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Mother Jones
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Recently, bands in assorted colors began appearing on the wrists of everyone from young athletes to old lawyers. FitBits, FueldBands, and other wearable fitness trackers promised to enhance the health of the wearer by accurately monitoring every step, calorie, and sleep pattern. But, according to a new study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the apps on your smartphone do the job just as well, or even better—at least in terms of measuring your steps and your calories.
“There is strong evidence that higher levels of physical activity are associated with weight loss,” says Mitesh Patel, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine and health care management at the University of Pennsylvania. “For most adults that want to track their general activity, smartphones will meet their needs.”
Penn researchers compared 10 of the top-selling smartphone fitness applications and pedometers with wearable devices, tracking 14 healthy adults as they walked on the treadmill.
According to the results, the smartphones were just as accurate and consistent as wearable devices. Wearable devices had as much as a 22 percent variation in the range of step counts compared to the observed number of steps taken. There was only a 6 percent difference in the range of the step counts from smartphones in comparison to observable steps. The number of steps is important to accurately estimate the number of calories burned, which the apps and devices track by detecting the shifting position of your body.
If smartphones are just as accurate, why spend $100 or more on a fancy tracker bracelet?
“Smartphones may be harder to carry with more vigorous activity such as running or biking, and that might be one reason an individual chooses to use a wearable device,” explains Patel, pointing to an obvious objection for people who might reject smartphones as fitness trackers.
But fitness trackers still might not be the right choice for heavy exercisers. According to Live Science, a site that tracks scientific news, when fitness trackers first came out, workout enthusiasts were disappointed in the basic functions like step counters. “A lot of people stopped using fitness trackers altogether because it wasn’t telling much more then they already knew,” Wes Henderek, a market researcher at NPD Group told Live Science. JAMA also reported that only about 1 to 2 percent of adults own wearable devices, and one-third completely stop using the devices after only six months.
More than 65 percent of American adults own smartphones and generally carry them throughout the day. For those hoping to get a handle on how active they were during the day, smartphone applications that track food consumption, activity, sleep, and other health factors may be more convenient and less expensive.
“While smartphones and wearable devices can help track health behaviors, they may not alone drive behavior change,” says Patel. The key, he says, is to figure out how to engage individuals so they use technology to lead them to changing unhealthy behavior, especially those that most in need of making the change.
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Mother Jones
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In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that measles had been eliminated in the United States. Now it’s making a comeback, in large part due to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.
This year’s outbreak—more than 100 cases reported across 14 states—follows a dramatic rise in measles cases in 2014—644 cases across 27 states. In light of the the potentially deadly disease’s return, public health officials are expressing concern about rising vaccine exemption rates. Citing the risks of not vaccinating, Anne Schuchat, an assistant surgeon general and the director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, stressed that measles could get “a foothold in the United States and become endemic again.”
More stories on vaccines and outbreaks:
Vaccines Work. These 8 Charts Prove It.
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How Many People Aren’t Vaccinating Their Kids in Your State?
Measles Cases in the US Are at a 20-Year High. Thanks, Anti-Vaxxers.
This PBS Special Makes the Most Powerful Argument for Vaccines Yet
Mickey Mouse Still Stricken With Measles, Thanks to the Anti-Vaxxers
If You Distrust Vaccines, You’re More Likely to Think NASA Faked the Moon Landings
Every state requires children to get the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine before they enter kindergarten. (The vaccine is usually administered in two doses after a child’s first birthday.) All states offer medical exemptions for kids with allergies, cancer, or compromised immune systems. Most offer religious exemptions as well. And now a growing number of states—20 as of this year—permit personal belief exemptions (PBEs) that allow parents to not to vaccinate for reasons of philosophy or conscience.
Nonmedical vaccine exemptions—the rules that allow parents to opt their kids out of required vaccines based on beliefs—are on the rise. Over the past four school years, there’s been a 37 percent increase in exemptions filed. Between the the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 school years, the rate of of exemptions for incoming kindergartners jumped 30 percent. The CDC reports that 85 percent of people who go unvaccinated do so for personal or religious beliefs.
According to a 2012 study led by Saad Omer, a professor of global health and epidemiology at Emory University, allowing PBEs leads to fewer kids getting vaccinated. Opt-out rates in states with PBEs are more than double those in states with religious exemptions alone. These vaccination gaps result in higher rates of diseases like measles and whooping cough, especially in states where PBEs are easily obtained.
“We do know that states that have philosophical exemptions tend to have not only high rates of exemption but also high rates of disease,” Omer says. But some states grant exemptions more readily than others. In states such as Colorado, a parent’s signature is all that is required. But in states like Arkansas, parents must first establish why they are seeking an exemption or receive counseling from a health care provider. “We have found that the more difficult the requirements are, the lower the rate of exemption and the lower the rate of disease,” Omer says.
Looking at data from 1991 to 2005, Omer’s team found that states with easy exemption procedures had whooping cough rates up to 90 percent higher than states that made it more difficult to get exemptions.
Last year, nationwide vaccination coverage was at about 95 percent, and the median national rate of children with PBEs was 1.7 percent. That might not seem so bad. Yet because unvaccinated kids are often clustered together, one transmission of a highly contagious disease like measles can put many people at risk and set off a series of outbreaks like those happening now.
These “clusters of vaccine refusal” put two groups at risk, Omer explains. First are people who are not vaccinated, which may include infants and children with compromised immune systems. The other is people who have gotten their shots but did not get immunity—something that affects about 1 in 10 vaccine recipients, even with the most effective vaccines. “Even when it is a good vaccine and someone has done the right thing and gotten their kid vaccinated there is still a chance that they will be unprotected. So, their risk not only depends on their own vaccination status—but also what is happening around them.”
As Schuchat noted earlier this week, “The national estimates hide what’s going on state to state. The state estimates hide what’s going on community to community. And within communities there may be pockets. It’s one thing if you have a year where a number of people are not vaccinating, but year after year in terms of the kids that are exempting, you do start to accumulate.”
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More States Are Letting Parents Refuse to Vaccinate Their Kids
Mother Jones
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Update, February 2, 2015, 12:20 p.m.: In 2009, Christie wrote a letter in which he appeared to support the theory that autism may be linked to vaccinations. An excerpt from the letter, provided to MSNBC, below:
“I have met with families affected by autism from across the state and have been struck by their incredible grace and courage. Many of these families have expressed their concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the nation vaccine mandates. I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor in their fight for greater parental involvement in vaccination decisions that affect their children.”
Update, February 2, 2015, 10:30 a.m.: Gov. Christie’s office released a statement amending his previous comments to reporters, saying there is “no question kids should be vaccinated.”
.@GovChristie‘s office offers clarification on vaccine interview responses in press release pic.twitter.com/L3PpjrJrkB
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews)
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called for a “balanced” approach to childhood vaccinations, telling reporters on Monday that it’s important to provide parents a “measure of choice” in their decisions.
“Mary Pat and I have had our children vaccinated and we think that it’s an important part of being sure we protect their health and the public health,” Christie said during a press conference in Cambridge, England, where he is traveling on a trade mission. “I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well, so that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”
I asked Gov. Christie if Americans should vaccinate their kids. He says his kids are — but says approach should be “balanced”
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie)
“Not every vaccine is created equal and not every type of disease is as great a public health threat as others,” he added.
Christie’s comments come a day after President Obama urged parents to vaccinate their children in the midst of a widening measles outbreak that started in Disneyland. The highly contagious disease has since spread to 14 states with at least 102 cases reported, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I understand that there are families that, in some cases, are concerned about the effect of vaccinations,” Obama said in an interview with NBC Sunday. “The science is, you know, pretty indisputable. We’ve looked at this again and again. There is every reason to get vaccinated, but there aren’t reasons to not.”
The rise in parents who choose not to have their children fully immunized has been cited as one reason for a growing number of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks in recent years.
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Sika Eteaki lay in bed, shaking uncontrollably. The pillow and sheets were soaked through with sweat, but now he couldn’t get warm. It felt like there weren’t enough blankets in all of Lancaster State Prison to keep him warm.
Just a few months earlier, Eteaki had turned himself in for illegal possession of a firearm. He’d been arrested with a gun while driving back from a camping trip. He and his family had used the pistol for target practice, for fun, but a spate of nonviolent priors from the decade before had prosecutors threatening to put Eteaki away for years. Since those early arrests, Eteaki had turned his life around. He now had four kids under five, a renewed faith in Mormonism, and steady work at a foundry. The prosecutor went easy, and after months of negotiation, Eteaki pleaded guilty to felony firearm possession and got eight months in Lancaster, on the outskirts of Los Angeles. In July 2010, Eteaki’s wife, Milah, drove him to the Long Beach courthouse, outside LA, where he surrendered and entered the system.
A hulking if slightly overweight presence, Eteaki stood 5-foot-10 and weighed 245 pounds, with broad shoulders, tattoos, and close-cropped black hair. His family was from the Polynesian archipelago of Tonga, and he’d arrived at Lancaster a strong, healthy man. But a few months into his stay, he started getting headaches and running a fever. He’d landed a plum job in the prison’s cafeteria and didn’t want to risk losing it by calling in sick, so he suffered through what he figured was a particularly rough flu for a week. He stopped by the prison clinic and was given ibuprofen and told to drink more water. He didn’t get better. He went back to the clinic and got more of the same. After a few more days of delirium, Eteaki learned from another inmate how to get the docs’ attention: “Tell them your chest hurts.” The next day, he was admitted to the prison’s hospital with a high fever and a diagnosis of pneumonia.
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How the Government Put Tens of Thousands of People at Risk of a Deadly Disease
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