Are You an Optimist? Could You Learn to Be? Your Health May Depend on It.

When you think about the future, do you expect good or bad things to happen?

If you weigh in on the “good” side, you’re an optimist. And that has positive implications for your health in later life.

Multiple studies show a strong association between higher levels of optimism and a reduced risk of conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and cognitive impairment. Several studies have also linked optimism with greater longevity.

One of the latest, published this year, comes from researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in collaboration with colleagues at other universities. It found that older women who scored highest on measures of optimism lived 4.4 years longer, on average, than those with the lowest scores. Results held true across races and ethnicities.

Why would optimism make such a difference?

Experts advance various explanations: People who are optimistic cope better with

In Rural America, Deadly Costs of Opioids Outweigh the Dollars Tagged to Address Them

Tim Buck knows by heart how many people died from drug overdoses in his North Carolina county last year: 10. The year before it was 12 — an all-time high.

Those losses reverberate deeply in rural Pamlico County, a tightknit community of 12,000 on the state’s eastern shore. Over the past decade, it’s had the highest rate of opioid overdose deaths in North Carolina.

“Most folks know these individuals or know somebody who knows them,” said Buck, the county manager and a lifelong resident, who will proudly tell anyone that four generations of his family have called the area home. “We all feel it and we hate it when our folks hurt.”

Now, the county is receiving money from national settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors to address the crisis. But by the time those billions of dollars are divided among states and localities,

Journalists Explain Medicaid Work Requirements and Hospital Price Transparency

KHN senior editor Andy Miller discussed Georgia’s Medicaid work requirements on WUGA’s “The Georgia Health Report” on Dec. 5.

  • Click here to hear Miller on “The Georgia Health Report
  • Read “Path Cleared for Georgia to Launch Work Requirements for Medicaid” by Miller and Sam Whitehead

KHN senior correspondent Julie Appleby discussed hospital price transparency on Newsy on Dec. 1.

  • Click here to watch Appleby on Newsy

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Watch: Big Medicaid Changes in California Leave Millions of Patients Behind

KHN senior correspondent Angela Hart appeared on Spectrum News 1’s “Los Angeles Times Today” on Nov. 29 to discuss her reporting on California’s pricey and ambitious experiment to transform its Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal.

The initiative, known as CalAIM, will provide some of Medi-Cal’s sickest and costliest patients with social services such as home-delivered healthy meals, help with housing move-in costs, and home repairs to make living environments safer for people with asthma.

But, as Hart noted, the reforms leave many patients behind. Hart spent time at MLK Community Hospital in South Los Angeles, where patients, health consumer advocates, and hospital executives told her that care hasn’t improved for the majority of patients, who don’t receive the new social services. They also told her that low reimbursement rates for doctors and other providers have created a “separate and unequal” system of care in a community

Much of the CDC Is Working Remotely. That Could Make Changing the Agency Difficult.

ATLANTA — Earlier this year, top leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began a monumental task: turning the sprawling, labyrinthine organization known for its highly specialized, academically focused scientific research into a sleek, flexible public health response agency primed to serve the American public. It’s an attempt to keep the CDC from repeating the mistakes it made while responding to covid-19.

But agency veterans, outside public health officials, and workplace organization experts said the current workplace structure could be a major barrier to that goal. Like directors before her, agency head Dr. Rochelle Walensky spends a considerable amount of time away from the CDC’s headquarters in Atlanta. The agency has also embraced a workplace flexibility program that has allowed most of its scientists to stay remote.

As of October, 10,020 of the CDC’s 12,892 full-time employees — 78% of the full-time workforce — were allowed to work