New research published this week in JAMA Network Open connects multiple residential factors generally associated with financial strain, such as high housing costs and crowded households, to worse overall outcomes among breast cancer survivors. Led by investigators at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, the findings could help inform innovative strategies to increase health care access and ease economic stress for a variety of patients in need.

Most chronic diseases don’t begin with obvious symptoms or dramatic warning signs. Instead, they develop quietly over many years, as small changes accumulate in the body. A new perspective from researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging notes that modern medicine often waits until disease is well underway, arguing that new technologies could help detect risk much earlier, when prevention may be most effective.

The results of this study show that in 2026, approximately 1 in 10 beneficiaries in HMO or PPO Medicare Advantage plans will be forced to disenroll from their current plan due to their plan exiting the market. Drivers of higher plan exit may include changes to plan payments and risk adjustment, as well as unanticipated increases in health care use among Medicare Advantage enrollees.

Individuals who engaged in spirituality were significantly less likely to exhibit hazardous use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs, according to a new meta-analysis led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The meta-analysis is the first of its kind to synthesize and comprehensively estimate associations between harmful or hazardous substance use and spirituality—considered any practice, religious or otherwise, through which an individual finds ultimate meaning, purpose, and connection to something greater than themselves. 

A novel vaccination approach developed by Vanderbilt Health researchers cleared the harmful gut bacterium Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) in an animal model of infection. 

An experimental vaccine administered to the mucosal lining of the colon protected against illness, death, tissue damage and infection recurrence. The findings, reported Feb. 18 in the journal Nature, represent a major step forward for vaccine development for C. diff, the leading cause of health care- and antibiotic-associated infection.

About The Study: This meta-analysis synthesized data from 55 published longitudinal studies on spirituality and harmful or hazardous alcohol and other drug use risk and documented a significant protective association. The results of this study have implications for clinicians and communities regarding future strategies for alcohol and other drug use prevention and recovery.