User:Oceanflynn/sandbox/Aaron E. Carroll

Aaron E. Carroll is a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine. He blogs on health research and policy at The Incidental Economist.

Pay for performance
Pay for performance in healthcare gives financial incentives to clinicians for better health outcomes. Clinical outcomes, such as longer survival, are too difficult to measure, so pay for performance systems usually measure process outcomes, such as measuring blood pressure, lowering blood pressure, or counseling patients to stop smoking. Aaron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics who writes a column for the New York Times, said after reviewing the medical literature in 2014 that pay for performance in the U.S. and U.K. has brought "disappointingly mixed results." Sometimes even large incentives don't change the way doctors practice medicine. Sometimes incentives do change practice, but even when they do, clinical outcomes don't improve. Critics say that pay for performance is a technique borrowed from corporate management, where the main outcome of concern is profit. In medical practice, many important outcomes and processes, such as spending time with patients, can't be quantified.

Flint water crisis
Childhood lead exposure causes a reduction in intellectual functioning and IQ, academic performance, and problem-solving skills, and an increased risk of attention deficit disorder, aggression, and hyperactivity. According to studies, children with elevated levels of lead in the blood are more likely as adults to commit crimes, be imprisoned, be unemployed or underemployed, or be dependent on government services.

Science of vaccination
"All of the vaccines save lives. It would be better for our vaccination policy for this not even to be a topic for debate, certainly not by those who aren’t immersed in the science of vaccines.