5SR - October 25, 2023

Hitha on male birth control, Britney Spears, and candy corn

Author

Hitha Palepu
October 25, 2023

Today’s curator is the founder of #5SmartReads, Hitha Palepu. She’s a consummate multihyphenate - CEO of Rhoshan Pharmaceuticals, author of WE’RE SPEAKING: The Life Lessons of Kamala Harris and How to Pack: Travel Smart for Any Trip, and professional speaker. Hitha is an unabashed fan of Taco Bell, Philadelphia sports teams & F1, romance novels, and is a mediocre crafter. She lives in NYC with her husband and two sons.

I’m bullish on mobile medical care as a whole (especially to provide access in areas lacking local healthcare providers).

I just never considered in-patient care as an option - but I’m thrilled to be wrong.

“Keeping patients in their own bed can have enormous benefits, including helping them get a better night's sleep and protecting them from exposure to infections, said Pippa Shulman, chief medical officer of Medically Home.

Seeing how pills are stored, what food is on the kitchen counter, and even signs a patient has a pet are all important treatment clues for providers when they visit a patient's home, Shulman said.

Beyond that, hospital-at-home programs could help fill critical voids as rural hospitals shutter, they argue.”

So what’s the catch? Because there is always a catch.

There are a few challenges to address before scaling up a program like this at the state and federal level - demonstrating improved costs and outcomes over a longer period of time (it’s currently rated as neutral by the Congressional Budget Office in terms of reducing strain to the system), and making the Medicare waiver program that enables this program a permanent one (it’s currently set to expire at the end of 2024).

I sincerely hope we do focus on both of them, as this fills an increasing need in healthcare delivery in the United States.

Candy corn is like Madonna - you either love it or hate it.

I’m a love-until-I-hate-it kind of person - every year, I’m so excited to dive into that first bag and inhale about half of it. It leaves me with such a terrible stomachache that the rest of the bag goes uneaten and I can’t touch the candy until the following year, when I repeat this cycle all over again.

It’s one of the only candies - or food - that garners such strong opinions. And there are plenty of people who do love it, as demonstrated by the 30M pounds of candy cord manufactured by Brach’s last year.

I enjoyed the history lesson and commentary of the controversial candy. And I realize I have yet to enjoy my love-to-hate cycle of candy corn this year, so I’ll be picking up a bag sometime today.

How much do you know about voter-approved children’s funds?

They could be the secret to help fund childcare around the country until we elect a Congress that will take decisive action on the issue. And while they require a fair amount of work at the state level, the success of state abortion measures shows that they are possible - and winnable.

And these are not party-line battles - these ballot measures (and the tax increases to fund them) have support from voters on both sides of the aisle.

“In 2020 Escambia County in the Florida panhandle approved the creation of a children’s service trust with 61% of the vote at the same time Trump won the area with 57% of the vote. Child advocates were able to bring on business leaders to support the proposal. After the community suffered $300 million in damage as a result of Hurricane Sally in September 2020, more leaders got on board with the idea that kids' services needed a stable source of funding, especially given the instability of the pandemic as well. The initiative is now raising $10 million per year for 10 years funded through a property-tax increase.”

Ghost Child (Vulture)

Did I wake up at 5 am yesterday just to begin reading Britney Spears’ new memoir? Yes.

Worth it? Absolutely.

This review goes into Britney’s perspective on the headlines written about her that we’ve all seen. While the headlines themselves aren’t news, revisiting them from her perspective and voice is something I encourage you do before reading the analysis in this piece. But I will leave you with one of the best sections, which sums up exactly how I felt about her memoir:

“The Woman in Me is many things — circular, repetitive, at times remarkably vivid, at other times maddeningly vague. But it is not inconsistent or incoherent. Britney’s central ambition remains constant: to express herself without thinking. Britney wants to move her body. She wants to “feel sexy” and likes “looking cute.” She doesn’t have an idea about the world that she’s trying to get across. Her drive for self-expression is wrapped up in a need to assert the fact of her existence. That’s why she turned to social media. “At a certain point, I’d rather be ‘crazy’ and able to make what I want than ‘a good sport’ and doing what everyone tells me to do without being able to actually express myself,” she writes. “And on Instagram, I wanted to show that I existed.””

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about Gabrielle Blair’s brilliant book Ejaculate Responsibly (and the maddening fact that both society and science have let ejaculators largely off the hook when it comes to the contraception burden).

Mercifully, there are some good men working on this issue. Plan A is the furthest along, and will make a massive impact in contraceptive care if and when it’s authorized by the FDA.

So how does it work?

“Plan A is intended to be administered during a quick outpatient procedure where our proprietary hydrogel, Vasalgel, is injected into the vas deferens (the tubes that carry sperm) to create a flexible filter that blocks the flow of sperm within the vas to prevent pregnancy. Since Plan A does not achieve its primary intended purpose through chemical action within or on the body, it is not a pharmaceutical. The design’s intent is to create up to 10 years of pregnancy prevention, with the hydrogel having the capability to be dissolved at any time through another outpatient procedure.”

The next battle in the fight for our reproductive rights will be over contraception, and the Dobbs opinion and the courts ruling to restrict mifepristone on a legal - NOT MEDICAL - argument shows me that a ban or severe restriction on contraception could win.

If Plan A was authorized by the FDA and had significant penetration (lol, I crack myself up), it would weaken their legal challenge quite a bit. This is a both/and issue for me - tracking the progress of reversible contraceptive measures in men, and helping expand contraception access to those who need it the most (which I support as a board director of New Morning and creating content for @forfactssake_)

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