Dear clients and friends: Given your interest in health and medicine, we would like to share with you our collection of the most interesting perspectives on our industry's trends and developments. We are happy to share them with you — and hope you share your thoughts with us.

1. Near the Doritos

Walgreens has announced it will launch a clinical trials business in its retail stores. Bloomberg reports that the new endeavor aims to not only connect pharma companies with Walgreens customers, but to diversify clinical trial participation:

“Our goal is to provide a flexible set of options so that we can bring the trials to patients,” said chief clinical trials officer Ramita Tandon, who was hired eight months ago to lead the business. “When manufacturers are looking to kick off a specific clinical trial, they’ll reach out to Walgreens to help them identify patients in local communities that they’ve never tapped into.”

2. China, et al.

Nature spotlights China’s rapidly growing scientific output and offers a clear reason why its rise will continue. “Money is the main thing here,” says Miguel Lim, a researcher at the University of Manchester. “There’s been a steady and enormous increase in research funding”:

According to an analysis of the Nature Index Annual Tables 2022, the 31 fastest-rising institutions, as judged by their change in adjusted Share, were all in China. Out of the top 50 fastest-rising institutions, just 10 were from other countries or regions. A similar pattern emerges when looking at China’s performance as a country alongside the other leading science nations in the Nature Index.

3. Africa’s COVID Non-Emergency

In Africa, just 17.4% of the population is double-vaccinated, the lowest of any continent. Yet not too many people are fussed. The Financial Times investigates:

“When you add together the low-risk perception because of the way most Africans have been infected, when you add the mistrust, then definitely people will not run to get the vaccine,” said professor Yap Boum, a Cameroonian epidemiologist and the regional representative for Epicenter Africa, the research arm of Médecins Sans Frontières. Covid-19 had “dropped way down the priority list” of health concerns in Africa, he said. “You have malnutrition in some countries, malaria, cholera, yellow fever, measles — why would you put Covid as a priority?”

4. The NIH Goes MIA

In The Atlantic, two professors make the case that the US’s pandemic response was missing a key piece: the NIH. The profs – each of whom has a stake in the NIH’s success – offer a Performance Improvement Plan to the $42-billion-a-year behemoth:

During the coronavirus pandemic, the NIH has appeared more a doddering, tired institution than a robust giant bestriding the gap between science and clinical care…The NIH, the largest public funder of clinical trials in the United States, should have been well positioned to create treatment guidance for doctors caring for patients hospitalized with a brand-new disease. The recent Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines for treating hospitalized COVID patients cite more than 40 published clinical trials. By our count, only a handful were generated by the NIH. Unfortunately, such failures are not an anomaly.

5. Not My Problem

A new study published in Social Science & Medicine finds an “ironic” outcome of the media’s coverage of racial disparities of COVID:

Media has extensively covered racial disparities in COVID-19 infections and deaths, which may ironically reduce public concern about COVID-19. In two preregistered studies (conducted in the fall of 2020), we examined whether perceptions of COVID-19 racial disparities predict White U.S. residents’ attitudes toward COVID-19. Utilizing a correlational design (N = 498), we found that those who perceived COVID-19 racial disparities to be greater reported reduced fear of COVID-19, which predicted reduced support for COVID-19 safety precautions.