Mattel introduces its first Barbie with Type 1 diabetes
In an announcement Tuesday, Mattel said it had partnered with Breakthrough T1D — a Type 1 diabetes research and advocacy organization formerly known as Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, or JDRF — to ensure that the design of the doll 'truly captures the community." That includes accessories that 'accurately reflect the medical equipment" people with Type 1 diabetes may need, the California-based company noted.
'Visibility matters for everyone facing Type 1 diabetes,' Emily Mazreku, director of marketing strategy at Breakthrough T1D, said in an accompanying announcement. And as a mother who lives with Type 1 diabetes, she added, 'it means everything to have Barbie helping the world see T1D and the incredible people who live with it.'
The new Barbie wears continuous glucose monitor (CGM), a device that tracks blood sugar levels, on her arm — while holding a phone displaying an accompanying app. She also has an insulin pump attached to her waist. And the doll carries a blue purse that can be used to carry other essential supplies or snacks on the go.
The Barbie's outfit is blue, too — with polka dots on a matching top and skirt set. Mattel says that this color and design are nods to symbols for diabetes awareness.
This new doll 'enables more children to see themselves reflected in Barbie,' Mattel wrote Tuesday, and is part of the company's wider Fashionistas line committed to inclusivity. The line features Barbies with various skin tones, hair colors and textures, disabilities, body types and more. Previously-introduced Fashionistas include a Ken doll with a prosthetic leg and a Barbie with hearing aids. Mattel also introduced its first doll with Down syndrome in 2023.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38.4 million Americans of all ages — amounting to about 11.6% of the U.S. population — were estimated to have diabetes as of 2021, the latest year with data available. About 2 million had Type 1 diabetes, including about 304,000 children and teens younger than 20.
Barbie's new doll with Type 1 diabetes was also introduced at Breakthrough T1D's 2025 Children's Congress held in Washington, D.C. this week, where the organization is advocating for continued federal research funding. This year, Breakthrough T1D has been particularly focused on the Special Diabetes Program, which is currently set to expire in September.
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The Guardian
9 hours ago
- The Guardian
AI-backed medical debt company claims payment plans can help US healthcare costs
The CEO of the artificial intelligence-backed medical debt purchasing company PayZen believes payment plans can be part of the solution to America's high-priced healthcare, even as consumer rights advocates warn third-party financial agreements lack transparency. The company is just one in a sea of healthcare financing companies, whose executives see 'acceleration' in conversations with cash-strapped hospitals facing historic Republican-led healthcare cuts. Signed into law by Donald Trump, the cuts are expected to leave 17 million people without insurance through 2034. As those uninsured people struggle to pay for healthcare, the change is effectively a cut to hospital revenue, and threatens some cash-strapped facilities with closure. 'We believe most people want to pay their bills – they're decent people trying to be responsible,' said Itzik Cohen, PayZen CEO. 'It's not a collections problem – it's an affordability problem.' PayZen's solution is to provide payment plans up to 60-months with 0% interest. 'If you extend the payment plan to three, four, five years … Then more people will pay their bills and successfully,' said Cohen. 'What we're trying to do is make it affordable.' PayZen's business model relies on buying debt from hospitals at a discount, and is backed by venture capital from groups such as New Enterprise Associates, a New York-based firm with big-name partners such as Dr Scott Gottlieb, the president's first-term Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner. NEA and Gottlieb deferred requests for an interview. PayZen may pay as little as 10% and as much as 90% of the value of the bill depending on an AI-backed prediction of whether the patient will pay, according to a 2022 contract with the University of Texas Medical Branch Health (UTMB) at Galveston obtained by the Guardian. The company then collects the full face value of the bill from patients. That same contract shows that PayZen also charges hospitals a transaction based 'platform fee'. 'PayZen charges a 5% platform fee to support outreach, enrollment, underwriting and serving all payment plans,' it reads. Cohen declined to comment on platform fees and said the 5% figure 'is not accurate and is not reflective of how our pricing works'. PayZen is part of an industry of companies, some of which provide interest-bearing financing, that help cash-strapped hospitals with a growing a liquidity problem. 'This is not a new business. It is based on an old model,' said Ge Bai, a healthcare finance professor at Johns Hopkins University's Carey School of Business. 'A hospital takes the unpaid bill to a financial institution, sells these bills to the financial institutions, then the financial institution will give them [the hospital] money immediately… It changes ownership.' Chief among hospitals facing liquidity problems are rural facilities – 153 of which have closed or lost key hospital services since 2010. For these facilities, government cuts, expected to result in an $87bn drop in revenue are only the latest blow. Over the last decade, insurers have increasingly pushed costs onto patients. From 2006 to 2025, the average deductible – an upfront payment that must be made before insurance kicks in – for a single person has grown from $303 to $1,562, outpacing inflation by more than 352%. Those payments represent a hardship for many Americans, more than one-third of whom can't afford an unexpected $400 expense. Unpaid, they also turn into bad debt on a hospital balance sheet. In 2022, people with health insurance became the largest group of patients in debt to hospitals – a sea change in the industry. And those debts, known as 'patient responsibility' or 'self-pay' are very hard for providers to collect. Companies like PayZen come in and pay hospitals up front for bills that might otherwise languish on the hospital balance sheet and become bad debt. 'Because of the growth in high deductible health plans, many people have $2,500, $10,000 [deductibles] for families – so they're really financing so much of their care,' said Richard Grundling, chief mission impact officer at the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA). Consumer advocates question the transparency of such deals for patients. 'I don't think there's any transparency to the patient that PayZen has just acquired this account at a fraction of its face value,' said April Kuehnhoff, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. UTMB Health confirmed that it does not tell patients that PayZen bought their debt at a discount. 'If the hospital was willing to accept this reduced amount, was there a discount that the patient could have accessed by directly paying the hospital instead of paying the full amount to this third party company?' Kuehnhoff asked. Advocates also argue there is a risk that low-income patients, who are often eligible for federally required discounted care, are caught up in payment plans. UTMB Health confirmed that PayZen does not screen patients for what is commonly called 'charity care,' despite performing a 'soft' credit pull and information on their debt and incomes. 'UTMB directs all patients to PayZen to discuss the terms and conditions of the specific agreements with PayZen,' said a spokesperson for the hospital system. 'We provide basic FAQ information, but the relationship is between the patient and PayZen.' Although PayZen relies on purchasing debt, Cohen objects to the label 'debt buyer', which he said refers to companies buying bundles of debt in default. Such companies were highlighted in a segment on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. 'Calling it debt buying is insulting to patients quite frankly,' said Cohen. 'When you purchase something with a [buy now, pay later] approach, is it debt buying? You're being offered a way to pay for your purchase in a convenient, integrated way that extends payments to you because now you can afford it.' Cohen said his company does not use 'extraordinary collection practices', such as filing debt law suits and objects to describing PayZen as 'buy now, pay later'. 'We never actually called ourselves 'buy now, pay later' for healthcare or 'care now, pay later'.' In fact, Cohen authored a 2021 blog post on the company website headlined: 'PayZen's 'Care Now, Pay Later' Mission.' He later clarified that his company has moved beyond that description. Cohen said PayZen is running a 'pilot' to pre-qualify accounts for charity care, but that only 'two to three' of the roughly 100 healthcare providers it works with participate. Some states require hospitals to screen patients for charity care. If hospitals continue to struggle to collect money from patients, Bai noted that 'hospitals will engage in even more aggressive mechanisms'. 'For example, all upfront payments – no payment, no service – this will happen,' Bai added. UTMB Health instituted one such policy, which was presented in a PayZen-sponsored report as 'masterclass in revenue optimization'. The hospital required patients to pay before seeing a doctor as early as 2019. However, the implementation reportedly led to loud exchanges in waiting rooms, as patients argued they could not afford to pay before seeing the doctor, according to local news outlets. In 2023, UTMB publicly affirmed its payment-first policy, and contracted with PayZen to provide patients with long-term pay plans through its AI-backed debt purchasing model. 'When thoughtfully implemented, pre-service payment policies can significantly increase collections without driving care avoidance,' the PayZen-sponsored report said.
The Independent
17 hours ago
- The Independent
At least 28 adults and 20 children starve to death in July as Gaza hunger crisis deepens
Five starving children at a Gaza City hospital were wasting away, and nothing the doctors tried was working. The basic treatments for malnourishment that could save them had run out under Israel's blockade. The alternatives were ineffective. One after another, the babies and toddlers died over four days. In greater numbers than ever, children hollowed up by hunger are overwhelming the Patient's Friends Hospital, the main emergency center for malnourished kids in northern Gaza. The deaths last weekend also marked a change: the first seen by the center in children who had no preexisting conditions. Symptoms were getting worse, with children too weak to cry or move, said Dr Rana Soboh, a nutritionist. In past months, most improved, despite supply shortages, but now patients stayed longer and didn't get better, she said. 'There are no words in the face of the disaster we are in. Kids are dying before the world,' said Soboh, who works with the US-based aid organisation Medglobal, which supports the hospital. 'There is no uglier and more horrible phase than this.' This month, the hunger that has been building among Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians passed a tipping point into accelerating death, aid workers and health staff say. Not only children – usually the most vulnerable – are falling victim under Israel 's blockade since March, but also adults. In the past three weeks, at least 48 people died of causes related to malnutrition, including 28 adults and 20 children, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday. That's up from 10 children who died in the five previous months of 2025, according to the ministry. The UN reports similar numbers. The WHO said Wednesday it had documented 21 children under five who died of causes related to malnutrition in 2025. The UN humanitarian office, OCHA, said at least 13 children's deaths were reported in July, with the number growing daily. 'Humans are well developed to live with caloric deficits, but only so far,' said Dr John Kahler, Medglobal's co-founder and a pediatrician who volunteered twice in Gaza during the war. 'It appears that we have crossed the line where a segment of the population has reached their limits. This is the beginning of a population death spiral.' The UN World Food Programme says nearly 100,000 women and children urgently need treatment for malnutrition. Medical workers say they have run out of many key treatments and medicines. Israel, which has let in only a trickle of supplies over the past two months, has blamed Hamas for disrupting food distribution. The UN counters that Israel, which has restricted aid since the war began, simply has to allow it to enter freely. Hundreds of malnourished kids brought daily The Patient's Friends Hospital overflows with parents bringing in scrawny children, 200 to 300 cases a day, according to Soboh. On Wednesday, staff laid toddlers on a desk to measure the circumference of their upper arms – the quickest way to determine malnutrition. In the summer heat, mothers huddled around specialists, asking for supplements. Babies with emaciated limbs screamed in agony. Others lay totally silent. The worst cases are kept for up to two weeks at the center's 10-bed ward, which has had up to 19 children at a time this month. It usually treats only children under five but began taking some as old as 11-12 because of worsening starvation among older children. Hunger gnaws at staff as well. Soboh said two nurses put themselves on IV drips to keep going. 'We are exhausted. We are dead in the shape of the living,' she said. The five children died in succession last Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Four of them, aged 4 months to 2 years, had suffered gastric arrest: their stomachs had shut down. The hospital no longer had the right nutrition supplies for them. The fifth, four-and-a-half-year-old Siwar – had alarmingly low potassium levels, a growing problem. She was so weak she could barely move her body. Medicine for potassium deficiency had largely run out across Gaza, Soboh said. The center had only a low-concentration potassium drip. The little girl didn't respond. After three days in the ICU, she died on Saturday. 'If we don't have potassium, we will see more deaths,' she said. A 2-year-old is wasting away In the Shati Refugee Camp in Gaza city, two-year-old Yazan Abu Ful's mother, Naima, pulled off his clothes to show his emaciated body. His vertebrae, ribs and shoulder-blades jutted out. His buttocks were shriveled. His face was expressionless. His father Mahmoud, who was also skinny, said they took him to the hospital several times. Doctors just said they should feed him. 'I tell the doctors, 'You see for yourself, there is no food,'' he said. Naima, who is pregnant, prepared a meal: two eggplants they bought for $9 cut up and boiled in water. They will stretch out the pot of eggplant-water – not even a real soup – to last them a few days. Several of Yazan's four older siblings also looked thin and drained. Holding him in his lap, Mahmoud Abu Ful lifted Yazan's limp arms. The boy lies on the floor most of the day, too weak to play with his brothers. 'If we leave him, he might just slip away from between our fingers, and we can't do anything.' Adults, too, are dying Starvation takes the vulnerable first, experts say: children and adults with health conditions. On Thursday, the bodies of an adult man and woman with signs of starvation were brought to Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, director Mohammed Abu Selmia said. One suffered from diabetes, the other from a heart condition, but they showed severe deficiencies of nutrients, gastric arrest and anemia from malnutrition. Many of the adults who have died had some preexisting condition, like diabetes or heart or kidney trouble, worsened by malnutrition, Abu Selmia said. 'These diseases don't kill if they have food and medicine,' he said. Deaths come after months of Israeli siege Israel cut off the entry of food, medicine, fuel and other supplies completely to Gaza for two and a half months starting in March, saying it aimed to pressure Hamas to release hostages. During that time, food largely ran out for aid groups and in marketplaces and experts warned Gaza was headed for an outright famine. In late May, Israel slightly eased the blockade. Since then, it has allowed in around 4,500 trucks for the UN and other aid groups to distribute, including 2,500 tonnes of baby food and high-calorie special food for children, the Israeli foreign ministry claimed on Wednesday. That is an average of 69 trucks a day, far below the 500-600 trucks a day the UN says are needed. The UN has been unable to distribute much of the aid because hungry crowds and gangs take most of it from its trucks. Separately, Israel has also backed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which opened four centers distributing boxes of food supplies. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed trying to reach the sites. On Tuesday, David Mencer, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister's office, denied there was a 'famine created by Israel' in Gaza and blamed Hamas for creating 'man-made shortages' by looting aid trucks. The UN denies Hamas siphons off significant quantities of aid. Humanitarian workers say Israel just needs to allow aid to flow in freely, saying looting stops whenever aid enters in large quantities.
Daily Mail
20 hours ago
- Daily Mail
I'm a doctor - this one household feature is slowly harming your health
A common household feature may be unknowingly creating an unseen health risk – and it's hiding in plain sight. According to GP Dr Emily Carter, older carpets pose an unexpected health threat. 'People usually think of carpets as harmless,' said Dr Carter. 'But old carpets can be a major source of indoor pollution.' Carpets are known to trap allergens like dust mites, pet dander, pollen, mould spores, and even chemical residues from cleaning products or smoke. Over time, these build up in the fibres and can trigger or worsen health issues especially in children, the elderly, and those with asthma or allergies. The difficulty is that this build-up can occur gradually - even when older carpet is regularly vacuumed or appears clean. There are certain recurring health symptoms to be on the look out for that may indicate that your home environment could be be impacting on your health. Signs include frequent sneezing, coughing, or itchy eyes while indoors, worsening allergy or asthma symptoms. Feeling tired or headachy without clear cause is another indicator. Sudden skin irritations - especially in younger children – can also result from carpet-trapped allergens. However, the tricky part with many of these symptoms is that many may be mistaken for seasonal allergies or minor colds. Dr Carter, who is also a UK-based mother of two young children, said she had seen first-hand the health issues that can be caused by older carpets. 'I've seen it in my own family, my youngest started getting skin rashes and breathing problems that we couldn't explain,' Dr Carter said. 'After having our carpets replaced and testing air quality, the symptoms started improving.' For anyone who is concerned about whether their carpet poses a possible health risk, the British doctor recommends a simple 'sniff test' as a first line assessment. 'If a room smells musty no matter how often you clean it, that's a red flag,' Dr Carter said. 'Especially in bedrooms, where people spend hours each night, clean air matters more than we think.' For families with babies, Dr Carter also urges extra caution: 'Young children spend a lot of time crawling and playing on floors.' 'Their immune systems are still developing, so they're more likely to react to mould spores and dust mites. If you notice frequent eczema flare-ups or a child often gets congested indoors, your flooring could be part of the problem.' According to My Home Improvements, most carpets should be replaced every 7–10 years, depending on usage, cleaning habits, and exposure to pets or dampness. The UK home renovation business suggests that any carpet over a decade old is likely to be 'past its best'. 'Your carpet is like a sponge, it absorbs everything that enters your home. Over time, it collects years of grime, allergens, and chemical residues that vacuuming can't always reach,' says an expert from My Home Improvements. 'Even professional deep cleans won't remove built-up toxins that have soaked into the padding underneath. 'Replacing old flooring might not be glamorous, but it could be the biggest upgrade you make for your health.'
