Read article – Quotes Jared Rhoads, a research project manager at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about a new study he co-authored on openness and access in health care systems, which has ranked Vermont as one of the most restrictive states in the country. Rhoads said the bad score reflects “state officials’ obsession for insurance regulation.”

Read article – Quotes Jonathan Skinner, professor of community and family medicine and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in Economics, about a study published in JAMA by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that maps out mortality trends by county and cause from 1980 to 2014.

Read article – Ellen Meara, professor of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and adjunct professor of economics, is quoted about about a new study published by JAMA that revealed the major causes of death for counties across the United States. “It is unique in its ability to track cause-specific death rates in small areas over a long time period, three decades,” says Meara, who was not involved in the study.

Read article – Quotes Alison Holmes, associate professor of pediatrics, about how the opioid epidemic sweeping through rural America has increased the number of drug-dependent newborns, and is putting a greater strain on hospital neonatal units.

Read article – Cites a recommendation by Michael Sateia, professor of psychiatry, emeritus, about how to treat a type of insomnia called early morning awakening, or waking up at 4 in the morning and not being able to fall back to sleep.

Read article – Quotes Stephen Bartels, professor of psychiatry, community and family medicine, and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, about the use of telehealth in rural areas. “We don’t have enough therapists in this state to have them drive two hours to help someone who is frail living in a log cabin,” Bartels said. “In rural areas, this is the future.”

Read article – Jonathan Skinner, professor of community and family medicine and of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, and the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor in Economics, is quoted about how U.S. life expectancy dipped by a little more than a month last year from 2014, to 78.8 years, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics. It’s the first decline in more than two decades. The decline “could be a blip, but even if it’s flat, we have a real problem,” says Skinner.