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This is a MedPage Today story. More than 230 clinicians at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) in Massachusetts won their union election and have received certification through the state Department of Labor Relations. About half of the group’s members are physicians, including primary care doctors, psychiatrists, and hospitalists; members also include physician assistants (PAs) and psychologists, according to SHARE CHA/AFSCME, the union representing the group. Jeremy Stricsek, MD, a primary care physician at CHA, told MedPage Today that collective discussions about ways to improve working conditions and patient care began several years ago, some of which were spurred by the pandemic. However, in the summer of 2022, organizing efforts became more serious as the group recognized that physicians and other healthcare professionals would need to unionize in order to "better advocate" for themselves and patients. Overall, there has been concern over "increasing pressure to do more with…

This is a MedPage Today story. More than 80 domestic cats, among many other types of mammals, have been confirmed to have had bird flu since 2022 — generally barn cats that lived on dairy farms, as well as feral cats and pets that spend time outdoors and likely caught it by hunting diseased rodents or wild birds. Now, a small but growing number of house cats have gotten sick from H5N1, the bird flu strain driving the current U.S. outbreak, after eating raw food or drinking unpasteurized milk. Some of those cats died. The strain of bird flu currently circulating has not adapted to efficiently spread among people. And there have been no known cases of cat-to-human transmission during the current outbreak of H5N1. Still, there’s always been the risk that cats, which are arguably only semi-domesticated, could bring home a disease from a midnight prowl. "Companion animals, and especially cats, are 100% a public health risk in terms of the risk of zoonotic transmission to people,"…

This is a MedPage Today story. A new journal purports to improve the publishing process through open access and public peer review, but it was co-founded by researchers who challenged the U.S. response to COVID-19 — including President Trump’s pick to lead the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD. Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, PhD, have founded the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, where "good scientists can publish whatever their studies conclude," Kulldorff said in a post on X. Kulldorff reported the backdrop for launching the journal in a perspective, charging that commercial publishers have a corner on the market, with universities paying "an enormous amount of money for journals that contain articles that are both written and peer reviewed by their own scientists, which they provide to journals for free." "As a result, scientific journal publishers have huge profit margins reaching almost 40%," Kulldorff stated in the perspective. Unlike traditional publishing,…

This is a MedPage Today story. Cleveland Clinic officials fired back at a conservative organization’s "Woke Alert" attack ad that asked if the large health system was "the wokest hospital in America," saying the ad’s claims are "riddled with inaccuracies and lies." The ad, by Consumers’ Research, says clinic officials "prioritize care based on skin color, perform child sex changes, push transgender propaganda on vulnerable kids, insert DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] into everything they do, and spend millions on climate activism." The organization also seized on a sentence in a 2023 statement from clinic CEO Tom Mihaljevic, MD, in which he said "providing high-quality healthcare is only part of our mission." Consumers’ Research said Mihaljevic’s statement is evidence "the Cleveland Clinic is prioritizing woke policies over patients." The 30-second ad, titled "Exposed," is reportedly running on mobile billboards at the Ohio state capitol building, the Cleveland Clinic’s…