| | | | |  | | By Daniel Payne, Carmen Paun, Erin Schumaker and Ruth Reader | | | | | 
The World Bank wants you to eat more of the green stuff. | | Public health advocates concerned about the impact of climate change on health might welcome new recommendations from the World Bank, the international development funder. In a new paper, the bank suggests repurposing the billions of dollars its wealthy-country sponsors spend to boost carbon-intensive red meat and dairy for more climate-friendly poultry, fruits and vegetables, our Federica Di Sario reports. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to save the planet from climate change, the bank argues. Even so: The report will worry dairy farmers and cattle ranchers and their allies in Congress. The bank contends that’s a risk worth taking since the food sector is responsible for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. “We have to stop destroying the planet as we feed ourselves,” Julian Lampietti, the World Bank’s manager for global engagement in the bank’s agriculture and food global practice, told POLITICO. Wide angle: Signatories, including the U.S., of the Paris agreement on climate must accelerate emissions cuts to reach the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to the report, countries must funnel $260 billion each year into the agricultural and food sectors — 18 times more than they currently invest — to get there. Governments can partly plug the gap by reorienting subsidies for red meat and dairy products. “The full cost pricing of animal-sourced food to reflect its true planetary costs would make low-emission food options more competitive,” the report says.
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Baltimore, Md. | Shawn Zeller/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Researchers are testing an oral vaccine to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections, Nature reports. In a small preliminary study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, half of participants who got the vaccine didn't develop a UTI for up to nine years. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  Barchi doesn't want to forget the basics. | CommonSpirit Health | Health providers think artificial intelligence could cut down on burnout and stretch staff further, give care providers superhuman pattern recognition skills and create revolutionary treatments. But is too much faith in AI’s future pulling providers away from more pressing concerns? Daniel Barchi, chief information officer and senior executive vice president at CommonSpirit Health, the Chicago-based hospital chain, worries that could be the case. “I’m excited about the use of AI, yet I worry that it distracts us from the care that we need to do every day,” he told Daniel. “It’s easy to focus on the bright and shiny objects and forget about the challenges of day-in and day-out medical care.” How so? Barchi said that while some AI systems show promise, many doctors and nurses need tools unrelated to AI: better medical equipment, updated pharmacy databases and coordinated care strategies, for example. Health care’s complexity also makes it difficult to build AI systems that get the details right. “Because health care is so bespoke in every way, it’s hard to create tools that automate processes in a massive, scalable way that have financial benefit,” he said. Even so: That doesn’t mean CommonSpirit isn’t excited about AI. The system has more than 100 AI tools, Barchi said, some developed internally and some purchased. Communication tools are especially promising, he added, given advances in large language models. “I think AI is key to how we’re going to care for patients in the future,” he said. “And yet, we can’t focus on the future in a way that ignores the care that we deliver today.”
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Risky research will get extra scrutiny under a new White House policy. | Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images | The Biden administration’s tougher approach to overseeing high-risk research that could cause disease outbreaks or other serious health threats goes only so far if other countries don’t follow suit. That’s according to Jaime Yassif, vice president for global biological policy and programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce dangers to humanity. Why it matters: “In a world where we’re only as strong as our weakest link, it will be important to see more progress globally,” starting with the biggest funders of life science research, she said. A new administration policy, issued Monday by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will — starting a year from now — apply to federal agencies that fund research into pathogens that could pose a risk to animal or human health, agriculture or national security, often called “gain of function.” Researchers who propose to increase a pathogen’s transmissibility or make it more virulent would have to submit a risk-mitigation plan to the federal agency funding the work, which will assess the experiment’s risks and benefits to decide whether to fund it. The review will be tougher for researchers proposing to study pathogens with pandemic potential. But most countries don’t have similar policies in place, Yassif said. What’s next? Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said U.S. science diplomacy should encourage more countries to improve research oversight “because the problems that could come from things that go wrong here are things that will not necessarily stay within borders.” | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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