Monthly Archive for August 2008
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August 29, 2008
links for 2008-8-29
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Download the full report.
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A sweeping new report by the World Health Organization challenges governments to improve world health through smart social policy
Posted by: Staff on August 29, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Narrowing World Health Disparities
From Time.com:
On average, a black man living in Washington, D.C., does not live as long as a man in India, and he certainly doesn't live as long as a white man in his hometown. The reasons — just like the reasons that the Japanese and Swedes live longer than the Ukrainians, and why aborigines in Australia on average die 17 years earlier than non-aborigines — are almost entirely social, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) released today.
From the WHO press release:
A child born in a Glasgow, Scotland suburb can expect a life 28 years shorter than another living only 13 kilometres away. A girl in Lesotho is likely to live 42 years less than another in Japan. In Sweden, the risk of a woman dying during pregnancy and childbirth is 1 in 17 400; in Afghanistan, the odds are 1 in 8. Biology does not explain any of this. Instead, the differences between - and within - countries result from the social environment where people are born, live, grow, work and age.
You can read the official news release from the WHO at their website as well as download the full report.
Posted by: Staff on August 29, 2008
Category: Health Disparities Class; Heath Inequities; Social Determinants of Health
August 27, 2008
links for 2008-8-27
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A Case Study of Intra-institutional Determinants of Uncompensated Care at Healthcare Institutions With Differing Ownership Models.
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African-American children are 40 percent less likely to have preventive dental sealants than their white classmates. Among adults aged 35 to 44 years, 40 percent of African-Americans have tooth decay as compared to 23 percent of whites, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Posted by: Staff on August 27, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 26, 2008
links for 2008-8-26
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Small-town medicine in the Internet age
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U.S. nonprofit hospitals face mounting pressures that could adversely affect their bottomlines, according to reports released on Monday.
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Role model or rotten failure? That's what lots of Americans are asking themselves these days about Canadian healthcare.
Posted by: Staff on August 26, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 25, 2008
links for 2008-08-25
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According to a review of lobbyists' spending in Washington, D.C. during 2007, the health care industry itself spent $445 million dollars (nearly half a billion dollars) on lobbying contributions, 15.9% of all lobbying money spent during that calendar year.
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Four in 10 Americans had trouble paying for medical care in 2007, according to the Commonwealth Fund's latest study on medical debt.
Posted by: Staff on August 25, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 23, 2008
links for 2008-08-23
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In my work as a nurse care manager for inner city Latinos over the course of the last decade, I have witnessed first-hand how culturally appropriate health care can be delivered to under-served populations despite barriers of language, education, and socioeconomics
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Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them in 2006-2007 - and blacks, American Indians, and children with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study.
Posted by: Staff on August 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 22, 2008
links for 2008-8-22
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In my work as a nurse care manager for inner city Latinos over the course of the last decade, I have witnessed first-hand how culturally appropriate health care can be delivered to under-served populations despite barriers of language, education, and socioeconomics
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Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them in 2006-2007 - and blacks, American Indians, and children with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study.
Posted by: Staff on August 22, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 21, 2008
links for 2008-08-21
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Shifting financial responsibility to individuals has been an uphill climb.
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Diet, genetics, lifestyle and environmental factors could explain the higher rates of liver, stomach and gallbladder cancers.
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A 30-year-old Mexican man in a coma at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago has ignited a dispute over a little-known practice
Posted by: Staff on August 21, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Hospital ready to deport comatose illegal immigrant
Earlier we posted about a hospital (Martin Memorial) who deported an illegal immigrant.
Now the Health Blog is reporting that a Chicago hospital is ready to deport an illegal immigrant who suffered a brain hemorrhage last month.
The Chicago Tribune has the full story. The issue at hand is summed up nicely by James Geraghty.
"It's important to make sure that hospitals aren't permitted to dump patients on an international level when they can't do it on a local level."
The practice of hospitals dumping patients has been in the news recently with the settlement of a suit where a Hollywood hospital dumped a paraplegic man on skid row.
Posted by: Staff on August 21, 2008
Category: Heath Inequities; Immigrant Health
August 14, 2008
Ohio's uninsured population
Chris Seper writing at Cleveland.com:
New research seems to punch holes in commonly held beliefs about health coverage in Ohio: from the size of the state's uninsured population to the way employers have handled coverage.
A survey released Wednesday by The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati suggests the often-used statistic for the state's uninsured - 1.3 million children and adults - is too low. The foundation's Ohio Health Issues Poll says there are 1.4 million uninsured adults - about 16 percent of the adult population.
The actual number of uninsured is important as safety net hospitals pull back on who they provide charity care to.
While more uninsured people are being 'discovered' safety net hospitals are changing their practices and marketing strategies.
The Wall Street Journal writes:
A new appointment-setting system at a safety net hospital in Little Rock, Ark., has “privately insured patients waiting the least amount of time for an appointment and uninsured patients waiting the longest,” the report says, without naming the hospital.
And CQ Politics writes:
In some cases, community health centers marketed their primary care services more aggressively to attract privately insured patients. Among their marketing pitches were that they coordinated care more carefully and offered more advanced health information technology than private doctors’ offices.
You can read the abstract of the study on safety net hospitals at Health Affairs.
EXTRA: On Saturday, August 16th from 11 am to 3 pm the 12th Annual Body & Soul Health Forum will be held at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and hosted by the Minority Health Alliance. Free parking, museum admission, and free health screenings are available. For more information contact Angela Bailey at 216-444-0776 or Kimberly Sanders at 216-231-7700 ext 1089.
Posted by: Staff on August 14, 2008
Category: Health Care
August 13, 2008
links for 2008-08-13
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A Pew Hispanic Center report released today found that more than one-fourth of Hispanic adults in the U.S. lack a regular health care provider.
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A higher proportion of people in Appalachia abuse prescription painkillers than in the rest of the nation, and the problem is even greater in coal-mining areas such as Eastern Kentucky, according to a federal study.
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The report also states more safety-net hospitals are restricting care for uninsured people out of their areas -days after The Plain Dealer's report on MetroHealth's decision to block care to out-of-county patients.
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A Lorain County health center that served more than 12,000 low-income patients last year is running out of money and in danger of closing by year's end.
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The investigators report that stroke fatality at discharge was 5.7 percent among subjects younger than 59 years of age, 8.6 percent among those between the ages of 60 and 69 years, 13.4 percent among those 70 to 79 years old, and 24.2 percent among those 80 years of age and older.
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Hospitals meant to serve the indigent are increasingly looking for ways to shun them.
Posted by: Staff on August 13, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 12, 2008
links for 2008-08-12
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The NHS enters its 61st year in pretty good shape. However, despite improvements in health, there are enduring and widening health inequalities which should dampen the birthday celebrations.
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Volunteer clinicians play a critical role in the current U.S. safety-net health care system and in many health care coverage expansion proposals. Yet, bureaucracy and red tape make it excruciatingly difficult for well-intentioned clinicians to donate their time.
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The president of the Navajo Nation has vetoed a ban on smoking and chewing tobacco in public places.
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As an African American woman, a physician, and a reproductive-health specialist, I see on a daily basis the real-life consequences of unequal access to good health care.
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When we wrote last month about some new rules mandating better manners among hospital staff, it didn't occur to us that doctors were actually throwing scissors.
Posted by: Staff on August 12, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Health care inequality and abortion rates
In a commentary that appears in the Philadelphia Inquirer Melissa Gilliam writes:
Behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. African American women have higher abortion rates than their white peers because they have much higher rates of unintended pregnancy - three times higher than those of white women. In other words, there is no need to resort to far-flung conspiracy theories to explain the higher abortion rate among black women.
But there's more to the story. Across the board, African Americans often have worse sexual- and reproductive-health outcomes than people from other racial groups. For example, we experience much higher rates of sexually transmitted infections. These disparate rates reflect broader health disparities that can be seen in high rates of diabetes, obesity, heart disease or cancer.
The root causes are manifold: a long history of discrimination; lack of access to high-quality, affordable health care; too few educational and professional opportunities; unequal access to safe, clean neighborhoods; and, for some African Americans, a lingering mistrust of the medical community.
EXTRA: In a terrific blog entry, Rural Doctoring talks about a hair on the back of her neck.
Posted by: Staff on August 12, 2008
Category: African-American Health; Health Disparities; Health Inequities; Women's Health
August 11, 2008
links for 2008-8-11
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People who've exchanged wedding vows tend to be healthier than their single, divorced or widowed peers, but new research shows that health gap may be narrowing.
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Blogs written by medical professionals may pose a threat to patient privacy, because the authors of the blogs may inadvertently reveal patient information, says a U.S. study that's the first to examine the issue.
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A new report says Pacific Islanders are more likely than other King County ethnic groups to smoke, to have premature and unhealthy babies, to die young, and to be obese and poor.
Posted by: Staff on August 11, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 08, 2008
links for 2008-08-08
Male and Female Adult Population Health Status in China
Males had better health status than females in terms of self-perceived wellbeing, presence of illness, chronic disease, and quality of life.
Medicaid patients in Columbus may soon have one hospital choice
Medicaid patients in Franklin County may soon have just one choice of a hospital system after OhioHealth and Mount Carmel hospital systems announced plans to end contracts with Medicaid managed-care plan
The Dutch Health System: A Performance Report
The Dutch health care system obliges everyone living in the Netherlands to be insured against health costs. Hence, a basic package of health care is accessible to everybody.
Posted by: Staff on August 08, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Supermarkets, lottery, and low birth weight
In a study published in Health and Place researchers looked at how access to full service supermarkets might affect low birth weight.
The study looked at access to full service supermarkets and the sale of lottery tickets compared to intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). The researchers broke this data down into high and low risk areas based on, "an aggregate score for low birth weight, premature births, infant deaths, poverty and other economic indicators." Race and ethnicity did not factor into risk factor.
In their findings the researchers report little difference in "corner stores" in the low and high risk areas.
To determine the volume of lottery ticket sales a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the New York State Lottery.
We were struck by the lively business in lottery sales; 15 of the 18 corner stores in both the high- and low-risk areas sold lottery tickets. The mean yearly lottery ticket sales per store in the high-risk census was $249,904, compared with $167,501 in the low-risk census tracts. We examined this issue in greater detail and found that the small corner and convenience stores sold 68% of all lottery tickets in the city of Syracuse. [T]he median household income was inversely proportionate to the per capita lottery purchases, and these figures were significantly different between each stratum.
The researchers then looked at access to a full service supermarket and IUGR:
[C]ontrolling for race and Medicaid, the infants of mothers who resided in a non-supermarket census tract were three and one-third times as likely to have full-term unexplained IUGR, compared with infants of mothers living in a supermarket census tract. The second important finding in this analysis is that by including supermarket as a variable, race and Medicaid were no longer statistically significant. Living in proximity to a full service supermarket may thus explain much of the racial and poverty disparities in fetal growth.
And although not statistically significant, when they looked at the sale of lottery tickets and IUGR the researchers found that in the areas where residents spent on average $500 per year on lottery tickets unexplained IUGR was double that of those residents who spent $135 a year on lottery.
Lane et al. Health and Place, Volume 14, issue 3 (September, 2008), p. 415-423
EXTRA: If you missed last night's Dr. Anonymous show you can catch it in the archives.
Posted by: Staff on August 08, 2008
Category: Health Care
August 07, 2008
links for 2008-08-07
Perceived Medical Discrimination and Cancer Screening Behaviors of Racial and Ethnic Minority Adults
Researchers find a link between perceived medical discrimination and cancer screening behaviors.
HIV drug resistance found in China's poorest
More than 17 percent of HIV patients being treated for their infection in China developed resistance to available drugs by 2006 and 2007, according to a new nationwide survey.
Hospitals Charged With Using Homeless to Defraud Medicare
One of those stories you have to read to believe.
Ontario doctor uses lotteries to pare down patient list
Doctors in Canada are playing the lottery
Posted by: Staff on August 07, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 06, 2008
Podcasts - How to Subscribe
If you use iTunes you can subscribe to our podcasts by clicking the link Health Disparities Blog Podcast. This will launch iTunes. You can then click "subscribe" to automatically receive new podcasts when available.
For other podcast managers you can add the following link to your podcast feeds:
http://blog.case.edu/ccrhd/podcasts/rsscrhdpodcast.xml
Be sure to check out some of our other multimedia presentations by clicking on the Audio / Video link in sidemenu on the left.
Posted by: Staff on August 06, 2008
Category: Health Disparities Podcast; Podcasts
links for 2008-08-06
Millions of uninsured with chronic conditions not getting needed services
Most of the uninsured with chronic diseases, the study found, forgo doctor's visits and instead rely solely on emergency room visits for care.
Child health in India, China key to attaining world health goals
Despite stunning economic growth in China and India, child mortality rates remain high amid widening health disparities in the world's two most populous countries, a UN report said Tuesday.
Beckley conference on minority health disparity
The Fourth Minority Health Disparities in Rural Appalachia Conference is scheduled to take place Aug. 7 and 8 in Beckley.
Posted by: Staff on August 06, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
August 05, 2008
links for 2008-08-05
Picture project helps MetroHealth patients reduce blood pressure
A picture's worth a thousand pills.
School Districts launch diabetes program for Native American Youth
One in three Americans will develop diabetes in their lifetime, and the rate is even higher among American Indians.
Growing Epidemic in Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States
"The new estimates confirm that a vast majority of new infections in the U.S. occur in gay and bisexual men, and that Blacks are significantly more heavily impacted than other racial/ethnic categories. However, the data fail to clearly link the two, perpetuating a longstanding, damaging polarization," explained Walt Senterfitt, CHAMP board co-chair and an epidemiologist living with HIV who served as a Visiting Scientist at CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. "We need CDC to clearly show the HIV incidence numbers in gay men and other MSM of color."
Posted by: Staff on August 05, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Photovoice Exhibition
The upcoming Photovoice Exhibition is highlighted at Cleveland.com.
A picture's worth a thousand pills.
That's what 20 Clevelanders, armed with cameras and a couple of photography lessons, have discovered.
Posted by: Staff on August 05, 2008
Category: Photo Voice; photovoice
August 04, 2008
links for 2008-08-04
Los Angeles Bars Hospitals from Dumping Homeless Patients
In Los Angeles, a new city ordinance makes it a misdemeanor for health facilities to transport a patient to a place other than his or her residence without written consent, the WSJ reports.
Immigrants Facing Deportation by U.S. Hospitals
What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial.
Care for poor grows heavier for downtown Detroit hospitals
When it comes to the national problem of caring for the rising numbers of uninsured, Detroit is the canary in the coal mine.
Dilemma of declining revenues and patient care
Health providers want to provide quality care and improve patient satisfaction. Really, they do. It's just that pesky problem of declining reimbursements getting in the way of meeting those two key business objectives.
Posted by: Staff on August 04, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
Hospitals have the power to deport immigrant patients?
From NYTimes.com:
Eight years ago, Mr. Jiménez, 35, an illegal immigrant working as a gardener in Stuart, Fla., suffered devastating injuries in a car crash with a drunken Floridian. A community hospital saved his life, twice, and, after failing to find a rehabilitation center willing to accept an uninsured patient, kept him as a ward for years at a cost of $1.5 million.
What happened next set the stage for a continuing legal battle with nationwide repercussions: Mr. Jiménez was deported — not by the federal government but by the hospital, Martin Memorial. After winning a state court order that would later be declared invalid, Martin Memorial leased an air ambulance for $30,000 and “forcibly returned him to his home country,” as one hospital administrator described it.
EXTRA: If you're a researcher or academic and you travel abroad be aware that your laptop (and data) can be confiscated indefinitely.
Posted by: Staff on August 04, 2008
Category: Health Care; Immigrant Health