Chris Worsham

Need a reminder of what American science can accomplish? Go watch "Apollo 13"

My latest essay with Bapu Jena for Random Acts of Medicine on some of the lessons readily gleanable from the classic film, now 30 years old

www.randomactsofmedicine.com/p/need-a-rem...

My thoughts in this feature from @medscape.com on what is lost when we cut biomedical research funding www.medscape.com/viewarticle/...

Big Data Can Make America Healthier. How to Do It Right Two Harvard doctors offer some guiding principles.

My latest with Bapu Jena for @time.com Ideas Series: time.com/7291563/big-...

Apocalypse on the Runway: Revisiting the Tenerife Airport Disaster An attempt at a more thorough accounting of the deadliest air disaster in history.

For a written deep dive by the exceptional @kyracloudy.bsky.social Read “Apocalypse on the Runway: Revisiting the Tenerife Airport Disaster“ by Admiral Cloudberg on Medium: admiralcloudberg.medium.com/apocalypse-o...

John Nance YouTube video by LMSOS

John Nance, an aviation safety safety expert who has spent a lot of time working to bring that safety culture into health care, tells the story of the 1977 Tenerife disaster like no other. So many lessons for medicine that are still yet to permeate

youtu.be/5qDaIK9-HH8?...

Thanks for the kind words, Olly!

Book on coffee table. Front cover has a dartboard at the top and then text that reads Random Acts of Medicine / The hidden forces that sway doctors, impact patients and shape our health. / Anupam B. Jena M.D., PH.D. host of the podcast Freakonomics, M.D. & Christopher Worsham, M.D.

Finally got around to finishing this rather fascinating book full of unusual research and findings in medicine. Very US-focussed, but particularly enjoyed the final chapters on public health and what can actually influence uptake etc.

Random Acts of Medicine by @chrisworsham.com and Anupam B. Jena.

a man with a beard is sitting at a table with a cup in his hand . ALT: a man with a beard is sitting at a table with a cup in his hand .

What, are you too good for a crisp $5 gift card to Dunkin?

Proud of the work we did here exploring the effects of a quasi-random increase in gun availability on different varieties of gun violence, and thrilled to get a byline! Write-up in Times Ideas based on our study published BMJ:

A man hunting in the USA

The start of hunting season was associated with increased rates of hunting and non-hunting related firearm incidents in the US, finds this study, most plausibly because of the increased availability of firearms and ammunition
www.bmj.com/content/389/...

Our latest piece for TIME Ideas, based on our new study time.com/7277814/gun-...

Firearm availability and firearm incidents: quasi-experimental analysis using start of US hunting seasons Objective To take advantage of the arbitrarily timed increase in firearm and ammunition availability brought on by the start of deer hunting seasons to study its impact on hunting, and importantly, no...

Our latest out today in @bmj.com finds increases in firearm incidents during the beginning of deer hunting season in the U.S.--both hunting realted AND non-hunting related firearm incidents--using data from the Gun Violence Archive.

www.bmj.com/content/389/...

Very interesting and insightful perspective on whether zoster vaccines reduce dementia risk from @chrisworsham.com and Bapu Jena

t.co/EBUyx3kRbT

Could the Shingles Vaccine Help Prevent Dementia? The shingles vaccine may have a protective effect against dementia, write doctors Christopher Worsham and Anupam Jena.

"In an age where data are collected in nearly every aspect of our lives, troves of natural experiments in health care are waiting to be uncovered—as long as researchers have the opportunity and resources to find and analyze them."

Our latest for TIME Ideas: time.com/7275048/shin...

Geldsetzer Lab Recent Discovery Using unique natural experiments that avoid common biases, Pascal Geldsetzer and his team found that shingles vaccination has a large protective effect for dementia. The first study from his group was published in Nature in April 2025: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08800-x. His team is now trying to raise funds from private foundations and philanthropy to conclusively test this link in a randomized clinical trial. They want to trial a version of the old live-attenuated shingles vaccine, which is no longer being manufactured. If you are interested in helping to fund this effort, please reach out to pgeldsetzer@stanford.edu This video was directed by Stanford's Global Health Media Innovation Lab. Animation by Janine Van Schoor (janinevanschoor@gmail.com). Sound design by Misha Seeff @mishaseeff

Shingles vax appears to prevent dementia! Our Nature paper is first of many from my group to show this. We use a really neat natural experiment to provide causal (not just correlational!) evidence. Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...; video (👏 @DrMayaAdam): bit.ly/4ciRfLh

The New CDC Study on Vaccines and Autism Should Take a Radical Approach "An adversarial collaboration on vaccines could serve as a model," write Drs. Christopher M. Worsham and Anupam B. Jena.

If the CDC plans to dedicate resources to do a vaccine safety study, it should do so in a way that results can be trusted by mainstream scientists & skeptics alike. I write with Bapu Jena in TIME Ideas about an approach called "adversarial collaboration"
time.com/7272138/cdc-...

Medicare Competitive Bidding Program and the SOAR Act To the Editor Duan et al presented results of an important quasi-experimental analysis1 of the impact of Medicare’s competitive bidding program (CBP) for oxygen supplies on Medicare beneficiaries with...

Medicare's competitive bidding program for oxygen services brought down costs for pts with COPD, but the program is not a good fit for all oxygen needs, as I write in @jama.com Internal Medicine on the SOAR Act, a bill sponsored by @klobuchar.senate.gov & Bill Cassidy jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Women Live Longer Than Men—But Not in Medicine "What could explain this mortality puzzle?" write Dr. Christopher Worsham and Dr. Anupam Jena.

Our latest piece for TIME Ideas, based on findings from a new study out in JAMA Internal Medicine about mortality among health care workers.

TIME: time.com/7261514/fema...
JAMA IM: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Telemedicine Adoption and Low-Value Care Use and Spending Among Fee-for-Service Medicare Beneficiaries This cohort study aims to quantify the association between telemedicine adoption and low-value testing among fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries.

Congress must decide if it will extend Medicare telehealth coverage beyond March 2025.

Our new JAMA IM study shows how this may benefit Medicare patients + taxpayers.

TLDR: Telemedicine ⬇️ some low-value test use + spending (eg,onsite EKGs,blood tests) + ⬇️ total visit spending.
shorturl.at/w6l5l

Mortality Among US Physicians and Other Health Care Workers This cross-sectional study compares all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates among physicians, health care workers, and non–health care workers by sex, race, and ethnicity.

Physicians & most health care occupations carry lower mortality rates than the general population. Yet our analysis out today (led by Vishal Patel, link 👇), taking advantage of new data linking jobs to death records, revealed some surprising patterns among our ranks jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

🚨New paper🚨The emergency department (ED) is like a box of chocolates; you never know which doc you're gonna get. What happens when you get a doc that admits patients more often? Are you less likely to die? @stephencoussens and I explore this question in @JAMAInternalMed.🧵1/

Column: Why We Can't Rely on Science Alone to Make Public Health Decisions Discussing the tradeoffs in public-health decisions might help us make better choices, write Dr. Christopher Worsham and Dr. Anupam Jena.

Check out our new piece (with video!) in @time-magazine.bsky.social, about how science is often used to justify someone’s values, rather than inform tradeoffs based on those values, in debate on health issues (More to come with @time-magazine.bsky.social Ideas, too!)

time.com/7198764/scie...

‘It’s a Beaut, Clark!’ What’s It Take to Light Up the Griswold House? (Gift Article) The blinding light display in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” dazzled the Griswolds and nearly broke the power grid. What would it cost, and how much power would it really need?

I never would have thought that my love for both pulmonology and Christmas Vacation could overlap, but thanks to the Osterland family of Wadsworth, Ohio, they do! A tribute to the classic movie that supports cystic fibrosis research www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/u...

Check out this great writeup in @planetmoney.bsky.social by @elliswonk.bsky.social about our working paper and the types of cognitive biases that might be affecting medical care surrounding various holidays--or really any day
www.npr.org/sections/pla...

Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers | PNAS Structural MRIs of the brains of humans with extensive navigation experience, licensed London taxi drivers, were analyzed and compared with those o...

Actually I meant this one, but that one too: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

London taxi drivers and bus drivers: a structural MRI and neuropsychological analysis - PubMed Licensed London taxi drivers show that humans have a remarkable capacity to acquire and use knowledge of a large complex city to navigate within it. Gray matter volume differences in the hippocampus r...

This study was the inspiration for the paper: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17024677/

Alzheimer’s disease mortality among taxi and ambulance drivers: population based cross sectional study Objective To analyze mortality attributed to Alzheimer’s disease among taxi drivers and ambulance drivers, occupations that demand frequent spatial and navigational processing, compared with other occ...

Beep beep! Which occupations are associated with the lowest risk of death from Alzheimer's disease? Check out our analysis in @bmj.com Christmas Issue with some interactive graphics to explore links between Alzheimer's and navigational jobs 🚕🚑✈️🚢🚌 www.bmj.com/content/387/...

Our working paper out in @nberpubs.bsky.social: can we take advantage of Halloween to study the role of diagnostic subjectivity at the pediatrician?

Oh my