35% of U.S. counties. About 149,000 babies are born in the counties each year, the report said. Another 3.4 million women and 209,000 infants live in counties with low or moderate access to maternity care.
Rural communities face some of the biggest gaps. Nearly 58% of rural counties have no obstetric clinicians, compared with about 19% of urban counties. More than half of all U.S. counties lack a hospital offering labor and delivery services, affecting nearly 370,000 births each year.
Hospital closures have further reduced access. At least 96 labor and delivery units closed across 35 states from January 2024 to May 2026, the report said. Nearly 60% of those closures eliminated the county’s only birthing facility.
Extreme heat impacting most US adults as nation swelters
A growing share of Americans say extreme heat is taking a toll on their daily lives, according to a new poll that was taken as the nation grappled with its hottest month on record.
Ninety percent of U.S. adults say extreme heat has had at least a minor effect on their lives during the past year, up from 83% in 2024, according to an AP-NORC poll released August 6. More than 80% said heat had an impact on their electricity bills, while 68% reported impacts on outdoor activities. Heat also interfered to lesser degrees with their sleep, travel plans and pets.
The poll was conducted toward the end of July, just weeks after a major heat wave placed more than 185 million people across the U.S. under heat alerts. Thousands of heat-related illnesses were reported and at least 69 people died during the early July heat wave that blanketed the U.S., an investigation by The Washington Post found.
The month was the warmest ever recorded across the contiguous U.S., according to new findings released August 10 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Every state in the contiguous U.S. recorded above-average temperatures, with 13 states experiencing one of their five warmest Julys. Nighttime heat was especially notable, with temperatures in one part of Nevada dropping only to 99 degrees, an all-time record minimum temperature, NOAA said.
Other recent public health news of note:
• Whether Americans are protected from medical debt varies widely by state, an August 6 Commonwealth Fund issue brief details. Fourteen states ban medical debt from appearing on credit reports; 23 prohibit measures such as wage garnishment, liens or home foreclosure to collect medical debt; and 20 states and Washington, D.C., require hospitals to provide some level of free or discounted care to eligible patients. But no state fully addresses gaps in financial assistance, billing and collections or enforcement, leaving many patients vulnerable to serious financial harm from major medical expenses, the brief said.
• As climate change makes droughts more frequent and severe, shrinking water supplies can bring people and animals closer together, creating conditions that help some diseases spread, according to new research published August 12 in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Drying rivers, ponds and other water sources can concentrate animals in smaller areas, increasing opportunities for infections to spread, researchers found. In North America, dry conditions have been linked to increased transmission of mosquito-borne West Nile and St. Louis encephalitis viruses.
Drought may also have fueled a major yellow fever outbreak in Brazil in 2017 and 2018, an August 14 study in Science Advances finds. Extremely dry conditions may have pushed mosquitoes and monkeys from forests toward cities as they searched for water, contributing to the outbreak, which had more than 720 reported human cases and nearly 240 deaths.
The Watch is written by Michele Late, who has more than two decades of experience as a public health journalist.
