Once upon a time, “my doctor” was the only answer a person would give if asked who they trusted when making personal health decisions. And while that still remains the most popular answer, it’s far from the only one—especially when it comes to those ages 18-34, or Gen Z and younger millennials, who put almost as much trust in friends, family, and even social media. 

People in that age group are also most likely to drop a medical provider or lose trust in one over political differences, according to the eye-opening findings of a new special report from global communications firm Edelman, released on Thursday.

It represents a “transformation” in the way healthcare is viewed, writes Edelman U.S. health chair and global health co-chair Courtney Gray Haupt in an analysis of the report. “Traditional health authorities are not disappearing, they’re being supplemented,” she says. “Influencers, peers, patients and social creators are now key players in the health narrative.”

Among the key findings about generational beliefs in the Edelman’s Trust Barometer Special Report: Trust and Health include:

• Doctors aren't special: 45% of the Gen Z and young millennial respondents believe that the average person who has done their own research can know just as much as a doctor—as compared with 38% of those ages 35-54 who believe that and 23% of those 55 and older. 
• Politics matter in health care: 47% of those ages 18-34 are likely to drop a medical provider or lose trust in one over political differences—compared with 38% of those ages 35-54 and 22% of those 55 and older.
• Friends and social media are sometimes more trustworthy: In the past 12 months, 45% of those 18-34 have disregarded a provider’s medical guidance in favor of advice from friends or family, while 38% have instead trusted social media—more than twice as much, on each count, as the Gen X/baby boomer group. 
• Vaccine skepticism is alive and well: Only 54% of Gen Z and young millennials gave or would give their child all routine vaccinations. That’s compared with 63% of those 35-54 and 69% of those 55 and older.
• Medical credentials aren't everything: In response to the statement, “People without formal medical degrees or health credentials have a big influence over my health decisions,” 45% of the youngest group agreed, while only 34% and 22% of those 35-54 and 55 and over, respectively, agreed.

“We are navigating a generational transition in how health is understood, trusted and shared,” Haupt notes. “This is not a trend—it’s a structural reorientation. Organizations must recalibrate their approach to reflect a world where trust is local, expertise is diversified, and emotional authenticity is a key currency.”

Speaking directly to healthcare organizations, she advises that, to lead in this new era, they must “meet all generations, but especially our youth, where they are—on the platforms they use, in the styles they speak and through the voices they already trust. Empathy isn’t just an ethical compass—it’s a business strategy and an imperative for the healthcare community globally.”

Much of the new attitudes around this “parallel health ecosystem” for younger generations, believes Edelman CEO Richard Edelman in his own analysis of the findings, have emerged within the context of COVID.

“Nearly seven in 10 young adults report that their lives were disrupted by COVID guidelines, from missing school to working from home,” he says, citing an earlier special report on the impacts of the pandemic. “They feel left behind and discriminated against as a result of the pandemic.” 

It all led, he believes, to what were the main revelations of the report—that young adults have become self-reliant when it comes to medical information, that they put equivalent amounts of trust on various sources for medical advice, and that they are avid sharers of health-related news items, with nearly 60 percent of young people sharing such stories, compared to 24 percent of those 55 and older. 

“The clear message to the healthcare community,” Edelman writes, “is that COVID has changed the game for communicators from inside out to outside in. Specifically, the elites are no longer in control of information, whether public health authorities or scientific institutions. Personal experiences cataloged on social media now carry enough weight to rival the believability of data provided by Government or even healthcare providers.” 

Correcting misinformation and disseminating scientific facts, he concludes, “is the true public health emergency that must be treated with urgency.”

More on Gen Z:

• Gen Z and millennial workers would accept lower salaries in exchange for this one thing from their employers
• Gen Z and Millennials are ‘doom spending’ their way to a life of debt unless they make 4 changes
• Gen Z’s anxiety is spilling into the workplace. Here’s how to effectively manage the ‘anxious generation’

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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First, the good news: The overall cancer death rate has been on a steady decline—as have smoking rates, with only 11% of Americans now smoking cigarettes. As a result, cancers associated with tobacco smoking have fallen. Also, breast and colorectal cancer screening rates rebounded after decreasing or stalling during the pandemic.

But there’s bad news, too: Up-to-date screenings for cervical cancer are low, remaining below pre-pandemic levels and continuing what’s been a decline since the early 2000s. Meanwhile, rates of HPV vaccinations—highly effective against most cases of cervical cancer—have flattened.

Such was this week’s mixed cancer and cancer-prevention report from both the American Cancer Society and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) annual report on the status of cancer. 

“Cancer prevention and early detection are central to the American Cancer Society’s goal to ensure everyone has an opportunity to prevent, detect, treat, and survive cancer,” Dr. Priti Bandi, a scientific director at the American Cancer Society and lead author of its new study, published in the the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. “These latest findings are encouraging, mainly the reduction in smoking rates and screening for certain cancers, but it’s clear urgent efforts are needed to address lagging cervical cancer prevention.”

The ACS news came right after that of the NIH, which reported on Monday in the journal Cancer that overall death rates from cancer declined steadily among both men and women from 2001 through 2022, even during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among men, it found, overall cancer incidence (rate of new cancer diagnosis) decreased from 2001 through 2013 and then stabilized through 2021. Among women, overall cancer incidence increased slightly every year from 2003 through 2021, except for 2020. 

An estimated 40% of cancer cases in the U.S. can be attributed to modifiable risk factors, the ACS noted, including cigarette smoking, excess body weight, dietary factors, physical inactivity, ultraviolet radiation exposure, and cancer-causing infections, including HPV. Cancer screening tests can also prevent thousands of additional cancer cases and deaths, the study highlighted.

Highlights of the ACS report regarding cancer risks and screenings include:

• Cigarette smoking declined from 14% in 2022 to 11% in 2023—but high smoking prevalence remains in American Indian/Alaska Native individuals, Black males, people with lower education, and bisexual females.
• Up-to-date cervical cancer screening in 2021 was at 73%, remaining below pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, up-to-date breast cancer screening and colorectal screening rebounded and exceeded pre-pandemic levels in 2023 after declining and stalling, respectively, during the pandemic.
• After a trend of increasing, up-to-date HPV vaccination prevalence in adolescents 13-17 years of age remained flat between 2021 and 2023 (61%), largely due to pandemic-related disruptions. Persistent, high-risk HPV infection causes almost all cervical and anal cancers and 64% to 75% of vaginal cancers.
• Less than half of adults (48%) met recommended physical activity levels, and an estimated one-third (27%) reported no leisure-time physical activity in 2022—remaining unchanged from 2020.

“Our report underscores the need to strengthen efforts to improve access and receipt of preventive services, including cancer screening, HPV vaccination, and counseling and treatment for tobacco dependence,” said Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, a senior vice president at the American Cancer Society and senior author of the report. “We must also work to identify individuals of racially/ethnically diverse groups and socioeconomic positions who continue to be greatly affected by cancer to accelerate progress against the disease.”

Added Lisa Lacasse, president of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), the advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, “These findings only further prove how investments in tobacco control have helped reduce the number of people falling prey to Big Tobacco’s deadly products and practices.” That control was largely thanks to federal agencies, she stressed, which is why recent government cuts to such agencies has the ACS “deeply concerned” that they will “jeopardize continued progress to reduce tobacco utilization nationwide.”

More on cancer:

• Childhood exposure to this bacteria could be driving rates of colorectal cancer in millennials and Gen Xers, new study warns
• The truth about CT scans: The common health check could drive 103,000 cancer cases, research warns
• Cancer deaths are down, but rates in women under 50 are rising

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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A resurgence of measles cases in the U.S., including one in Texas that recently infected more than 620 people and killed at least two children, is connected to a continuing decline in childhood vaccination rates. And if they continue to drop, warns a new study, it could pave the way for a measles comeback—and for rubella and polio, too.

But even if vaccine rates stay at current rates, measles could again become endemic (circulating in the U.S.) within two decades—and happen more quickly even with another small decline in immunization rates. Just a small increase, though, would prevent this.

So say the researchers of the Stanford Medicine-led study, published on April 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

“We’ve seen a worrisome pattern of decreasing routine childhood vaccinations,” senior author Nathan Lo said in a news release. “There was a disruption to health care services during the pandemic, but declines preceded this period and have accelerated since then for many reasons. People look around and say, ‘We don’t see these diseases. Why should we vaccinate against them?’ There’s a general fatigue with vaccines. And there’s distrust and misinformation about vaccine effectiveness and safety.”

A thought leader in that area has been Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now Health and Human Services secretary, who founded the non-profit Children’s Health Defense in order to examine the link between routine childhood vaccinations and chronic disease in this country. Last week, he publicly vowed to get to the bottom of which “toxins” are causing autism, specifically, though he referred to one of the possible culprits as “medicines” rather than vaccines. 

Researchers behind the new study—which also included scientists from Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, and Texas A&M University—embarked upon their investigation because they were curious about when the impacts of the decline in vaccinations would be felt.

“Specifically,” said Lo, “we wanted to look at some key diseases that have been eliminated from the U.S. through vaccination, which means they’re not spreading within the country on an ongoing basis. These include measles, polio, rubella and diphtheria, which can have awful complications, like lifelong paralysis, birth defects and death.”

To do that, they used a large-scale epidemiological model to simulate all Americans, and then simulated how infections would spread under different vaccine conditions.

Eventually, said Lo, “you see sustained, ongoing transmission, meaning these diseases become endemic—they become household names once again.”

With measles—one of the most infectious diseases that exist, and more infectious than the others looked at in this study—researchers found that the U.S. is “already on the precipice of disaster,” said Lo.

If vaccination rates remain the same, he explained, “the model predicts that measles may become endemic within about 20 years. That means an estimated 851,300 cases over 25 years, leading to 170,200 hospitalizations and 2,550 deaths.” Measles is also more common globally, so travelers are most likely to bring it back, and the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is one of the most controversial, “partly due to a history of fraudulent medical research that raised safety concerns,” said Lo.

But the other diseases, the researchers found, are not likely to become endemic under current vaccination rates.

If vaccination rates were to fall even further, though, things would look more dire.

Measles cases would skyrocket to 11.1 million over the next 25 years if vaccine rates fell even by 10%, said lead author Matthew Kiang. And if those rates were cut in half, he said, “we’d expect 51.2 million cases of measles, 9.9 million cases of rubella, 4.3 million cases of polio and 200 cases of diphtheria over 25 years,” all of which would lead to 10.3 million hospitalizations, 159,200 deaths—and an estimated 51,200 children with post-measles neurological complications, 10,700 cases of birth defects due to rubella, and 5,400 people paralyzed from polio. 

“Measles would become endemic in less than five years, and rubella would become endemic in less than 20,” warned Kiang. “Under these conditions, polio became endemic in about half of simulations in around 20 years.”

In such a scenario, researchers note, those most at risk would be unvaccinated individuals, including babies not yet eligible for a first MMR dose (which is given at 12 months), as well as people who are immunocompromised.

Lo encouraged vaccine-hesitant parents to discuss the issue with their pediatrician “and believe in our health-care providers.” 

And, added Kiang, “It’s worth emphasizing that there really shouldn’t be any cases at this point, because these diseases are preventable. Anything above zero is tragic. When you’re talking about potentially thousands or millions, that’s unfathomable.

More on measles:

• As measles spreads throughout the U.S., here’s how to tell if you need a booster shot
• First U.S. measles death in over a decade: Unvaccinated child dies of virus in Texas outbreak that’s infected more than 120 people
• RFK Jr. touts vitamin A and cod liver oil as another death is reported in growing measles outbreak. Health experts warn the move is ‘misleading the public’

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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It's one thing to humble brag by posting a slew of photos of your cute kid to social media. But what's the emotion behind those actions? If it's pure pride and awe that you're feeling, then you're likely in a pretty good parenting place.

At least that's the theory behind new research out of Rochester University, published this week in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science after a team conducted a series of studies involving nearly 900 parents to look at how parental pride and awe affect aspects of well-being.

"Parental pride and awe are common and beneficial feelings parents can have with their children," said the lead author, graduate student Princeton Chee, in a news release. "Parents may feel proud when their child does something they worked hard to succeed in and accomplish. They may feel awe when their child does something amazing or completely unexpected that make them feel like saying 'woah' or 'wow.'" 

While both pride and awe proved beneficial, the feeling of awe appeared to have more profound effects on overall well-being. "We find that awe can actually strengthen parental well-being more broadly and holistically, compared to pride, making parents lives feel happier, more meaningful, and richer in experiences," Chee noted. 

Awe, the study found, connects parents to something larger than themselves, including the concept of parenthood itself, while pride is more about ego and accomplishments.

For example, the study found, although pride experiences most frequently centered on a child’s talent, experiencing awe was equally dispersed across talent, love/kindness, growth, and special
moments.

It's likely why awe showed stronger associations with purpose and meaning for parents.

"Awe in particular can help parents fully immerse themselves by making time feel like it's slowing down during extraordinary moments," said Chee. 

The researchers wanted to find ways for parenthood to be rewarding, particularly in the wake of the U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, calling parental stress a public health issue just last year.

"Our research finds that one way in which parenthood can be rewarding, rather than detrimental," said Chee, "is through feeling pride and especially awe with one's child." 

Awe, the researchers point out, needn't be reserved for major moments. "It doesn't have to be only once in a lifetime, extraordinary experiences in which parents feel awe," says Chee, but can be felt "through things as simple as weekend outings and quality time spent with one's child." 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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