Topic Page for Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-11-14
-
Most children actively notice and think about race. A new study has found that children develop an awareness about racial stereotypes early, and that those biases can be damaging.
-
New research published in the November issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows that African-American patients with colorectal cancer are more likely to be diagnosed with advanced disease and are less likely to undergo surgical procedures compared with Caucasians, suggesting that improvements in screening and rates of operation may reduce differences in colorectal cancer outcomes for African-Americans.
Posted by: Staff on November 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-11-12
-
This report was released by the World Health Organization about both women’s health needs and their contribution to the health of societies. Using current data, it takes stock of what is known about the health of women's lives and across the different regions of the world.
-
"There is room for you to make a difference."
That was the message last month at the New England Regional Minority Health Conference (NERMHC). Held from October 14 through 16 at the Westin Hotel in Providence and hosted by the RI Department of Health, the theme of NERMHC was “From Disparities to Equity: the Power to Make Change.”
Posted by: Staff on November 12, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-11-04
-
The Network for Multicultural Research on Health and Healthcare, a consortium of researchers from major research institutions around the country, examines health care disparities affecting minorities with chronic diseases and has produced a special supplement of the Journal of General Internal Medicine examining Latinos and health care, shedding light on important issues that have been left out of the health care reform debate.
-
The University of Kansas Medical Center has helped develop a program aimed at reducing smoking rates among residents of Native American Indian reservations, Indian Country Today reports.
-
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has awarded grants of up to $258,500 each to seven organizations to support the development and testing of interventions aimed at reducing racial and ethnic care disparities, AHA News Now reports.
Posted by: Staff on November 04, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-29
-
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a user-friendly document to help risk assessors understand how children are exposed to pollution.
More information on the documents: http://www.epa.gov/childexpfactors/highlights
A new study by Oregon State University researchers shows that those in poverty in rural Oregon often know what kinds of foods they should be eating, but face tough choices between eating well and spending less money for meals.
Posted by: Staff on October 29, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-28
-
Three studies presented this week at the American College of Gastroenterology's 74th Annual Scientific meeting in San Diego underscore the growing disparities in gastrointestinal disease, particularly colon cancer and Barrett's Esophagus, among certain ethnic and gender populations, including African Americans, Latinos and women. These race- and gender-specific disparities underscore the need for education and vigilance among these populations and perhaps more aggressive screening tactics than the population in general.
-
The study, reported in The Cereal Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score (FACTS) Report, was part funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was conducted by researchers from Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. It is being presented at Obesity 2009, the 27th annual scientific meeting of The Obesity Society, in Washington on 27 October. One of the findings from the researchers was that not one the cereals targeted to children in the US meets the nutrition standard required to advertise to children in the United Kingdom..
-
The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, examined data from national surveys taken from 1988 to 1994 and a second time period, from 1999 to 2004. In both time periods, men had more heart attacks than women. But the rates in men improved from 2.5% in the first time frame to 2.2% in the second time frame while women’s rates increased from 0.7% to 1%.
Posted by: Staff on October 28, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-15
-
"End-of-life care discussions appeared to be more effective in ensuring that white patients' treatment preferences were honored," said Holly Prigerson, PhD, senior author of the report in The Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study is posted on the journal's web site and will be published in a future print edition.
Posted by: Staff on October 15, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-14
-
A new study recently published online by the American Heart Journal shows that more than half of all randomized clinical trials, or RCTs, for cardiovascular disease are not reporting vital information about the study populations race or ethnicity.
-
The study published in the medical journal Chest, found that among 1,485 asthmatic children from four U.S. states, black children were twice as likely as white children to have gone to the emergency room for an asthma attack in the past year. Overall, 39 percent of black children had visited the ER, compared with 18 percent of white children.
-
A study being published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine calculates that people who live in neighborhoods that are conducive to physical activity and healthy eating have a 38% reduced risk of developing diabetes compared with people who don’t.
-
Children in Philadelphia who attended public schools and shopped at corner stores before or after school purchased almost 360 calories of foods and beverages per visit, according to new research published in Pediatrics.
Posted by: Staff on October 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-10
-
Discussion of a new report by the Commonwealth Fund that shows the wide disparities in health care across the U.S. and how each state fares in comparison.
Posted by: Staff on October 10, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-06
-
"Women's health advocates say issues such as maternity coverage and fair pricing affect far more women, who have received inadequate care and coverage for too long."
-
The rates are highest in Africa, but North America follows closely behind, concludes the first part of the report, a collaboration with the World Health Organization. The report, and its implications, are to be discussed this week at a child health meeting in India.
Posted by: Staff on October 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-02
-
"Before 1990, the mortality rate for both rural and urban communities had been about the same — and both were decreasing. Death rates in rural and urban America have continued to decrease since 1990, but the rate of decline has been much faster in urban areas" reports the Daily Yonder.
Posted by: Staff on October 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-10-01
-
This 8 page brief uses data from the 2008 Ohio Family Health Survey and identifies disparities in health behaviors, risk factors, family income and other issues.
-
Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2009-2010 was released September 30, and it shows that breast cancer deaths have been falling in the US since the early 1990s, with the biggest drops in women under 50. However, as of 2006, breast cancer death rates were 38 per cent higher in African American women than white women. The report provides possible explanations for that disparity.
-
There is rejoicing today at agencies that work with recipients of food vouchers through the Women, Infants and Children program in California. Starting Thursday, WIC recipients -- more than 8 million of them -- will be able to use vouchers to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, under a program revision that has been years in the making.
Posted by: Staff on October 01, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-30
-
The State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables, 2009 released includes information, policy, and behavioral indicators of fruit and vegetable consumption.
Posted by: Staff on September 30, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-29
-
A new study finds that diabetes significantly increases a woman’s risk of developing atrial fibrillation, a common and potentially dangerous irregular heart rhythm that doctors often miss.
-
Prostate cancer patients of low socioeconomic status are more likely to die than patients with higher incomes. That is the finding of a new study from Swiss researchers to be published in the December 1, 2009 issue of Cancer.
Posted by: Staff on September 29, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-24
-
"While we often hear media reports of genes that account for race differences in health outcomes, genes are but one of many factors that lead to the major health conditions that account for most deaths in the United States," said Thomas LaVeist, PhD, director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions and lead author of the study.
Posted by: Staff on September 24, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-19
-
"Racial health disparities cost the United States $229 billion between 2003 and 2006 — money that could help cover an overhaul of the nation's health care system, according to a new report by Johns Hopkins and University of Maryland researchers," The Baltimore Sun reports.
Posted by: Staff on September 19, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-17
-
The Alabama Department of Public Health announces a decline in Alabama's infant mortality rate in 2008, with a rate of 9.5 deaths per 1,000 live births and a total of 612 infant deaths. In 2007 Alabama's infant mortality rate was 10.0.
Posted by: Staff on September 17, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-16
-
"Ultimately, the research -- and the comments -- reiterate the fact that we should be careful with our assumptions. Broadly extrapolating results of studies done in men to women, perhaps especially when it comes to heart disease, is risky."
Posted by: Staff on September 16, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-14
-
The Joint Center's Health Policy Institute will unveil a study that estimates the direct medical costs of racial inequalities in health status and access to quality care. Findings will include specific estimates on the combined costs of health disparities for minorities over a three-year period (2003-2006), as well as estimates of how much in direct and indirect costs could have been saved in our health care system during that same period if those disparities for minorities had been eliminated.
WHEN: Thursday, September 17, 2009
8:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.The briefing will be available online. To view the live Webcast (8:15 a.m.), visit www.jointcenter.org/hpi
Posted by: Staff on September 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-11
Posted by: Staff on September 11, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-10
-
At a company event yesterday Apple announced a new iPod nano that has a pedometer. The step counts and estimated calories burned data collected by the iPod nano can be sent to the user’s Nike+ iPod account for tracking.
-
Rising obesity rates across the nation have led to worsening health outcomes and increasing inequities in health (1) -72 million American adults are now considered to be overweight or obese.(2) Additionally, economists have identified obesity as a major driver of health care utilization and spending, and contributor to escalating health care costs. In fact, a recent study published in the journal, Health Affairs found that obesity accounts for 9.1 percent of annual health care spending in the United States, nearly $150 billion dollars a year.(3)
-
The research is aiming to promote better understanding about lesbian and bisexual women's experiences of breast cancer and the findings will inform policy development.
Recommendations will also be made to cancer organisations and other facilities to help improve services.
The number of children dying before their fifth birthdays each year has fallen below nine million for the first time on record, a significant milestone in the global effort to improve children’s chances of survival, particularly in the developing world, according to data that Unicef will release on Thursday.
Posted by: Staff on September 10, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-08
Posted by: Staff on September 08, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-09-02
-
In a recent survey by the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, only one-third of parents gave their children’s public schools an “A” grade for offering healthy food choices, according to AnnArbor.com.
-
Recognizing that local government officials are eager to address the childhood obesity epidemic, The Institute of Medicine (IOM) produced Local Government Action to Prevent Childhood Obesity, a report that serves as a practical guide for government officials at the city, town, township or county level who want to take action to address healthy eating and active living.
Posted by: Staff on September 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-26
Posted by: Staff on August 26, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-25
-
Little tidbit for weight loss..
Posted by: Staff on August 25, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-19
Posted by: Staff on August 19, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-18
Posted by: Staff on August 18, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-13
-
A report, "Building a Comprehensive Child Vision Care System," found that children are being screened at low rates and those who are screened do not often receive the necessary follow-up and treatment they may require. Children without health insurance and those living in poverty are at the greatest risk.
"Children from low-income families lack the health care resources necessary to break the cycle of poverty," said David Rosenstein, DMS, MPH, Oregon Health & Science University professor emeritus. "This lack of vision care is handicapping our most vulnerable populations.
Posted by: Staff on August 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-12
-
The findings underscore a central obstacle in tackling childhood obesity, Skelton and his colleagues note: The children who are most affected also generally have the greatest difficulty getting good healthcare.
-
According to the report published in the journal BMC Public Health, over-indebted Germans are more likely to be overweight or obese than the population in general. The authors attribute this to the high cost of a healthy diet, lack of awareness of the availability of cheaper but nonetheless wholesome foods, but most particularly to the psychological and social stress experienced by over-indebted individuals. The result of this stress is that they tend to "comfort eat" and become less physically active.
Posted by: Staff on August 12, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-06
-
"Cancer is a disease that is cheaper to prevent than treat," says Michele Forman, Ph.D., a professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Epidemiology. "If we eat healthier meals and increase daily exercise, we could avoid about one-third or 186,000 cancer deaths this year."
-
"In young women ages 15-29, the torso is the most common location for developing melanoma, which may be due to high risk tanning behavior," according to Francesco Fusco, MD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Mt Sinai School of Medicine NYC and an educational spokesperson for the Skin Cancer Foundation."
Posted by: Staff on August 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-08-05
Posted by: Staff on August 05, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-31
-
Book Review in NEJM: The author argues for a "patient-centered bioethics" that pays attention to these problems and maintains a strong alliance with primary care medicine. This is, he contends, "the side of medicine most concerned about talking with and listening to patients and forging long-term relationships" with them. Brody also argues that bioethicists should talk with and listen to communities (not just patients), and in an insightful chapter, he compares and critiques several models of community dialogue.
-
Because Americans in the upper half of the income distribution devote a smaller share of their income to health care, their standards of living have yet to decline, but they, too, will do so in the coming decades if current trends continue. If health care reform based on private health insurance is to be sustainable, it has to be affordable for Americans across the entire income distribution. Achieving this goal will require both substantial cost containment and shifts in the distribution of health care costs within the population.
Posted by: Staff on July 31, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-30
-
"For the first time, we have evidence that the major difference in survival between black and white patients with head and neck cancer appears to be the rate of HPV infection. We found an astounding difference in prognosis between patients who are HPV-positive and those who are HPV-negative,"
-
Men who have a regular, ongoing relationship with a health care provider are more likely to receive prostate cancer screening and less likely to be diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, regardless of their race.
-
Alliance researchers will focus on several of the most successful approaches used to combat malnutrition and attempt to further enrich foods already used to fight it.
Posted by: Staff on July 30, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-21
-
The lack of cultural understanding between health-care providers and minority populations is a critical public health concern. As lawmakers work to reform health care, it's important that they address this problem which has long plagued America's health system.
-
Researchers seek out the genetic component that causes prostate cancer.
-
The number of people who went uninsured in 2008 may be over 50 million.
Posted by: Staff on July 21, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-17
-
Boston Medical Center filed suit yesterday against the state, accusing officials of illegally cutting payments made to the hospital for treating thousands of poor patients, a decision executives said could financially unravel the urban hospital’s key services.
-
Dale H. Yamamoto says that common provider fees, a national data warehouse, and a physician council are the keys to health care reform.
-
Who pays when a student-athlete gets hurt? Sometimes its the student.
Posted by: Staff on July 17, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-16
-
Disparities exist in who is obese. This study found that foreign-born black men were the least likely to be obese while U.S. black women were the most likely. Education, self-image, social stigma and other factors contributed.
-
How much are we willing to spend for six more months of life?
-
As unemployment rises more people are using programs that are funded at the state and federal level. The problem is, although utilization is increasing, funding isn't.
Posted by: Staff on July 16, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-15
-
Is donating a kidney a preexisting condition?
-
Maybe health care funding shouldn't be affected by swings in the economy.
-
The Boston Public Health Commission has launched a new campaign to help improve the survival rates for African-American women with breast cancer.
-
U.S. business will spend 9% more for health care costs in 2010 and with rising unemployment more people will be dependent on public programs.
-
A UCSF team has found that using a simple communication technology is more effective than traditional methods in managing diabetes in under-served populations that have communication barriers.
Posted by: Staff on July 15, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-14
-
Study reports that when socioeconomics, stage at diagnosis, and type of treatment were considered, race no longer predicted survival.
-
The [stimulus] bill offers medical facilities as much as $64,000 per physician if they make "meaningful use" of "certified" health IT in the next year and a half, and punishes them with cuts to their Medicare reimbursements if they don’t do so by 2015. Obviously, doctors and health administrators are under pressure to act soon. But what is the meaning of "meaningful use"? And who determines which products qualify? These questions are currently the subject of bitter political wrangling.
Posted by: Staff on July 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-13
-
The existence of health disparities between racial and ethnic groups is common knowledge among public health wonks. But the average American may find the numbers shocking: In impoverished urban areas like Harlem, one-third of black girls and two-thirds of boys who reach their 15th birthdays don't reach their 65th. That's almost triple the rate of early death among average Americans.
-
What happens when you forget to list hypertension as a pre-existing condition? The insurance company doesn't pay for your heart stent.
-
The Georgia Commission on Men's Health released its 2009 report earlier in the week. The study finds men live an average of five fewer years than women, with heart disease, stroke and cancer accounting for more than 50 percent of all male deaths in the state.
Posted by: Staff on July 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-10
-
Governor says universal health care too expensive for the state.
-
Women pediatric residents more likely to request and receive less money, receive lower scores.
-
Hospitals in Washington are required to provide free care to anyone living below the poverty line, if they ask for it. But some hospitals give more freely than others.
Posted by: Staff on July 10, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-09
-
Black women have a lower incidence of breast cancer than white women, but once diagnosed they are more likely to die of the disease. Now, two new studies add to the debate about the roles that access to care and biology play in this disparity.
-
"The greatly elevated risk of disability among Blacks aged 55 to 74 is largely explained by differences in socioeconomic status. Reductions in Black—White health disparities require a better understanding of the mechanisms whereby lower income and education are associated with functional outcomes in older persons."
-
[In the UK] some Parkinson's disease patients are going for years without seeing a specialist doctor or nurse.
Posted by: Staff on July 09, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-08
-
[One] selfless act started a chain of events that would allow not just one person to get a desperately needed kidney but eight people to get new organs to keep them alive and thriving.
-
Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer Mortality Are Not Driven by Estrogen Receptor Status Alone (NIH)Black women who are diagnosed with breast cancer have a higher probability of dying from the disease than white women, regardless of their estrogen receptor status, according to research from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. Differences in breast cancer mortality may reflect racial differences in access and response to innovative breast cancer treatments, as well as other biological and non-biological factors, according to the report. In addition, the researchers found that differences in outcomes in the first few years post-diagnosis make up nearly all of the disparity.
-
Published Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the study found that African-Americans were more likely than others to die of three gender-related cancers -- breast, prostate and ovarian -- even when they received the same advanced care from the same doctors. The researchers say the survival disparity persisted after they controlled for factors such as education and income.
-
Community Based Participatory Research manual now available from CEAL.
Posted by: Staff on July 08, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-07
-
McAllen [Texas], on average, now spends $14,946 on healthcare for every patient enrolled in the government's Medicare scheme, almost double the national average of $8,304 per Medicare enrollee.
-
[In the UK] at least 46% of ethnic minorities are unfamiliar or not sure about the signs and symptoms of the various forms of cancer or how to reduce their cancer risk even though 61% have had a family member suffer from cancer.
-
Qliance customers pay $99 to join, then a flat monthly rate of $39 to $119, depending on age and level of service. Patients can quit without notice and no one is rejected for pre-existing conditions.
-
To improve the likelihood of being heard, the health-care industry has hired more than 350 former government staff and members of Congress to lobby on their behalf.
Posted by: Staff on July 07, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-06
-
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are the freedom to direct ones own Life, to provide for ones own Health and to die with dignity—that to assist in providing such rights when otherwise unattainable, health professions are instituted among people, deriving their roles solely from the consent of the people they serve.
-
A free weekend of health care, canceled in May because of worries about the spread of swine flu, has been rescheduled for July 25 and 26 at two locations in Cleveland's University Circle.
-
How many nephrologists does the U.S. need?
-
There remains a 10-12 year gap in life expectancy at birth between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
Posted by: Staff on July 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-02
-
The emergency room at Melrose-Wakefield Hospital is seeing more patients over the past six months. Many with behavioral problems such as depression. The local police chief says they are making frequent trips to the ER.
-
Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and AMA president Dr. J. James Rohack discuss health care reform.
-
A two-year effort to create a countywide health program for Cuyahoga County's poor and uninsured is at risk of falling short of its ultimate goal as the group's members debate exactly how much money and other resources they are willing to commit.
-
Documentaries about health-care and food are all the rage. Cue the lights - bring the music up - action.
Posted by: Staff on July 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-07-01
-
Health insurance is supposed to offer protection — both medically and financially. But as it turns out, an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.
-
The widespread use of expensive cancer drugs to prolong patients’ lives by just weeks or months was called into question by an article published Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
-
The disagreement centers on a critical issue: What’s the best way to cover impoverished Americans? Is it by expanding Medicaid? Or by providing subsidies for the poor to buy private insurance on new health insurance exchanges to be created by the legislation?
Posted by: Staff on July 01, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-30
-
Because Insurance policies come with limits even the insured may not get access to new drugs or a needed transplant.
Posted by: Staff on June 30, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-29
-
More tests don't always equal better care.
-
From the journal Annals of Family Medicine
-
Almost 50 percent of HIV-positive American teens and young adults don't know they are infected, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
As the lobbyists watched the 22 senators, NPR watched the lobbyists — took panoramic photos of them, in fact.
-
Health clinic executives say the money will allow them to keep their doors open as the rolls of uninsured patients grow. An estimated 64 million people use rural health clinics, a number that is expected to rise as people lose their jobs and health insurance.
Posted by: Staff on June 29, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-26
-
No one can buy a transplant - but knowing how the system works is a definite advantage.
-
One out of five—that’s the latest CDC estimate of how many people living with HIV in the U.S. are unaware of their HIV status. Stigma around HIV remains a barrier for HIV testing. National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) is an opportunity to reduce HIV testing stigma and promote testing!
-
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin today introduced the Ending Health Disparities for LGBT Americans Act (ELHDA), the first comprehensive approach to improving all areas of the health care system where lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans face inequality and discrimination.
-
Research study finds that endoscopic and histological Barrett's esophagus was present more often in non-Hispanic whites than in African Americans.
-
It’s not difficult to get most Americans health-care coverage. If you make it accessible and affordable most people will buy it.
Posted by: Staff on June 26, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-25
-
Assistant U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Michele Moloney-Kitts and Christine Lubinski, head of the Center for Global Health Policy and Advocacy, answer viewer questions on President Obama's global health initiative and how it will shift U.S. global health priorities. (Transcript and mp3 available at link)
-
Massachusetts will cut some dental services, slow enrollment, and may eliminate coverage for legal immigrants from their 'universal' health coverage.
-
Greater Cleveland diabetes patients are showing health improvements in areas such as blood sugar control, but the gains are threatened by a growing number of people losing insurance coverage.
Posted by: Staff on June 25, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-24
-
Aboriginal children are among the most marginalized children in Canadian society. Despite some advances, in almost any measure of health and well-being, Aboriginal children – including First Nations, Inuit and Métis -- are at least two or three times worse off than other Canadian children. As children, they are less likely to see a doctor. As teens, they are more likely to become pregnant. And in many communities, they are more likely to commit suicide.
-
Huge geographic differences exist in cancer risk
-
Almost 2.2 million people lived in neighborhoods where pollution raised the risk of developing cancer to levels the government generally considers to be unacceptable. There, toxic chemicals were significant enough that people who breathed the air throughout their lives faced an extra 100-in-1 million risk of getting cancer.
-
The team of more than 30 researchers found that low-income women not only have more chronic diseases -- such as hypertension, arthritis and diabetes -- than their higher income sisters, but that their condition degenerates more quickly.
Posted by: Staff on June 24, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-23
-
Parents struggle to get insurance companies to pay for the newest treatment.
-
Americans are struggling to pay for healthcare in the ongoing economic recession, with a quarter saying they have had trouble in the past 12 months.
Posted by: Staff on June 23, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-19
-
Hospitals are reducing the number of Medicaid patients they accept including children covered under SCHIP.
-
Audio program from NPR's Fresh Air.
-
Physician heal thyself.
Posted by: Staff on June 19, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-18
-
Researchers found that black children with high blood pressure are more likely than other children to develop a thickening of the left chamber of the heart. Known as left ventricular hypertrophy, or LVH, the condition can lead to heart failure, rhythm abnormalities and death.
-
Executives of three of the nation's largest health insurers told federal lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for some sick policyholders, despite withering criticism from Republican and Democratic members of Congress who decried the practice as unfair and abusive.
-
Gov. Ted Strickland has floated roughly $2 billion in cuts to help close a $3.2 billion shortfall in the two-year state budget, a plan that would slash health care and other safety-net services for Ohio's poor.
-
People are afraid of losing their insurance in coming year. Nearly one in four people (23.6%) fear losing their health insurance at some point in the next 12 months.
Posted by: Staff on June 18, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-17
-
Reacting to a rising tide of anger from gay and lesbian supporters at a series of slights and deferred promises, President Obama will tomorrow extend some benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
-
Despite the overwhelming evidence that men are being left behind, the U.S. government has never made a concerted effort to address male health issues. Right now, there are seven (seven!) offices of women's health in the U.S. government: six in the Department of Health and Human Services and one in the Department of Agriculture. And the Pentagon makes huge investments in women's health research. Yet there is not a single federal organization that encourages and disseminates physical and mental health research for and about men.
-
Residents in the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles County continue to face living conditions that are significantly more unhealthy than more affluent areas.
-
Executives of three of the nation’s largest health insurers told federal lawmakers Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for some sick policyholders, despite criticism that the practice is unfair and abusive.
Posted by: Staff on June 17, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-16
-
Among cancers which affect both sexes, [in the UK] men are 60 per cent more likely to develop the disease and 70 per cent more likely to die from it.
-
Children belonging to ethnic minority and low-income groups face an increased risk of suffering from asthma, new research shows.
-
Insurance rules vary, but what often happens is that patients with private insurance end up paying all of the facility fee until they reach their deductible. At the nine Clinic facilities, for example, a person with a $25 co-pay now pays $80 for an office visit because of the $55 facility fee.
-
On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is "don't get sick after June," when the federal dollars run out. It's a sick joke, and a sad one, because it's sometimes true, especially on the poorest reservations where residents cannot afford health insurance. Officials say they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.
Posted by: Staff on June 16, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-15
-
HIV is impacting black women disproportionately, according to a recent report by the Florida Department of Health's Bureau of HIV/AIDS. It has been the leading cause of death among black women age 25 to 44 in Florida for the past 15 years.
-
British men may be literally dying as a result of their reluctance to see the doctor, researchers said on Monday with a new study showing they are nearly 40 percent more likely to die from any form of cancer than women.
-
Online version of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS report.
-
Measures of lead poisoning among Cleveland-area children younger than 6 have reached an all-time low. Cleveland's lead poisoning rate dropped from 46.6 percent in 1994, the highest in recent history, to just over 8 percent in 2008, the Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council announced Friday.
Posted by: Staff on June 15, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-11
-
NPR report on health disparities in minority women.
-
Bidding process for community health center may negatively affect Hispanic residents.
-
As the health care debate heats up, the American Medical Association is letting Congress know that it will oppose creation of a government-sponsored insurance plan, which President Obama and many other Democrats see as an essential element of legislation to remake the health care system.
Posted by: Staff on June 11, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-10
-
Ensuring that every American or Ohioan is insured is not the same as ensuring that everyone receives equal treatment.
-
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius newly released report on Health Disparities.
-
Black women in the District suffer from obesity, diabetes, heart disease and generally poor health in alarmingly high numbers, and white women do not.
Posted by: Staff on June 10, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-09
-
As part of the larger effort to overhaul health care, lawmakers are trying to address the problem that intrigues Mr. Obama so much — the huge geographic variations in Medicare spending per beneficiary. Two decades of research suggests that the higher spending does not produce better results for patients but may be evidence of inefficiency.
-
Parents may try to set an example by eating a healthy diet themselves, but a new study has found that their children are not paying attention.
-
Black, Latino and Asian lawmakers want President Barack Obama to focus more on racial disparities reported in medical treatment as the White House works toward overhauling the nation's health care system.
-
Black and Asian patients were more likely than white patients to report communication difficulties with their doctors in 2005.
-
Grassley Tweets, "Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a "hammer" u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL."
Posted by: Staff on June 09, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-05
-
Tourette syndrome occurs in 3 out of every 1,000 school-aged children, and is more than twice as common in white kids as in blacks or Hispanics
-
The issue of asthma in Puerto Rican Hispanics is critical. They are affected at a greater rate than any other group and no one is sure why. Potential causes include: lack of Spanish speaking health care providers, a genetic disposition, stress from living conditions, cultural practices, or simply sub-standard care.
-
In a study of 41 young people who received a liver transplant, receiving text message reminders helped improve medication compliance. Researchers measured the amount of anti-rejection drugs in the patient's blood. 49% of patients had low levels of anti-rejection medication in the year prior to the study. After they started receiving text messages that number dropped to 15%.
-
An increasing stream of uninsured patients into community health centers throughout Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky has extended waiting times and cut hours at some locations.
Posted by: Staff on June 05, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-04
-
Sedatives and sleeping pills prescribed to ease depression, anxiety and sleep problems appear to increase the risk of suicide four-fold among the elderly
-
Senator Baucus told single-payer advocates Wednesday that he regrets not allowing more discussion of the single-payer plan in his efforts to draft a health system overhaul proposal.
-
Dr. Rankin, professor of History at UT Dallas, wanted to know how to reach more students and involve more people in class discussions both in and out of the classroom.
-
Medical bills are involved in more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies, an increase of 50 percent in just six years.
Posted by: Staff on June 04, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-03
-
Research indicates that physical and mental stress in childhood may have life-long adverse health effects and policy initiatives are needed to emphasize the importance of starting health promotion and disease prevention early in life.
-
Hispanic children in Houston who had low SES ate 68% of their calories from soda, desserts, pizza, chips, fruit drinks and juice, and processed meats and burgers.
-
Blacks in South Carolina who are diagnosed with prostate, oral or female breast cancer die from the diseases at nearly twice the rate of whites.
-
Obama says Cleveland Clinic offers 'top-notch quality, lower costs.'
Posted by: Staff on June 03, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-02
-
Doctors are reducing fees and offering payment plans for out of work patients
-
New study finds widespread disparities in care received by those with mental health problems.
-
Some teenagers with depression don't seek treatment because of social stigma.
Posted by: Staff on June 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-06-01
-
Single payer advocates rally in Louisville, KY.
-
Asthma and diabetes are potentially preventable conditions because good outpatient care can help to prevent the need for hospitalization. Despite national efforts to eliminate health care disparities, low-income Americans continue to have higher hospital admission rates for asthma and many other conditions.
-
The American Medical Association is urging hospital leaders to contact their congressional representatives to oppose a federal proposal to set a minimum for charity care
Posted by: Staff on June 01, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-29
-
From the Journal Urology, May 2009.
-
Besieged by high medical costs and overcrowding, Ohio prison officials are turning to nursing homes to care for inmates who are medically incapacitated or terminally ill.
-
A recent study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said the number of uninsured Americans could jump to more than 65 million in 10 years as healthcare costs more than double.
Posted by: Staff on May 29, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-28
-
One in five adults said they had been told in the last 12 months that a doctor or clinic was not accepting new patients or would not see patients with their type of insurance. The rejection rates for low-income adults and those with public insurance were double the rates for higher-income residents and those with private coverage.
-
Today, BHN hosts the Health Wonk Review, the floating web digest of health policy blog posts.
-
The governor's proposal to whack an additional $5.5 billion from state programs stunned even longtime Capitol-watchers with its blunt force. Ending cash assistance for 1.3 million impoverished state residents, for example, would make California the only state with no welfare program.
Posted by: Staff on May 28, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-27
-
About 10% of small businesses are considering eliminating coverage over the next year
-
How a 'pre-existing' condition affects getting insurance coverage.
-
Blacks and Hispanics were less likely to discuss hospice when compared to white or Asian patients. Non-English speaking patients discussed hospice less than English speaking patients. Those covered under Medicaid were less likely to discuss hospice when compared to those with Medicare or private insurance.
-
Malnutrition is not a glamorous field, and so it’s routinely neglected by everybody — donor governments, poor countries and, yes, journalists.
-
Almost 25 percent of black women with advanced breast cancer refuse the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that could save their lives, a new study finds.
Posted by: Staff on May 27, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-26
-
Logic says that a referral should depend only on a patient’s needs and the reputation and skill of the physician to which the patient is referred. But medicine is a business too, so that isn’t how it always works in practice.
-
Maybe the answer isn't more money but rather better data collection.
-
Studies show that behaviors from virtual worlds can translate to the real world. Our survey suggests that users are engaged in a range of health-related activities in Second Life which are potentially impacting real-life behaviors. Further research evaluating the impact of health-related activities on Second Life is warranted.
-
"There has been a rapid rise in the number of retail clinics across the United States, but this growth is not evenly distributed across communities," says Craig E. Pollack, MD, MHS, an internist and Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar at Penn. "Poorer neighborhoods are less likely to have access to these clinics."
Posted by: Staff on May 26, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-21
-
Recent decades have seen a remarkable change in the delivery of health care services. Nurse practitioners now have much greater prescribing authority, consumers can purchase more than 700 over-the-counter medications once available only by prescription, and numerous devices have become available that enable a nurse, technician, or consumer -- rather than a physician or a laboratory -- to diagnose or monitor a medical condition.
-
Minorities continue to fight an uphill battle for a career in medicine and science. They are hampered by historically understaffed, underfunded and ill-supplied schools; a lack of career mentorship as well as institutional and historical racism and inadequate financial resources. Despite these obstacles, there are effective ways to reverse the inequities of minorities in medicine.
Posted by: Staff on May 21, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-20
-
The Kalamazoo County Board of Comissioners confessed shock and dismay at statistics that show that infant mortality and sexually transmitted disease rates are many times higher among young blacks than whites.
-
Ana Rodriguez was 7 years old and tethered to an IV the first time I met her. "I have special blood," she told me in 1995. "It needs extra care."
-
The group that represents Ohio's hospitals says the amount of care and services they give away is going up, and an increasingly sour economy is threatening to force cuts in some community services such as mobile mammography.
-
Dane County Jail inmates are now able to get free education in how to prevent and treat HIV, thanks to a Madison-based organization employed by the sheriff's office.
-
A detailed analysis of state-provided data has found racial disparities in health care among the three million New Yorkers in the state’s public insurance programs.
Posted by: Staff on May 20, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-19
-
Good pictures often tell stories. Researchers at MetroHealth Medical Center gave a number of cancer survivors and their caretakers cameras and told them to take pictures of things that speak to their experiences after they were diagnosed. Their work turned into an exhibit titled "Cancer Through the Camera Lens."
-
Ohio’s 178 hospitals said they provided a record amount — $2.2 billion — in charity care and other uncompensated benefits to their local communities in 2007
-
Why are hospitals keeping same-sex partners from the bedside of their loved ones?
-
New liver cancer cases among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are expected to soar in coming years, the result of persistently higher rates of chronic hepatitis B, a leading cause of the disease, and population growth as projected by the US Census.
-
Using evidence based medicine to design hospitals.
Posted by: Staff on May 19, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-18
-
Corruption and ineptitude aren't limited to health care, of course; they're endemic in most Iraqi public institutions. When it comes to public health, however, the repercussions are devastating, and they bring into sharp focus the failures that are threatening Iraq's American-financed effort to rebuild itself as a democracy at peace with itself and its neighbors.
-
Black and Latino children, whose communities tend to be more sensitive to economic fluctuations, will be affected most by these changes.
-
In June, the Cleveland Clinic will expand its presence in local barbershops and beauty salons with a pilot program designed to provide customers with blood-pressure tests and health education.
-
"When you control for their health status and all sorts of characteristics like age, [insured immigrants] actually have medical expenditures that are far below those of U.S. citizens."
Posted by: Staff on May 18, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-15
-
Patients who ride MetroHealth Medical System's free vans won a reprieve Thursday when Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones requested the service continue temporarily. Hospital leaders agreed to continue the service while they search for a solution with county officials. The two groups are slated to meet again next week.
-
A new report from the National Minority Quality Forum finds that appropriate medications for a variety of diseases often are under-prescribed, over-prescribed, or mis-prescribed for African Americans, Hispanics and Asian Americans.
-
A recently published study in the May edition of the American Journal of Public Health, has found that children who are the victims of racism are more likely to develop mental health problems as adults.
-
A photography exhibit highlights the struggle of cancer survivors.
Posted by: Staff on May 15, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-14
-
Thousands of Macedonian citizens, who previously had access only to emergency health care and certain hospital services, are now eligible to receive free primary care through the government. Coverage now extends to vulnerable segments of the population, such as the homeless, the elderly and the unemployed.
-
"What a disgrace that RNs and physicians are shut out and arrested while the insurance industry is given a seat at the table. We would expect that from the Bush administration, not in the time of the Obama administration," said NNOC/CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro. "The Baucus Committee can arrest nurses, but they cannot silence the voices of RNs who will continue to speak from their hearts on behalf of their patients who want and deserve real reform."
-
University Hospitals became the first Northeast Ohio hospital to reveal how much free care and community benefit it provides -- and the numbers signaled a growing need for low-cost medical care in the region. The health system, which provided its annual report for the past year during an evening gathering Tuesday, said the amount it gives to the community increased to $195 million last year, up 16 percent in 2007.
Posted by: Staff on May 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-13
-
Since early 2007, and under a mandate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to dramatically increase HIV testing nationwide, emergency rooms such as S.F. General's are moving toward a day when nearly every patient who enters its doors - whether for chest pain or a broken finger - is offered an HIV test.
-
In 2004, diarrhoea killed 1.8 million children, yet between 2004-2006 only $1.5 billion was spent globally on improved sanitation – vital in the fight to protect children from diarrhoea. In the same period, $10.8 billion was spent on interventions for HIV/AIDS (responsible for 315,000 child deaths), and $3.5 billion on those for malaria (responsible for 840,000 child deaths).
-
Consumer Reports' Nancy Metcalf says that many big-name insurance companies are offering those so-called junk policies. They look like a good deal because the premiums are low—but they're low for a reason. They are so riddled with loopholes, limits, and exclusions that they will not come close to covering your expenses if you ever fall seriously ill. More info at http://blogs.consumerreports.org/health/2009/04/junk-health-insurance-affordable-.html
-
While heterosexual couples typically don’t have to provide marriage licenses to hospitals in order to prove they are husband and wife, same sex couples often must document their relationship to hospital officials before being allowed to take part in a partner’s care.
-
Around the country, hospitals are now affiliated with more than 25 Wal-Mart clinics. The Cleveland Clinic has lent its name and backup services to a string of CVS drugstore clinics in northeastern Ohio. And the Mayo Clinic is in the game, operating one Express Care clinic at a supermarket in Rochester, Minn., and a second one across town at a shopping mall.
Posted by: Staff on May 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-12
-
Melanoma is the sixth most common cancer in men and women in the United States. This year over 60,000 Americans will develop melanoma. However, the incidence and mortality rate is higher for middle-aged and older men. Nearly 50 percent of melanoma deaths in the United States are in white men 50 years and older.
-
A study of residents of Illinois finds that city dwellers are more likely to have doctors spot breast, colorectal, lung or prostate cancer later in the disease's progression than their peers residing in the suburbs or rural areas.
-
Derek Beeston, Principal Lecturer in Ageing and Mental Health, Centre for Ageing and Mental Health, Staffordshire University, discusses the key issues of ageing and risk factors surrounding older adults and suicide.
Posted by: Staff on May 12, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-11
-
The research found three in ten of men would feel embarrassed about seeking help for mental distress, and just 14 per cent aged 35 to 44 would see a GP if they felt low compared with 37 per cent of women.
-
Just how much does it cost to have a baby?
-
A report by the Commonwealth Fund says seven of 10 working-age women -- or an estimated 64 million women -- have no medical insurance coverage or inadequate coverage.
-
For the vast majority of gay couples getting health insurance for a domestic partner is still a challenge.
Posted by: Staff on May 11, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-08
-
There have been substantial disparities in receiving recommended treatments between blacks and whites, and these disparities have been relatively stable without a significant trend of narrowing during the past 12 years.
-
Researchers found that most of the parents avoided seeking care not because of insurance status but rather because they could not find a doctor who speaks Chinese or could not find an interpreter.
-
What’s the real cost of health care for rural residents? Richard Oswald explains how labor and delivery equal debt for most young families. And the price only goes up.
Posted by: Staff on May 08, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-07
-
As they come to rely more on healthcare providers and caregivers for their needs, this makes LGBT seniors especially vulnerable. A few statistics highlight the needs of the LGBT elder community: LGBT seniors are five times less likely to access services than the mainstream senior population; 62 percent have no partner or live alone; 80 percent have no children; most lack traditional family support. Only 13 percent of long-term care facilities report sensitivity to sexual orientation included in their cultural competency or provider care training.
-
Two annual government reports released Wednesday show that progress in improving the quality of health care and narrowing health disparities among ethnic groups remains agonizingly slow, and that patient safety may actually be declining.
-
How does one measure, based on MGMA data, the “value” of an NIH grant, writing a peer-reviewed article, performing clinical research, or teaching medical students?
-
The second Commission chartbook investigating health across social and economic groups examines the differences in adults’ health based on their levels of education.
-
Sen. Chuck Grassley will remain on the Finance Committee at least through next year.
-
High cost sharing delays the start of drug therapy for patients with a newly diagnosed chronic disease.
Posted by: Staff on May 07, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-06
-
Insurance companies offered Tuesday to end the practice of charging higher premiums to women than to men for the same coverage.
-
Providing housing to chronically ill, long-term homeless adults reduces hospitalizations and emergency department visits, according to research conducted in Chicago.
-
Eight [single payer advocates] caused a scene at the start of a health-care hearing of the Senate Finance Committee today, getting up one by one and complaining that nobody who shared their view was getting a voice.
-
Nearly 2.3 million people in Ohio - most of whom have health insurance - spend more than 10 percent of their pre-tax income on medical care
Posted by: Staff on May 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-05
-
The media may be guilty of exaggerating the results of medical studies, but academic medical centers that hype the results aren’t blameless themselves.
-
St. Vincent Charity Hospital has spent almost a year on a narrow, focused experiment to foster the concept that would connect patients — particularly those who use its emergency department for regular care — with full-time physicians, keep patients’ tests up-to-date and encourage them to do more to care for themselves.
-
How a newspaper went undercover to break the swine flu story.
Posted by: Staff on May 05, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-04
-
Concerned about their own job security, many Japanese are seeing the homeless not as troubled individuals seeking handouts, but as victims of a failing economy and a government system that offered no safety nets.
-
Kettering Medical Center and other Kettering Health Network hospitals this year began to consistently request co-pays from patients, including those in their emergency departments.
-
Calls to local pharmacies suggest it's not uncommon for chain stores to charge significantly more for prescriptions for those without insurance. And smaller drug stores - such as the apothecary and other local pharmacies in the Hanover area - charge significantly less.
-
Every BMJ article published since the journal’s first issue in October 1840 is now available online from bmj.com. Introduction video available at http://www.bmj.com/video/stories.dtl
Posted by: Staff on May 04, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-05-01
-
Nearly half of the 428 employers polled said they plan to shift more health costs to employees in 2010.
-
About one in three thought that their doctor would be able to cure their diabetes or that they wouldn't always have diabetes, while most didn't know about the hemoglobin A1C test, a key gauge of long-term blood glucose control.
-
The number of new cancer cases diagnosed each year will jump 45 percent in the next two decades to 2.3 million up from 1.6 million in 2010, affecting many more older adults and minorities
-
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed changes to its dialysis reimbursement policy, making one lump payment to cover both dialysis and injectable medications, which were previously reimbursed separately. Researchers at the University of Minnesota caution that, because African-American patients require higher doses of costly blood-boosting drugs than Caucasians, facilities may be biased against treating them.
Posted by: Staff on May 01, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-30
-
Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review hosts the Health Wonk Review--The Best Health Care Posts on the Web!
-
Metropolitan Milwaukee ranks among the top 10 cities in the country where industrial pollution falls disproportionately on poor and minority neighborhoods
-
The NHS rationing body, NICE, has confirmed a ban on three out of four new treatments.
Posted by: Staff on April 30, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-28
-
African Americans have about a one-in-100 chance of developing heart failure while still in their 30s or 40s, a far higher rate than in whites, and their risk of heart failure at that age is closely tied to whether they have hypertension, obesity, or renal dysfunction earlier in adulthood.
-
Young adults have the worst access to mental health care and, despite links between offending behaviour, mental disorders and substance abuse, there are virtually no specialised adolescent forensic mental health services in Australia.
-
The number of Latinos without health coverage is about 10 percent higher in Nevada compared to most states.
-
In an upcoming issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers report that community health centers refer patients with heart problems to specialists less often than primary care providers in hospitals. It is unclear whether this reflects overuse by hospitals or underuse by community health centers.
Posted by: Staff on April 28, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-27
-
Kidney cancer patients with Medicare as their primary payer were more likely to have their kidney surgically removed entirely (radical nephrectomy) whereas those with private insurance were offered surgery to preserve organ function (partial nephrectomy).
-
Although the UK has a national health care plan age discrimination exists. Nearly half of British Geriatrics Society Doctors think the NHS is institutionally ageist.
-
Study reports that medical residents at hospitals with interpreter services often went without an interpreter because it was easier to 'get by' without one.
Posted by: Staff on April 27, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-24
-
There were 1.4 million Americans diagnosed with cancer last year. About 1,500 die daily from the disease nationwide, according to the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. For black women, the cancer death rate is 41 percent higher than white women. For black men with prostate cancer, the death rate is 238 percent higher
-
The World Health Organization says roughly 600 million people worldwide have disabilities. Eighty percent of them live in developing nations where disabilities are often viewed as shameful.
-
In 2005, medical care amenable mortality was the largest source of absolute black-white mortality disparity, contributing 30% of the black-white difference in all cause mortality among men and 42% among women
-
Doctors will triage their conversations with patients, categorizing discussions about advanced directives or risky medications as “high stakes,” and those that occur during routine rounding on a stable patient as “low stakes.” Doctors will then tend to use interpreters in “high stakes” conversations but will muddle through “low stakes” topics themselves, resorting to gestures, mimicry or bilingual family members in order to communicate.
Posted by: Staff on April 24, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-22
-
"If we look at the rate of an Aboriginal child dying compared to a non-Aboriginal child dying, the rate of difference is around three to four times that for Aboriginal children for infant mortality, for higher rates of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, childhood injury, suicide, accidental death"
-
State law requires hospitals that receive Hospital Care Assurance Program money to provide free care to patients earning up to the federal poverty level ($22,050 for a family of four). Beyond that, every hospital can decide how much assistance it wants to provide.
-
"There are so many types of payment systems, both public and private, that it's hard to understand," said Silbaugh. "No one pays the same price on anything.""There are so many types of payment systems, both public and private, that it's hard to understand," said Silbaugh. "No one pays the same price on anything."
-
Since Danna Walker lost her $37,000-a-year salary, the government’s recently enacted 65% break on Cobra health-insurance costs would still mean paying $476 a month for continuing coverage.
-
Our proposed reorganization, Medicare Expansion, would build a national care system by expanding on the existing Medicare program for citizens over the age of 65 years, with a gradual phasing out of state administered Medicaid programs. This restructuring would involve gradual changes in the age of eligibility into the Medicare system to include the most needy first, until eventually the entire population is covered. The first step in the Medicare Expansion program would be to enroll children under 5 years of age and pregnant women by the end of 2010.
Posted by: Staff on April 22, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-21
-
Globally the impact of poverty is pronounced; over 101 million children are deprived of a primary school education; 26,000 children under the age of 5 die each day, almost entirely due to preventable causes. Children that live with poverty are often said to suffer a double disadvantage, this refers to the fact that there are very strong correlations between poverty and negative outcomes (ill-health, shorter life expectancy, less education): a fact that is true for relative and absolute poverty.
-
"These findings provide strong circumstantial evidence that universal health insurance coverage sharply narrows disparities," wrote Ashwini R. Sehgal, M.D., of Case Western Reserve University, in an accompanying editorial.
-
Twenty percent of Americans say they have delayed or postponed medical care, mostly doctor visits, and many said cost was the main reason
-
Every so often reports on black and minority ethnic (BME) staff or service issues in the NHS are published. Each one is seized on by the media, BME organisations and the NHS itself to see what it has uncovered or recommended, and what its impact may be.
Posted by: Staff on April 21, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-20
-
More than one-quarter of Arizona residents do not speak English at home, according to the most recent Census data. Federal laws require any organization that receives government funds to provide interpretation services.
-
There have been substantial disparities in receiving recommended treatments between blacks and whites, and these disparities have been relatively stable without a significant trend of narrowing during the past 12 years. Efforts should focus on providing appropriate quality treatment and educating blacks on the value of having these treatments to reduce these disparities in receipt of treatment for NSCLC.
-
That is the beneficiary's only cost for up to 60 days of Medicare-covered inpatient hospital care in a benefit period. Many beneficiaries buy supplemental policies, known as "Medigap," to pay for deductibles and other costs not covered by Medicare.
-
A new study on patient empowerment in 31 European countries has found that there are great disparities in how health care consumers are treated among the different countries, in areas ranging from access to test results and specialists' opinions to the frequency of under-the-table payment for medical care.
Posted by: Staff on April 20, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-17
-
A statewide initiative now being circulated would create two kinds of birth certificates: one for the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants and one for everyone else. The measure also would deny publicly funded health benefits to the children of illegal immigrants.
-
M. Eileen Collins, 48, of Indianapolis, tried to scrimp on her medication last fall after her husband lost his job and with it their insurance. Without money for insulin, test supplies and other medicines, she asked for free samples and also got a few drugs through $4-a-month generic programs. But she stopped taking most of her drugs and cut her insulin doses in half to stretch her budget.
-
Health researcher fired because he didn't delay report on health disparities.
-
"The results of this study possibly reflect negative views, attitudes and behaviour of healthcare professionals towards older patients," say the authors, adding that: "rationing of care on the basis of age has occurred in other medical areas."
Posted by: Staff on April 17, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-16
-
recent reports have characterized West Virginia’s system for treating the mentally ill as one of the worst in the country
-
Latino workers were prohibited from speaking Spanish to Spanish-speaking nursing home residents, disciplined for speaking their native tongue in the parking lot on breaks and subjected to other forms of discrimination and harassment
-
Do we need any more proof that the phrase “health care marketplace” is an oxymoron? Looks more like administered prices by monopolists to me.
Posted by: Staff on April 16, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-14
-
"Today's economic woes are like none any of us have ever seen and the same is true for hospitals," said Caroline Steinberg, vice president for trends analysis at the American Hospital Association. "People are scared."
-
More and more, doctors and other health practitioners are asking patients — even those with insurance — to pay their share of the costs up front, either before they are treated or before they leave the office.
-
Black patients suffering from lung cancer are less likely to receive recommended chemotherapy and surgery than white lung cancer patients, a disparity that shows no signs of lessening.
Posted by: Staff on April 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-13
-
Non-profit hospitals in the Chicago area are sending some poor patients away, advising them to get care at the county’s publicly funded hospital
-
While the health of most Utahns improved significantly over the last two decades, minority populations continue to face higher rates of death and disease.
-
African-Americans have a higher cancer death rate than Caucasians, and this circumstance largely appears to be due to discrepancies in the incidence numbers for this disease
-
While cities have shown considerable racial disparities in cancer survival, those racial disparities virtually disappear among smaller populations, such as neighbourhoods within that city.
Posted by: Staff on April 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-09
-
to eliminate racial/ethnic disparities in alcohol-related problems, public health efforts must do more than reduce heavy drinking.
-
"Excuse me, sir," a Mexican man politely asks in accented English. "Are you looking for a good dentist?"
-
Too many minority women are ignoring their health before they get pregnant, and an alarming disparity in infant mortality is the result, Florida's top health officials warned Wednesday as they marked National Minority Health Month.
-
Recent trends in health care costs, health care coverage, and household income have contributed to growing disparities between different income groups in the United States.
-
Indian Americans may be at a higher risk for Vitamin D deficiency because of the amount of melanin in their skins, says the author of a new study, published this month in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
-
Too many minority women are ignoring their health before they get pregnant, and an alarming disparity in infant mortality is the result, Florida's top health officials warned today as they marked National Minority Health Month.
-
"California is making history through the implementation of this language access law, which will end the unnecessary distress and confusion many" limited English speakers experience.
Posted by: Staff on April 09, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-08
-
Both the insured and uninsured are seeing their doctor less.
-
While African-Americans make up only 12% of the U.S. population, they represent nearly half of new HIV infections and AIDS deaths every year, the CDC said. Many of those at the highest risk of HIV infection don't realize the level of risk they face or believe that HIV is no longer a serious health threat, according to officials.
-
TAP-IN -- the Third Age Professionals Initiative -- held its first volunteer recruitment open house in Northeast Ohio at the end of March. The organization plans two more in the coming month.
Posted by: Staff on April 08, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-07
-
Obesity is twice as common in young American Indian/Native Alaskan children as it is in white and Asian children, according to new research offering the first nationally representative analysis of obesity prevalence among preschool-aged kids in five major racial/ethnic groups. The analysis also shows that obesity prevalence is higher in Hispanic and black children than it is in whites and Asians.
-
A new Consumer Reports investigation finds that many people who believe they have good health insurance actually have coverage so riddled with loopholes, limits, and exclusions that it won't come close to covering their expenses if they fall seriously ill.
-
About 500,000 working-age Californians have lost their health insurance since the economic recession began in November 2007
-
Between 2005 and 2007, 87 percent of low-income children in Rhode Island lived in older housing, compared with 74 percent of all Rhode Island children, according to the 2009 Rhode Island Kids Count Factbook released today.
Posted by: Staff on April 07, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-06
-
The continuing lack of appropriately-trained interpreter services for migrant women has been highlighted in the media in the last couple of years, including one case of a young son who had to translate for his mother, who had just had a miscarriage.
-
One in five Americans does not have a family doctor and even many who do often are shut out of care, translating to higher rates of illness and death, and higher costs.
-
“Although we have made advances in reducing health disparities among minorities, we need to continue to work to eliminate these disparities. Statistics show minorities are heavily impacted by STDs, which is one of the reason numerous Minority Health Month events are focusing on education and awareness of STD/HIV/AIDS.
-
Experts warn that driven by profits from selling medicine, some doctors from Indonesia to Hong Kong are overprescribing medicines, a practice they say will be disastrous in the longer term.
Posted by: Staff on April 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-03
-
This updated fact sheet shows variations across states and racial and ethnic groups for six key health and health care indicators. It provides a quick glance at disparities in rates of infant mortality and diabetes-related mortality and AIDS cases in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as similar breakdowns showing the percentage of each group in each state that is uninsured, enrolled in Medicaid, and living in poverty.
-
The Cleveland Clinic announced Thursday that it will take over Medina General Hospital, investing $40 million in capital improvements.
-
The fact that a child's race, ethnicity and family income can be linked to their quality of health and care from doctors and dentists surprised nobody in the room of 225 people at Columbus State Community College yesterday.
Posted by: Staff on April 03, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-02
-
The researchers are with Project REECH. The word stands for research, engagement and education for community health. The project is an effort by the Case Center for Reducing Health Disparities and MetroHealth.
-
Some 20% of Medicare patients discharged from the hospital are readmitted within a month, and 34% return within three months, according to a study published in the current New England Journal of Medicine. Unplanned rehospitalizations cost Medicare $17.4 billion in 2004, the study says.
-
EARLY this year, Barbara Plumb, a freelance editor and writer in New York who is on Medicare, received a disturbing letter. Her gynecologist informed her that she was opting out of Medicare.
-
Inequality is Unhealthy: Dr. Stephen Bezruchka on How Economic Inequality is Dangerous to our HealthWatch the video at DemocracyNow.org
-
Chief Executive of the Alzheimer's Society, Neil Hunt, said: "One in three people over 65 will die with dementia, yet there is widespread failure to provide good quality care for people with this devastating condition.
-
Nearly half of Hispanics and American Indians in New Mexico went without health insurance at some point in 2007 and 2008, compared with 28% of whites
-
Minority groups are substantially underrepresented in New York's physician work force compared to their share of the general population, according to a study from the University at Albany.
Posted by: Staff on April 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-04-01
-
Poor harvests, drought and rising food prices could have serious health implications for people living in developing countries
-
Reed said a study of third-graders in Ohio showed the average body mass index, a scale for measuring obesity, is higher among those children living in rural areas. And adults in rural areas also are going without proper medical care. Reed said the diabetes rate in adults is 45 percent higher in rural areas of Ohio and heart disease rates are 52 percent higher.
-
If you have been a patient at one of Walgreens in-store clinics, you lose your job and have no health insurance, the clinic will treat you -- and qualifying family members -- for the rest of 2009 for free.
-
the rate of graft failure among African Americans was approximately 2-fold higher than for white patients over the entire study period. Graft survival has improved slightly more for African American than white pediatric patients over the past 25 years. However, graft survival for African American pediatric patients remains poor compared with white patients.
-
Are There Enough Doctors in My Rural Community? Perceptions of the Local Physician Supply
Posted by: Staff on April 01, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-31
-
Reform of the U.S. healthcare system is vital this year because of growing costs and worsening care, the Health and Human Services Department said in a report on Monday.
-
The idea that mammography may do more harm than good may be alien to many American women.
-
The watchdog said NHS trusts must do more to meet their legal obligations to promote race equality following a review, which showed that examples of good practice existed but many trusts fell short on meeting basic requirements.
-
The African National Congress (ANC) plans to introduce national health insurance in its next term in government, party president Jacob Zuma said on Tuesday.
-
The prevalence of diabetes is at least twice as high in some ethnic groups as it is in whites. This is true even among people with similar body mass index (BMI) numbers, a large new study finds.
Posted by: Staff on March 31, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-30
-
Indigenous children in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand experience higher rates of infant mortality, child injury, accidental death as well as a host of other health ailments compared to non-Indigenous children according to a new report released today by the Centre for Research on Inner City Health.
-
African-American men are 44 percent more likely to die from colon cancer than white men, and African-American women, 46 percent more likely to die than white women.
-
Last hired, first fired: This generations-old cliche rings bitterly true for millions of Latinos and blacks who are losing jobs at a faster rate than the general population during this punishing recession.
-
Even with Hennepin’s open-door policy, hospital officials say, getting health care is increasingly difficult for many illegal immigrants. Previously allowed to use Medicaid, people here illegally are no longer eligible, except for children, pregnant women or those with emergency cases. Some illegal immigrants are too afraid to approach a public hospital like Hennepin, fearful that any official interaction might tip off immigration agents.
Posted by: Staff on March 30, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-27
-
President Barack Obama should specifically address disparities in black unemployment, foreclosures, education and health care, the National Urban League says in its annual "State of Black America" report.
-
According to data released by the Missouri Foundation for Health, African-Americans are 2.3 times as likely to receive inadequate prenatal care than whites.
Posted by: Staff on March 27, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-26
-
Health disparities between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians will not end unless racism is tackled
-
A funny thing happened on the way to passage of Timothy's Law, which requires health insurers to provide coverage for mental illnesses. State legislators exempted three of New York's publicly subsidized health programs for low-income residents.
-
Inequality goes hand in hand with the social diseases that blight whole communities. The rational conclusion to be drawn from the mass of evidence that Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have assembled is that all of us, irrespective of income, have much to gain from the creation of a more equal society.
-
In Wisconsin, American Indians have the highest rate of diabetes, at almost six times the rate of whites. African Americans and Hispanics have the second and third highest rates, nearly one and a half times more than whites, respectively. Asians have a diabetes rate just slightly higher than whites.
Posted by: Staff on March 26, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-25
-
Social and economic gaps between whites and blacks persist in the United States despite an atmosphere that led to the election of President Obama, an Urban League report said.
-
The Obama administration has signed onto a United Nations official statement of support for “Human Rights, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity.”
-
The factors that feed our obese medical system are manifold. But three are especially troublesome. First, there is an unfortunate ethos within American medicine and society at large called “heroic positivism.” Essentially, it is the idea that the more we do to and for our patients, the more they gain.
-
Reductions to public health and nonemergency services by state and county health departments in response to the economic recession have resulted in limited access to care for undocumented immigrants
-
Forget about single-payer, which would be the easiest, fastest and most efficient way to cover everyone so the necessary national dialogue over how to control costs can begin. Many liberals, most Democrats in Congress, and President Obama chose a milder approach -- creating a government plan to serve as a default option for anyone or any employer who can't find an affordable option in the private marketplace.
Posted by: Staff on March 25, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-24
-
Community health centers saw a significant increase in patient load amid the state's efforts to improve health coverage by expanding public programs and making private insurance more affordable.
-
No one can deny the differences between ethnic groups when it comes to culture and language. But it seems race can dictate one's health, too. Some examples:
-
The worldwide epidemic of tuberculosis is mainly found in third world countries and is being monitored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About 1.5 million people die of TB every year. South Africa recently has been hit the hardest (infections of TB have almost tripled) because of the also high rate of HIV in people living there because treatment is expensive and ongoing and the patient’s immune systems are weakened.
-
A small recent study of refugees in schools in Stockholm found that Somalis were in classes for autistic children at three times the normal rate.
Posted by: Staff on March 24, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-23
-
Black patients wait longer for hospital beds after being admitted into the emergency department than patients of other races
-
African Americans have a shorter life expectancy than whites, and cancer plays a major role in this disparity. African Americans are more prone to get cancer; they tend to present at a later, deadlier stage; and they have poorer survival rates after diagnosis.
-
Despite the fact that colorectal cancer screening among Medicare patients is increasing, gaps still remain between whites — who are screened most frequently — and other racial and ethnic groups, according to a new study by the University of California, Davis and the University of Washington. The biggest gap is between whites and Hispanics, who are screened at 47% and 33%, respectively. Asians and Pacific Islanders were screened at 42%, and blacks, 38%.
-
IF YOU THINK this is the era of e-government and transparency, it's time to think again. Hard as it is to imagine, there's a move afoot in Congress to take away the public's free online access to tax-funded medical research findings.
Posted by: Staff on March 23, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-20
-
Overcrowded clinics in Chicago neighborhoods and area hospitals that refuse to give emergency contraception to rape victims are just some of the examples of health care disparity facing women and minorities
-
A report released Thursday shows more than 11% of the state's American Indian population has diabetes. The average for all Utahns is about 6%.
-
People in some parts of West Lancashire will continue to die much earlier than others within the district unless significant action is taken.
-
for most types of cancer, the disparity in mortality is almost entirely due to the fact that African Americans are more likely to get cancer in the first place. Their stage at presentation and survival after diagnosis play a much smaller role.
-
Eating out, lack of social support and high-risk lifestyles are just some of the barriers that stop patients with type 2 diabetes from controlling their condition, according to a research review that covered 8,900 patients and 4,550 healthcare providers from 28 countries.
Posted by: Staff on March 20, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-19
-
Heart failure—a disabling and often deadly form of heart disease—is hitting African Americans in their 30s and 40s at the same rate as Caucasians in their 50s and 60s, according to a study featured as the lead article of the March 19 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
-
Do racial and ethnic disparities persist in contemporary practice? If so, what are their health consequences? And how can these disparities be overcome?
-
According to the reports, the poor care results from unskilled or indifferent staff members at detention centers, overcrowding in facilities, bureaucracy, language barriers and limited services available to detainees.
-
Examples of system changes aimed at reducing wait times can be found at Parma Community General Hospital, with its Doc at the Door program
Posted by: Staff on March 19, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-18
-
Penn study points to need for regionalized emergency care system
-
With a large poor and minority population, the District of Columbia has struggled with HIV for decades. Its report on Monday showed the number of people with HIV infections rose 22 percent from 2006 to 2007.
-
Despite growing public support to ban the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals, a U.S. representative said on Tuesday efforts to move legislation through Congress this year could be met with resistance.
-
As a group, African-American women have the highest percentage of overweight/obesity in the United States. Three out of four African-American women are either overweight or obese.
-
Kidney disease is a growing problem in the United States, and certain racial and ethnic minorities, including African, Asian, Hispanic and Native Americans are at a higher risk than the general population for developing conditions that lead to kidney failure.
Posted by: Staff on March 18, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-17
-
Telehealth, sometimes referred to as telemedicine, is particularly valuable in Wyoming. The state's rural nature and sparse population make it more difficult to attract health professionals, and it reduces demand for highly specialized doctors. Many in the state's medical community see telehealth as a way to bring advanced care to the Wyoming's most remote settlements.
-
As the recession deepens, doctors and hospitals are reporting that hard-pressed patients are deferring elective surgery, like knee replacements and nose jobs, even as others are speeding up non-urgent procedures out of fear that they may soon lose their jobs and health insurance.
-
There are a lot of people other than doctors and nurses getting ready to volunteer
-
Even with health insurance, more than one million cancer survivors living in the United States report that they forgo needed medical care because of concerns about cost
Posted by: Staff on March 17, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-16
-
The number of uninsured children and seniors in Ohio has dropped in the last few years, but the number of working adults without health insurance has increased - causing the state’s overall uninsured population to climb by about 100,000, according to the 2008 Ohio Family Health Survey released today.
-
Illinois lawmakers recently unanimously passed a bill (HB 5192) that seeks to reduce breast cancer health disparities among minority and immigrant women
-
If the global economy were a 100-metre dash, the U.S. would start 23 metres behind its closest competitors because of health care that costs too much and delivers too little, a business group says.
-
Research has revealed that people with schizophrenia die on average ten years younger than the rest of the population,this has raised alarm bells among race equality experts because of the disproportionate numbers of black people who are routinely given this diagnosis.
-
Thanks to new taxes and fees imposed last year, the health plan’s jittery finances have stabilized for the moment. But government and industry officials agree that the plan will not be sustainable over the next 5 to 10 years if they do not take significant steps to arrest the growth of health spending.
Posted by: Staff on March 16, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-13
-
A new report by an independent watchdog group says inmates in New York State's 70 prisons lack adequate access to health care.
-
High blood pressure accounts for some of the disproportionately higher mortality rates among African American women with breast cancer compared with their Caucasian counterparts, according to an article in the International Journal of Cancer.
-
Restaurant group to challenge ruling that businesses with 20 more more employees have to offer health benefits.
-
With Inuit women three times more likely to die from cervical cancer than other Canadian women, it is clear that there is a vast health discrepancy here.
-
While the doctors were aware that dying patients might feel abandoned and even took what they believed were steps to prevent it, patients and their caregivers continued to feel abandoned by their doctors both in the period leading up to and at the time of death.
Posted by: Staff on March 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-12
-
Striking new research shows dying blacks and Hispanics in the U.S. have much steeper treatment costs than whites, sobering evidence that racial health-care differences continue right up until death.
-
From isolated reservations across the state to urban pockets around Seattle, Native Americans are dying at higher rates than a decade ago, at a time when most people in Washington are living longer, healthier lives.
-
U.S. lawmakers unveiled a bipartisan proposal on Wednesday to allow government approval for cheaper copies of biotechnology medicines that cost as much as tens of thousands of dollars per year.
Posted by: Staff on March 12, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-11
-
Three hospitals in the Cleveland-Akron area on Tuesday announced more than 200 layoffs and unveiled plans to shutter some programs and expand others to try and adjust to lower patient volumes and tough economic times.
-
The researcher, Dr. Scott S. Reuben, an anesthesiologist in Springfield, Mass., who practiced at Baystate Medical Center, never conducted the clinical trials that he wrote about in 21 journal articles dating from at least 1996
Posted by: Staff on March 11, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-10
-
More than three-quarters of adult Americans who have health insurance say they still worry about paying more for their medical care, and nearly 50 percent say they're "very" or "extremely" worried about the issue
-
“We have to face up to the fact that individual and collective mental health and well-being depends on reducing the gap between rich and poor. A large divide leads to a mentally unhealthy society, and many associated social problems. In the UK in particular, we’ve failed to acknowledge this link, preferring instead to blame the health and social conditions of those living on or near the poverty line on their own lifestyle choices.”
-
Dangling a financial carrot in front of doctors as a way to improve health quality has changed the way some doctors practice medicine, but has yet to significantly improve quality and may be interfering with doctor-patient relationships
-
In what may be an ominous sign for retail clinics, CVS Caremark has closed about 90 of some 550 MinuteClinic locations until the next flu season or other “seasonal” needs demand their services
Posted by: Staff on March 10, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-09
-
population research leaves more questions than answers when it comes to LGBT health
-
All in, the Harvard-affiliated hospital is on track for a $20 million operating loss this fiscal year
-
Blacks represent 19% of the county's population, according to state Department of Health epidemiologists; however, in 2008, 35%, or 26, of the 74 TB cases in the county were in U.S.-born blacks.
Posted by: Staff on March 09, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-06
-
Racial Disparities In Emergency Department Length Of Stay Point To Added Risks For Minority PatientsSick or injured African-American patients wait about an hour longer than patients of other races before being transferred to an inpatient hospital bed following emergency room visits, according to a new national study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine
-
The study suggests that independent grocery stores can improve access to healthy foods in areas where supermarket chains choose not to venture. Having a large grocery store in the neighborhood boosted the average fruit and vegetable intake by 0.69 servings per day.
-
Physicians for a National Health Program, a group of docs that claims 15,000 members and supports a single-payer system, had planned to demonstrate outside the White House today over what they said was the exclusion of single-payer advocates from the White House’s health-reform summit. But yesterday, PNHP canceled the protest — after the group’s president was invited to today’s meeting. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who backs a Medicare-for-All bill in Congress, was also invited.
-
“Place of residence plays a larger role in dietary health than previously estimated,” said Manuel Franco, MD, PhD, lead author of the studies and an associate with the Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology. “Our findings show that participants who live in neighborhoods with low healthy food availability are at an increased risk of consuming a lower quality diet. We also found that 24 percent of the black participants lived in neighborhoods with a low availability of healthy food compared with 5 percent of white participants.”
Posted by: Staff on March 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-05
-
The researchers found that the risk of severe complications, such as eclampsia and pulmonary embolism, was 80 cases per 100,000 maternities for white women. For black African women the risk was 188 cases per 100,000 maternities, rising to 196 for black Caribbean women.
-
Black heart attack patients living in racially segregated areas are 35% more likely than whites to be admitted to hospitals with higher mortality rates, even when hospitals that have better outcomes are geographically closer.
-
A study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco has shown that hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a predictor of mortality among breast cancer patients, especially those who are African-American, and that hypertension accounts for approximately 30 percent of the survival disparity between African-American and white breast cancer patients.
-
They're asking patients to agree to what amounts to a gag order that bars them from posting negative comments online.
-
Kathryn Kaiser doesn't think she actually has seen her doctor, even though she went to his office three times last year. When she made an appointment, the Scottsdale resident was directed instead to a nurse practitioner for an exam and prescription.
Posted by: Staff on March 05, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-04
-
Asian and Pacific Islander children living in the U.S. have higher rates of type 1 and type 2 diabetes than children living in Asian countries
-
Trends in Child Health 1997-2006: Assessing Black-White Disparities
Posted by: Staff on March 04, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-03
-
The project aims at improving patient health, clearing away barriers to medical care — and lowering the cost of that care — through a coordinated team of medical professionals who are centered around patient needs, MetroHealth said.
-
Elderly patients who undergo surgery at teaching-intensive hospitals have better survival rates than at nonteaching hospitals, but these better survival rates occur in white patients, not black patients
-
"Five or 10 dollars may not seem like much, but for the families being forced to pay it, it may mean they go without a meal," said Kucinich, a Cleveland Democrat.
-
Plunging revenues from investments have forced median profit margins for U.S. hospitals to zero, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis of hospital finances published on Monday.
Posted by: Staff on March 03, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-03-02
-
Washington’s Death with Dignity Act will take effect in four days, and doctors, pharmacists and health facility administrators are scrambling to figure out exactly what the law says and how they’re going to deal with it.
Posted by: Staff on March 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-27
-
"We're starting to see that people are delaying their access to health care," [Mark] Whitney said. "They are avoiding going to the physician's office, the emergency room or for other services."
-
Breast cancer kills black women in Chicago at a rate 68 percent higher than white women.
-
A new study suggests that the metabolic response to obesity and insulin resistance, particularly as it pertains to the liver, differs among ethnic groups in the U.S.
-
A new analysis from The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services indicates that a lack of access to eye care services for residents in rural and low-income areas has become a major public health crisis in America.
Posted by: Staff on February 27, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-26
-
According to data released Tuesday by the Missouri Foundation for Health, African-Americans are two point three times as likely to receive inadequate prenatal care than whites. They are eight times more likely to contract HIV. Thirty times more likely to contract Gonorrhea and four and a half time more likely to be the target of sexual abuse
-
"Our bottom line is, choose a diet that is good for your heart and there's a big range of what you can eat. Then just be reasonable about your intake. If you need to lose weight, eat less."
-
Asians living in Utah are less likely to suffer from chronic health conditions and are generally in better health than the general population, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Utah Department of Health....
-
The number of Americans without health insurance could rise by almost 10 million to 54 million in a decade if lawmakers fail to quickly enact policies that rein in costs and expand coverage, Congress' top budget analyst said on Wednesday.
-
More than a third of New York State’s recipients of Medicaid and other public health insurance programs fail to re-enroll on time, losing coverage even though they remain eligible, because of daunting paperwork and other obstacles, according to a new study.
-
Europeans with the least education have a higher incidence of lung cancer compared with those with the highest education. However, smoking history accounts for approximately half of this risk, according to a study in the February 24 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Posted by: Staff on February 26, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-25
-
More Americans will lose their health insurance as the economy weakens, health care becomes more expensive and fewer employers offer coverage, the U.S. Institute of Medicine said in a report on Tuesday.
-
Health care costs will top $8,000 per person this year, consuming an ever-bigger slice of a shrinking economic pie, says the report by the Department of Health and Human Services, due out today.
Posted by: Staff on February 25, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-24
-
Deep disparities also exist for nonwhite elders, some tracing to historical injustices that kept minorities from union jobs that offered pensions or steered them to low-paying manual work, according to the study. Seven out of 10 Latino and African-American senior citizens, and six out of 10 Asians, live below the survival standard.
-
Women are 30 percent less likely than men to receive a critical clot-busting drug than can limit brain damage after a stroke, according to a Michigan State University study.
-
Colon cancer patients who seek out more information about their care are more likely to be prescribed cutting-edge, expensive medications that aren't necessarily the best drugs for them, new research shows.
Posted by: Staff on February 24, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-23
-
One of the most vexing questions for doctors is why African Americans are much more likely to die of asthma. The easy explanation would be that they’re not getting preventive treatment, but the numbers are the same even among those with access to health care.
-
Lack of access to adequate women's health care puts rural women in the US at a greatly increased risk of poor health outcomes compared with women in urban areas.
-
A new study has found that people living in neighborhoods with a high number of fast-food restaurants could have a significantly higher risk for stroke
Posted by: Staff on February 23, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-19
-
Massachusetts members of the Physicians for a National Health Program released a report today faulting the state's experiment with health reform for failing to achieve universal coverage, being too expensive and draining funds away from safety-net providers.
-
MetroHealth Medical Center plans to introduce a new point-of service fee next month, changing the way it charges uninsured patients for the first time in nearly two decades.
-
Blue Shield’s monthly premium for a family of four in Los Angeles with a 40-year-old primary policyholder is $1,461. That’s $401 a month, or $4,812 a year, above the cap. Anthem’s 2009 monthly premium for the same family was $1,356 — $296 a month, or $3,552 a year, above the cap.
-
Using a range of data sources, we show that the cutbacks were followed by a major increase in the numbers of uninsured people, greater uncompensated care burden on hospitals, and revenue shortfalls that forced community health centers to obtain larger state grants and charge patients more.
Posted by: Staff on February 19, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-18
-
Gov. David A. Paterson of New York has proposed allowing parents to claim these young adults as dependents for insurance purposes up to age 29, as more than two dozen other states have done in the past decade.
-
Death rates from cancer — especially colon, lung and prostate cancer — continue to drop overall among African Americans, but the group still is diagnosed at higher rates, and die more often from the disease than their white counterparts.
-
Black Medicare beneficiaries gained no extra benefit by having surgery in a major teaching hospital, instead of a community facility, compared with the better outcomes enjoyed by white patients, researchers here said.
Posted by: Staff on February 18, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-17
-
Black Medicare beneficiaries gained no extra benefit by having surgery in a major teaching hospital, instead of a community facility, compared with the better outcomes enjoyed by white patients, researchers here said.
-
Giving people with type 2 diabetes the opportunity to help manage their care online can substantially improve their long-term blood sugar control, new research suggests.
-
In California, many women who are planning families pay higher premiums with larger deductibles to secure optional maternity coverage.
-
Recent results from a Tower Hamlets PCT text messaging campaign have shown that text messaging contributes to improved attendance for Breast Screening in Tower Hamlets.
Posted by: Staff on February 17, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-13
-
A report from the Internal Revenue Service found that a small minority of nonprofit hospitals provide the bulk of uncompensated care for the poor, rekindling concerns about the tax-exempt industry at a time when government aid to corporations is drawing fire.
-
Men have a lower life expectancy than women in all race and ethnicity groups.
-
Blacks and Hispanics in Kansas are more likely than whites to smoke, have high blood pressure, and be obese or physically inactive, according to a report released on Wednesday
-
The Cleveland Clinic is no longer content with merely providing care at its hospitals.
Posted by: Staff on February 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-02-12
Posted by: Staff on February 12, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-28
-
California insurers are discriminating against women, charging them more for individual health insurance than men, the city of San Francisco maintained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state regulators who govern them.
-
Women are less likely than men to receive kidney transplants, and researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that this gap primarily affects older women -- even though they fare as well or better than men their age after a transplant.
-
Using professional interpreters can also lead to better care for patients with limited English proficiency, but physicians and medical trainees underuse professional interpreters, frequently substituting their own limited spoken Spanish during clinical encounters.
-
Mississippi blacks fare worse than their white counterparts in terms of life expectancy and infant mortality, according to a county-by-county report released on Monday
Posted by: Staff on January 28, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-27
-
Western Pennsylvania has the highest rate of blacks progressing to end-stage renal disease, or complete kidney failure, according to the latest report from the U.S. Renal Data System.
-
Based on all three approaches for measuring disparities, researchers found that disparities between Hispanics and whites for two broad indicators of health care increased between 1996 and 2005, while disparities between blacks and whites remained roughly constant.
-
Drama over language requirements for the head of an improved trauma network in China.
Posted by: Staff on January 27, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-23
-
The U.S. agency responsible for keeping the public safe from harmful drugs and foods was added to a list of "high-risk" areas of the federal government because it may not be able to adequately do its job, the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday.
-
One in seven Americans under age 65 went without prescribed medicines in 2007 as drug costs spiraled upward in the United States, a nonprofit research group said on Thursday.
-
In the year following Hurricane Katrina, the health of survivors 65 and over declined nearly 4 times that of a national sample of older adults not affected by the disaster
-
People caring for family members with dementia commonly abuse them with behavior such as swearing and shouting, researchers said on Friday in a study that shows a more widespread problem than previously thought.
Posted by: Staff on January 23, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-22
-
Panelists who took part in a December 2008 webcast hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation voiced optimism that as president, Barack Obama will work to eliminate ethnic and racial disparities in health care.
-
Under a plan passed Wednesday by the State Council, China is set to spend more than $120 billion in the next few years to build hospitals and clinics as part of an effort to provide basic, universal health care. The government will also subsidize insurance to extend coverage to more of its citizens.
-
Dramatic improvements in U.S. air quality over the last two decades have added 21 weeks to the life of the average American, researchers reported on Wednesday.
-
Obama said he would address the disparity in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, in which rural providers often get paid less than their urban counterparts when they perform the same procedure.
-
Among patients with lung cancer, black patients are less likely than white patients to undergo recommended lung resection, but the disparity in treatment does not appear to have an impact on outcomes, according to research published in the January issue of the Archives of Surgery.
-
The recession has squeezed virtually all sectors and demographic groups. But black men, who have always faced higher unemployment rates than the national average, are taking a harder hit, data show.
-
People who live in poorer neighborhoods in the U.S. are less likely to have easy access to supermarkets carrying a wide variety of fresh produce and other healthy food, an analysis of 54 studies confirms.
-
As President Obama gets down to the business of increasing patients’ access to health coverage, some liberals in Congress are suggesting he take a page from the Bush administration’s playbook: expand community health centers.
Posted by: Staff on January 22, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-21
-
Children who suffer physical abuse, death of a parent or other childhood adversity and are anxious or depressed are at increased risk of developing asthma in adulthood, a study suggests.
-
Gordon Brown hailed the 'momentous day' for the NHS as the first Constitution ends the era of doctor knows best with list of rights and responsibilities for patients and staff.
-
The new president has spoken eloquently and accurately on the problems plaguing many minority communities. But he knows that it takes more than words to bring about change. That’s why, to fulfill his promise of a new, better America, the number one priority should be to fix the nation’s massive health care disparities as soon as he takes office.
-
Obama’s health care reform are focused on access, with cost second and quality somehow tied in. He didn’t mention access at all, and he tied quality and cost to science and technology.
-
Slowly, and somewhat surprisingly, health care is atwitter.
Posted by: Staff on January 21, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-20
-
Women are less likely to receive kidney transplants than men, and researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that this gap primarily affects older women — even though they fare as well or better than men their age after a transplant.
-
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is a failed agency that the public should not trust, Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Steven Nissen told The Plain Dealer in a preview of a talk he’s giving Monday.
-
Three-quarters of children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes had insufficient levels of vitamin D in a study conducted by researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center.
-
A new study from the Health Department reveals huge gaps in the care that New Yorkers with diabetes receive. If we see this in a city that is pro-active in diabetes care, then what is happening in the rest of the U.S.?
Posted by: Staff on January 20, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-16
-
In a year-long study conducted in Dallas County, Texas, women who called 911 for suspected heart-related symptoms had a 52 percent greater likelihood of experiencing delays in emergency medical services (EMS) compared with their male counterparts, even after adjusting for a number of factors.
-
Rural residents are more likely to suffer from diabetes by 16% than their city-dwelling counterparts, according to a first-of-its-kind study by researchers at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford.
Posted by: Staff on January 16, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-15
-
Even as President-elect Barack Obama plans an ambitious push to expand health coverage nationwide, states are slashing health services to their poorest residents amid the economic downturn.
-
Hispanic voters turned out in droves last fall to elect Barack Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill. Those allies get their first chance to return the favor on Wednesday when the House takes up a children’s health care measure that would grant Medicaid coverage to children of new immigrants whose families came to the U.S. legally.
-
India's fight to lower maternal and child mortality rates is failing due to growing social inequalities and shortages in primary healthcare facilities despite an economic boom, the United Nations said on Thursday.
-
Under the [California] law, which took effect Jan. 1, health insurers are required to provide patients who lack English comprehension with an on-site interpreter or access to one through telephone or Web-hosted videoconferencing.
-
More than half a million expectant and new mothers die each year, most in Africa and Asia where obstetrical and post-natal care is often unavailable and many pregnancies are complicated by HIV.
Posted by: Staff on January 15, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-14
-
The reality of social change during the civil rights period is more complicated and more accessible than any savior myth. Social change begins from the bottom up, with everyday people joining together to make a change. They learn the necessary tools for investigation as well as for resolving conflicts in a nonviolent fashion and for engaging the community.
-
Although more families are finding that they qualify for coverage for their children, many of the parents still make too much money to qualify for government-sponsored coverage, such as Medicaid, for themselves. The increase in requests for assistance also burdens already stretched state budgets.
-
Surveillance data show higher rates of reported STDs among some minority racial or ethnic groups when compared with rates among whites.
Posted by: Staff on January 14, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-13
-
In Jacksonville - More than 13 percent of black infants are born with a low birth weight, compared with 7 percent of white babies.
-
New findings are grim for women and their loved ones. Women who have the most serious type of heart attack and get to the hospital in time are less likely to get proper treatment and are less likely to survive than a man.
-
The Food and Drug Administration does almost nothing to police the financial conflicts of doctors who conduct clinical trials of drugs and medical devices in human subjects, government investigators are reporting.
Posted by: Staff on January 13, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-10
-
Younger women have equal access to kidney transplants compared with their male counterparts, but older women receive kidney transplants much less frequently than older men, new research shows.
-
Criticism by a national accreditation group over a lung cancer study that failed to disclose an author’s financial conflicts has led The New England Journal of Medicine to change its procedures.
-
If an HMO and an ER can’t agree on what emergency care should cost, they shouldn’t take it out on the patient. That, basically, is what the California Supreme Court ruled yesterday.
Posted by: Staff on January 10, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-08
-
Medicaid provides coverage to poor and disabled Americans, many of whom face the highest burden of chronic disease owing to cultural and socioeconomic challenges. The program beats being uninsured, but it often relegates the poor to inferior care.
-
Seniors who were hospitalized for a psychiatric illness were less likely to get recommended follow-up care if their Medicare plans required that they pay more for mental health care than for other medical care, researchers have found.
Posted by: Staff on January 08, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-07
-
Adolescents aren't just big kids, and too many start falling through cracks in the health care system when they pass the stage of preschool shots and summer camp checkups — what a major new report calls missed opportunities to shape the next generation's well-being.
-
Because of long waits, some children who are brought to an emergency room never get treated before they and their caretakers have to leave.
-
In a bid to put to rest legal troubles over a practice of canceling patients’ health insurance policies after they got sick, Blue Shield of California has agreed to grant coverage again to nearly 700 such patients.
Posted by: Staff on January 07, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-06
-
Women with early-stage breast cancer may live longer if they maintain a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy, a new study suggests.
-
...as part of the informed-consent process, doctors have an ethical obligation to tell patients if they are more likely to survive, be cured, live longer or avoid complications by going to Hospital A instead of Hospital B.
-
One person is diagnosed with diabetes every three minutes* in the UK, according to new figures from Diabetes UK.
Posted by: Staff on January 06, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-05
-
In an article today, Canada’s National Post suggests that the increased demand that would follow health reform could lead to an exodus of Canadian doctors to the U.S.
-
105-seconds isn't long enough to discuss the benefits of transradial angioplasty
Posted by: Staff on January 05, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2009-01-02
-
...the scarcity of general surgeons, most acute in rural areas where population density is too low to support the legions of surgical specialists that cluster in cities.
-
People who live on Syracuse's South Side in ZIP code 13205 are about 3 1/2 times more likely to be hospitalized for preventable illnesses than Skaneateles residents who live in ZIP code 13152.
Posted by: Staff on January 02, 2009
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-31
-
"Communities are no longer interested in simply being a subject of a study," said Austin. "They want to engage in a process with the researcher that helps them address some of the pressing issues they confront."
Posted by: Staff on December 31, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-30
-
Fifty-eight percent of children had a documented autism spectrum disorder. In adjusted analyses, children who were Black, Hispanic, or of other race/ethnicity were less likely than were White children to have a documented ASD. This disparity persisted for Black children, regardless of IQ, and was concentrated for children of other ethnicities when IQ was lower than 70.
-
Community health centers throughout the state are seeing a dramatic increase in patients requesting service, leaving many patients to wait weeks for follow-up care.
Posted by: Staff on December 30, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-29
-
Partners HealthCare, the umbrella organization over Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals in Boston, tends to get substantially heftier fees from insurers than other hospitals in the area.
-
A majority of Maryland's hospitals have received surpluses from free and unpaid care in recent years, though they are supposed to break even in the long run.
Posted by: Staff on December 29, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-23
-
...calls for the Grady Health System to require Fulton and DeKalb County patients who earn between 126 and 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines to pay for 40 percent of their care, up to 25% of their annual income.
-
The University of South Florida tracked new clients of various Medicaid programs for three years. A report issued in 2007 illustrated managed care's little secret: When time came for the nursing home, most people disenroll from managed care and fell back on regular Medicaid.
-
In England and Wales, the admission rate to paediatric intensive care is higher in children from more deprived areas and 36% higher for children from the south Asian population. Risked-adjusted mortality increases in south Asian children as deprivation decreases.
-
The median cost of attending a year of medical school, including all fees, is now $62,243 at private schools and $44,390 for state residents at public schools.
-
This holiday season reminds me of 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, a young African American who died in the shadows of our nation’s capital last February from a toothache that progressed to a brain abscess.
Posted by: Staff on December 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-22
Posted by: Staff on December 22, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-19
-
Hospital executives in the Dayton area are saying that rising unemployment and a worsening economy over the past year have led to a drop in the percentage of patients who are privately insured.
-
Not everyone in Ontario has the same access to specialty care.
-
How much is Medicare’s unfunded liability? Adding up Medicare Part A, Part B, and Part D ... $85 trillion
-
American College of Physicians President Jeffrey Harris sent a letter yesterday to HHS nominee Tom Daschle (pictured) asking that the Obama administration’s economic-stimulus package include a 10% pay bonus for all services provided by primary care docs under Medicare for a period of 18 months.
Posted by: Staff on December 19, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-17
-
When supporters of President-elect Barack Obama hold house parties to discuss ways of fixing the health care system over the next two weeks, they may find some unexpected guests. The health insurance industry is encouraging its employees and satisfied customers to attend.
-
The incidence of colorectal cancer is declining in the United States, but blacks are developing the disease and dying of it at higher rates than whites, and the racial gap is widening, the American Cancer Society has reported.
-
According to researchers discussing the issue during a session on emergency department crowding at the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Scientific Assembly held here in October, the current system of offering hospital beds on a first-come, first-served basis favors patients undergoing elective procedures that are scheduled sometimes days or weeks in advance. These patients also are more profitable to a hospital than patients admitted through the emergency department.
Posted by: Staff on December 17, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-16
-
Researchers report that low-income men have more advanced prostate cancer when first diagnosed.
-
Today, thousands of scientists, health care workers and policymakers, among others, are convening at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, just outside Washington, D.C., for the first government-sponsored scientific summit on minority health and health disparities.
-
American health care cannot be compared to other countries because of our cultural diversity.
Posted by: Staff on December 16, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-15
-
...physicians and other health-care providers are facing language and other barriers arising from fast growth in Nashville's immigrant population. As a result, they're hiring interpreters and front-desk staff who speak languages from Arabic to Somali, signing up for services that offer telephone-based translators or send in-person interpreters, or adding satellite clinics in diverse areas of Nashville.
-
Relatively low earnings, rising overhead and overwhelming patient loads are sending veteran primary care physicians into early retirement and driving medical students into better-paying specialties, creating what the New England Journal of Medicine recently called a crisis.
-
Colorectal cancer diagnoses and deaths have fallen in the United States this decade, but the gap in progress between whites and blacks is widening, the American Cancer Society said on Monday.
Posted by: Staff on December 15, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-12
-
“Three strikes, and the game is over.”
-
California's low-income teenagers are three times more likely to be fat than their better heeled counterparts, a new study shows.
Posted by: Staff on December 12, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-11
-
Childhood social conditions predict stroke risk in black and White American adults. Additional adjustment for adult SES, in particular wealth, nearly eliminated the disparity in stroke risk between black and white subjects.
-
This study explored Arizona CHW involvement in advocacy beyond the individual patient level into the realm of advocating for community level change as a mechanism to reduce the structural underpinnings of health disparities.
-
Nearly 50,000 more Ohio children could be eligible for Medicaid health insurance, but state budget woes could stop the expansion.
-
Low-income teenagers are almost three times more likely to be obese than teens from more affluent households, according to new research from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Posted by: Staff on December 11, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-10
-
Better coordination and care, along with improved training for health care providers, are among the reforms needed to improve the fragmented and poorly designed health services currently available for American teens.
-
Adolescents rely on hospital emergency rooms for routine treatment more than any other age group, according to a report that found the U.S. health-care system often fails those ages 10 to 19.
-
In Ontario, only one in six children who need mental health services gets treatment.
Posted by: Staff on December 10, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-09
-
The authors present three clinical scenarios highlighting challenges in providing equitable emergency care to minority populations.
-
As increasing numbers of the unemployed and uninsured turn to the nation’s emergency rooms as a medical last resort, doctors warn that the centers — many already overburdened — could have even more trouble handling the heart attacks, broken bones and other traumas that define their core mission.
Posted by: Staff on December 09, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-06
-
A new study says retail prescription prices appear to be higher in poorer ZIP codes of Florida.
Posted by: Staff on December 06, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-03
-
“Our health-care system is fraught with waste,” Gary Kaplan, chairman of Seattle’s cutting-edge Virginia Mason Medical Center, tells the Washington Post. As much as half of the $2.3 trillion spent today does nothing to improve health, he said.
-
Under a new federal rule, states now have greater authority to charge Medicaid beneficiaries premiums and increase co-payments for doctor’s services, hospital care and prescription drugs.
-
More than 50 mentally disabled patients in the large state-run institutions of Texas died in the past year from preventable conditions often related to poor care, a federal investigation revealed Tuesday.
Posted by: Staff on December 03, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-02
-
The European Union accused drug companies of adding billions of dollars to health care costs by delaying or blocking the sale of less-expensive generic medicines.
-
1. America has the best health care in the world.
Posted by: Staff on December 02, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-12-01
-
Older African Americans more likely to rate their health as poor compared with older white Americans, even though when the two groups "are functioning extremely well, new research suggests.
-
The surprising news made headlines in December 2002. Generic pills for high blood pressure, which had been in use since the 1950s and cost only pennies a day, worked better than newer drugs that were up to 20 times as expensive.
-
Look for legislation clearing a path for generic biotech drugs, direct negotiations of drug prices by Medicare and maybe even importation of prescription medicines. A consensus in support of health reform also appears strong, for now.
Posted by: Staff on December 01, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-26
-
There are 8.6 million uninsured children in the United States -- including 215,000 in Ohio, according to a new report released today by Families USA.
-
Women younger than age 65 with diabetes tend to have worse cardiovascular risk profiles than diabetic men of the same age, leading to higher death rates following a heart attack.
-
Following introduction of the MELD score to the liver transplantation allocation system, race was no longer associated with receipt of a liver transplant or death on the waiting list, but disparities based on sex remain.
Posted by: Staff on November 26, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-25
-
The lowest ‘years of healthy life’ is seen in Estonia, where the age is 59 years for men and 61 for women. In Denmark, by contrast, those values rise to 73 years for men and 74 years for women. The UK is higher than the European average with figures of 69 years and 9 months for men and 70 years and 9 months for women.
-
Despite political, social and economic advances by black Americans, racial disparities between blacks and whites persist in just about every measurable form.
Posted by: Staff on November 25, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-24
-
Financial incentives for doctors can improve the management of coronary heart disease and reduce ethnic differences in quality of and access to care, according to public health experts in the UK.
-
...students have been trying for six years to get the administration to tighten its conflicts policies, both in the classroom and at the affiliated hospitals where the students train. One idea they’re pushing is to require faculty and students, while talking about drugs in the classroom, to disclose any ties to the makers of those drugs.
-
...fifth graders living in public housing did worse on standardized math and reading tests than fifth graders who lived elsewhere. Researchers found this disparity in fifth-grade test scores even when comparing students at the same school who shared similar demographics, like race, gender and poverty status.
-
In one instance, the lawsuit said, the middle schooler's soccer coach asked the girl whether she had AIDS, then told her the team could use her HIV status to its advantage because "the other team will be afraid."
Posted by: Staff on November 24, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-21
-
Sen. Chuck Grassley is squawking about another eyebrow-raising conflict-of-interest in psychiatry. This tale of drug-industry influence comes with another twist: It involves National Public Radio.
Posted by: Staff on November 21, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-20
-
Employers are dramatically shifting healthcare costs onto workers, so much so that the average annual deductible for an individual surpassed $1,000 for the first time this year, according to a new study.
-
According to the results of a large depression treatment study, published n the November issue of Psychiatric Services, minorities with depression have limited access to treatment. Those who seek treatment receive inadequate care. The findings reveal that even when variables such as poverty, insurance coverage, and education were taken into account, ethnicity and race still impacted treatment.
-
The Saskatoon Health Region report, Health disparity in Saskatoon: Analysis to intervention, says putting more health services in the inner city alone won't close the health gap between the rich and poor -- a broader cultural shift will be needed.
Posted by: Staff on November 20, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-19
-
As Democrats in Congress consider covering more of the uninsured kids by expanding Medicaid, they may want to consider this: Fewer doctors are accepting Medicaid patients not just because fees are so low, but because it often takes months to get paid.
-
60 percent of 12,000 general practice physicians would not recommend medicine as a career.
-
U.S. doctors seem to be fed up. Within the next three years, a new survey shows, almost half are considering cutting back on patients or simply halting their practice. Already, more than three-quarters say, there's a shortage of primary care doctors.
Posted by: Staff on November 19, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-17
-
The latest life expectancy figures released by Statistics New Zealand show that a newborn non- Maori girl can expect to live more than than 12 years longer than a Maori boy born on the same day, based on current death rates.
-
...Mr Chi said providing equal health, education and welfare services by 2020 for China's 750 million rural residents - still more than half the population - would cost 5-8 trillion yuan (£5,800 billion).
-
It has never enjoyed the best reputation, but now hospital food has got healthcare critics spluttering in their soup.
-
Need a brain scan? An MRI of your head will cost $1,153 at Mass General, or a bargain price of $716 at Winchester Hospital.
Posted by: Staff on November 17, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-14
-
State officials are considering capping enrollment in California's health insurance program for children of the working poor, as an influx of new clients overwhelms it.
-
Chronically ill patients in the United States spend more out-of-pocket money, skip needed care, and report more medical errors than patients in seven other industrialized countries, a new survey finds.
-
The election of the nation’s first African-American president raises questions about racial disparities in health care.
Posted by: Staff on November 14, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-13
-
The odds of having a premature baby are lowest in Vermont and highest in Mississippi. The March of Dimes mapped the stark state-by-state disparities in a new "report card."
Posted by: Staff on November 13, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-12
-
The American Medical Association’s House of Delegates voted Monday to undertake a study of the repatriation of uninsured immigrant patients by hospitals, a practice that has been examined by The New York Times in two recent reports.
-
Without waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, Senator Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, will unveil a detailed blueprint on Wednesday to guarantee health insurance for all Americans by facilitating sales of private insurance, expanding Medicaid and Medicare, and requiring most employers to provide or pay for health benefits.
-
Australia's public hospitals are unsafe, overcrowded and underfunded, resulting in 1,500 unnecessary deaths a year, a national doctors group said on Wednesday in a report titled "Public Hospitals Flatlining."
Posted by: Staff on November 12, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-11
-
As General Motors faces a liquidity crisis many of the company’s retirees are trying to navigate Medicare and plan for their own finances in the wake of the company’s decision to drop its lifetime health coverage for some 100,000 white-collar retirees.
-
The lives of 8,000 black Americans could be saved each year if doctors could figure out a way to bring their average blood pressure down to the average level of whites, a new study found.
-
Hospitals everywhere in America - public, non-profit institutions as well as private, profit-making ones-routinely charge the uninsured, the people who have no clout, the most. How much more? On average, five times as much, according to K.B. Forbes, a patient-rights advocate who has spent the last three years analyzing and securing reductions in the hospital bills of uninsured working people from California to Florida.
Posted by: Staff on November 11, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-10
-
Analysts estimate that 15 million people could gain access to Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program because of federal policy changes likely to be enacted in the coming months (Source: "Health Insurers Prime for New Business with Democratic...
-
Families with a “gross wage base” between $20,000 and $60,000 a year are about to be swamped by health care costs, Princeton health economist Uwe Reinhardt argues in a guest post on the New York Times blog Economix.
Posted by: Staff on November 10, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-07
-
Robert Laszewski expects the new President and Congress to keep their health care promise by starting incrementally to insure more Americans.
-
In a sign of the economy’s toll on the health care system, some hospitals are seeing fewer paying patients — and more people at emergency rooms unable to pay their bills.
Posted by: Staff on November 07, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-06
-
We, as doctors, must swallow hard and admit that we do not control the quality and value of health care any longer - and it has been a long time since we did.
-
According to one non-partisan health policy group, President-elect Barack Obama’s victory, even coupled with Democratic gains in Congress, is unlikely to yield sweeping health reform in the next two years.
Posted by: Staff on November 06, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-11-04
-
The internationally respected Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development recently threw out a warning flag to Canada. It says the income gap between Canada’s rich and poor is growing faster than most of the other 30 developed nations in the world, and that our governments need to stop that trend.
-
As the lights dim on the presidential campaign and the financial crisis drags on, the prospects for universal health care in the U.S. seem to be dimming too. But what about narrowing our expectations to universal primary care?
Posted by: Staff on November 04, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-31
-
A study surveying patients in more than 1,500 physician practices has found racial and ethnic disparities in patient experiences, with minority patients having worse experiences than white patients. The findings suggest that while all doctors should be attentive to differences in patient experiences, Hispanic, Native American, and black patients are often visiting physician practices that are less patient-centered.
-
The investigators found that Black Canadians were significantly less likely than Caucasians to receive a kidney transplant, either from deceased or living donors. This situation mimics that seen in the United States. However, unlike African-Americans, Black Canadians who underwent a kidney transplant experienced no significant health differences compared with Caucasians after their procedure. Their transplanted kidneys survived just as long as kidneys transplanted into Caucasians, and Black Canadians actually survived longer following the surgery compared with Caucasians.
Posted by: Staff on October 31, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-30
-
Opponents say the measure could have unintended consequences, including driving up Medicaid costs. Supporters say it will keep the state from encroaching on the private sector.
-
Chinese AIDS victims are dying needlessly because a "tragic stigma" prevents them seeking help in a country where one fifth of people think the disease can be passed on by sharing a toilet, a top activist said on Thursday.
-
Our recent study of income-related inequalities in limiting long-term illness found the least generous Anglo-Saxon welfare states, England and Ireland, exhibited the largest health inequalities.
-
Striking new evidence has emerged of a widespread gap in the cost of health insurance, as women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage, according to new data from insurance companies and online brokers.
Posted by: Staff on October 30, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-29
-
Roughly 2,000 times over the last 17 years, Marguerita Toribio, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, has climbed into a cushioned recliner for the three-hour dialysis treatment that keeps her alive.
-
The bells and whistles include discounts for fitness club memberships, coverage of acupuncture and 24-hour health information lines. Prices can vary, depending on a person’s medical history and state rules.
-
Doctors subconsciously favor whites over blacks, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday in a finding that may explain widespread racial disparities in health care in the United States.
-
In a study conducted in Florida, researchers found that drugstores in the poorest areas charge more, on average, for four widely used prescription medications than do pharmacies in wealthier neighborhoods.
Posted by: Staff on October 29, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-24
-
Faced with a projected $500-million deficit this coming year, Ontario's finance minister announced that it will slow down the hiring of 9,000 nurses in order to save $50 million.
-
"The Cure," written and directed by student Anthony Onah. It's about a single mother whose young son is injured in an accident while she is at work. The family has no insurance, pulling them into an insurance nightmare almost as bad as the child's physical nightmare.
Posted by: Staff on October 24, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-23
-
Violent deaths among blacks in the nation’s capital have become a public health epidemic, with murder ranking as the leading cause of years of potential life lost for black men in D.C., according to a study released today by Public Citizen.
-
PloS Medicine -- an open-access journal -- published an essay suggesting that current publication methods depict a false portrayal of scientific progress through pumped up results.
-
The most recent breast cancer statistics for the St. Louis area tell two different tales. While there is a lot of good news in the numbers; there is some bad news as well n when looking at all races combined we see that deaths from breast cancer are higher for the city than for both the state and the US. And driving much of these numbers seems to be a growing disparity between African American women and white women.
Posted by: Staff on October 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-22
-
In 1980, black women and white women in Chicago with breast cancer were equally likely to die. Since then, death rates for white patients have improved dramatically. But that is not the case for their African-American counterparts, who are now dying at a rate 116 percent higher, according to data released Wednesday by the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force.
Posted by: Staff on October 22, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-21
-
When non-Hispanic whites and African Americans live in similar social settings, their health outcomes are much more similar than those found in national samples.
-
Why market based insurance is bad.
-
Whether you survive after a serious accident may depend on your race and your health insurance, a new study concludes.
Posted by: Staff on October 21, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-20
-
Chris Seper wraps up the week's top stories.
-
The Chinese government, recognising the disparities in access to healthcare between the urban rich and rural poor, is planning to overhaul the world's largest health system.
Posted by: Staff on October 20, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-17
-
For an employed individual carrying a family policy with her employer, premiums have risen five time faster than earnings. And that rise has claimed much of California workers' meager pay hikes since 2000.
-
The credit crunch may have been the last straw for a failing Chicago hospital that said yesterday it was closing its doors.
-
The MetroHealth System will cancel its contract with one of the only two Medicaid managed care companies available in Northeast Ohio, a move that could force more than 4,000 patients to get new doctors.
Posted by: Staff on October 17, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-16
-
In California, the fight is over balance billing patients who go to emergency rooms at hospitals that aren’t in their insurer’s network. Predictably enough, the insurers argue that the hospitals charge inflated rates for these patients, while the hospitals say the insurers only pay a pittance.
-
Infant mortality in the United States remains higher than in many other industrialized countries, with progress stalling this decade, the U.S. government said on Wednesday.
Posted by: Staff on October 16, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-15
-
The World Health Organization is urging governments to adopt primary health care and universal coverage as the best ways of improving health and saving lives.
-
An e-mail survey of 1,767 adults currently being treated for cancer found 569 respondents with late-stage cancer. Of those, 12% said they passed up recommended treatment because it was too expensive.
-
More than 20 Chicago medical and public health organizations came together to provide an interactive approach to the health disparity problem in the city. They were taught to pay more attention to cultural influences on health, low levels of health literacy in the public and how even the smallest of biases can affect quality of care.
-
Under new state rules that take effect today, hospitals and physicians are barred from billing patients for the balance of emergency care not covered by insurers.
Posted by: Staff on October 15, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-14
-
Chris Seper wraps up the previous week's health stories.
-
Falling tax revenues and higher enrollment in Medicaid programs are putting pressure on state budgets that could hit doctors' pocketbooks.
-
Fully one-third of children in the poorer families are in less-than-optimal health, and are five times more likely to be worse off than wealthier kids. In middle-class families, children were 1.5 times more likely to be in less-than-optimal health than in wealthy families.
Posted by: Staff on October 14, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-09
-
The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company.
-
Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine has received a $14.5 million grant to fund the Center for Research to Evaluate and Eliminate Dental Disparities until 2015.
-
In 1960, the U.S. ranked 11th in the world in infant mortality rate. In 2004, it was 29th. Further, in 1960 white Americans on their own would have ranked 11th in the world in that category, while African Americans would have been 30th. In 2004, white Americans would have ranked 26th, while African Americans had fallen to 35th.
-
Three men who say they have adequate health coverage and enough money to pay for their health care needs want to opt out of hospital coverage under Medicare. Federal rules say they cannot collect Social Security benefits if they do that.
Posted by: Staff on October 09, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-08
-
Universal health care is, however, a moral obligation for an industrialized society, and will not result in the apocalyptic consequences promised by the jeremiads.
-
Survival after a head and neck cancer diagnosis lags for African-Americans and the poor, researchers here said.
-
Discussing the disparity between mental health care and general medicine in the country, Duckworth said the bias against mental illness goes beyond the institutions — hospitals, insurance companies, states — and encompasses society.
-
The statistics are startling: One out of every 166 children nationwide has some form of autism, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
Asthma patients who are black tend to have more severe disease than asthma patients who are white, leading to more asthma control problems, higher rates of emergency department visits, and overall worse quality of life.
Posted by: Staff on October 08, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-06
-
Sen. Barack Obama’s attack on health insurance reforms proposed by Sen. John McCain shows that Obama’s not for real change in health insurance.
-
During 2004-2006, an estimated 20% of US adults, or 1 in 5 people, had some level of disability and these individuals -- particularly individuals from certain minority groups
Posted by: Staff on October 06, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-03
-
There wasn’t a lot said about health care in last night’s vice presidential debate. But there was just enough to give each candidate the opportunity to slam the other ticket’s health plan.
Posted by: Staff on October 03, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-10-02
-
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a lower court ruling that San Francisco’s universal health care program violates federal law
-
More than half the children in some parts of Barnet borough are living in or on the brink of poverty, a report revealed this week.
-
Consider, for example, the fact that most hospitals and health systems have remained in the black only as a result of investment income. Many lose money on operations. How will health systems remain afloat if the returns on their investments are diminished?
-
Black and Hispanic adults who are terminally ill are less likely than their white counterparts to have a plan in place for end-of-life care, a new study suggests.
Posted by: Staff on October 02, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-30
-
Science Times asked some of its contributors for their favorite resources on health, whether online or in print.
-
Mayo CEO Denis Cortese and Johns Hopkins Medicine CEO Edward Miller argue on the op-ed page of today’s Chicago Tribune that instead of Congress, some sort of board should make big decisions about Medicare’s payment policies.
Posted by: Staff on September 30, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-29
-
A study conducted on behalf of the not-for-profit National Women's Health Resource Center (NWHRC) shows that Hispanic women are dramatically more likely to misidentify breast cancer as the leading cause of death among women and to report not having enough information about breast cancer.
-
8 dems and 8 repubs are working on universal health care legislation.
-
According to a new study by the GAO only one-third of the 20 million children in the United State who are covered by Medicaid got any dental care.
-
Listen to Chris Seper review the big medical stories of the past week.
Posted by: Staff on September 29, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-26
-
The Ohio Department of Child and Family Services announced Wednesday that an additional $80 million will be trimmed from its budget, but the cuts will not affect Medicaid benefits
-
The law allows hospitals to charge patients for the cost of care, plus a mark-up of 35%. That may not strike you as a fantastic bargain, but it’s still a lot less than list prices, which can run to two to three times the cost of care.
-
As the political parties mobilise for the conference season it is tempting to believe there is broad consensus about the future of the NHS. But three debates that go to its heart are raging....
Posted by: Staff on September 26, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-9-25
-
A slew of recent reports, including one released today, show that more people are having problems paying their medical bills, that costs of insurance and hospital beds continue to rise and that fewer people are filling prescriptions and going to the doctor.
-
As it stands, a person with a physical illness is apt to have a much lower deductible than a person with a mental illness. Co-pays for seeing a mental health specialist are apt to be higher than for seeing other specialists. And mental health patients often find that only a set number of visits to a psychologist or a psychiatrist will be covered.
-
Evidence is mounting that the current economic climate has led to reductions in health spending .
Posted by: Staff on September 25, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-23
-
Doctors provide little in the way of empathy, even when their patients seem to ask for it, according to a study in the Sept. 22 Archives of Internal Medicine. Researchers looked at real doctor/patient encounters between 137 patients and their oncologists or thoracic surgeons from a Veterans Affairs hospital.
-
Contrary to public perceptions, foreign-born children are increasingly uninsured, rather than publicly insured, in the wake of immigration policy changes, according to a study by public health researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
-
New York City plans to expand primary health care facilities in 11 high-poverty areas, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn announced on Monday, saying she hoped to put $26 million toward the effort in the next four years, city finances permitting.
Posted by: Staff on September 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-20
-
African-American patients are approximately twice as likely as their Caucasian counterparts to die following major liver surgery, or hepatectomy, U.S. researchers report.
-
Spanish-speaking Hispanics in the United States have difficulty accessing the health-care system, University of North Carolina researchers report.
-
For reasons that are complex, Asian Americans seek mental health treatment in far lower numbers than the rest of the population, according to preliminary findings from a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Davis.
Posted by: Staff on September 20, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-18
-
Alberta spends more than any other province on health care, but has a mediocre medical system burdened by long wait times for treatment and a shortage of physicians, according to a new study.
-
Universal health care is something many Canadians cherish and want to fiercely protect, but a new study finds it lags far behind the standard of care that is commonplace in Western Europe.
Posted by: Staff on September 18, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-16
-
A vast majority of emergency room patients are discharged without understanding the treatment they received or how to care for themselves once they get home, researchers say.
-
Several sources of frustration underlie doctor-hospital disputes. One is financial: Many physicians, including myself, are earning less these days as a result of diminishing reimbursements from health insurers, more uninsured patients, the high cost of medical liability insurance and the rising costs of maintaining a private practice.
Posted by: Staff on September 16, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-12
-
"The male-to-male sexual contact transmission category represented 72 percent of new infections among males, including 81 percent of new infections among whites, 63 percent among blacks, and 72 percent among Hispanics," the report said.
-
Grassley is leaning on NIH to get tougher with the researchers and universities receiving government grants. “Starting today, the NIH could send a signal that business as usual is over,” Grassley said. “The simple threat of losing prestigious and sizable NIH grants would force accurate financial disclosure.”
Posted by: Staff on September 12, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-11
-
According to a new study, African American women with breast cancer who have a lumpectomy are less likely to receive radiation treatment compared to white women-the standard for early stage breast cancer.
-
CLOSING the gap has become a common theme in discussions of policy towards the indigenous people of Australia. Newcomers are appalled at the enormous differences between mainstream and indigenous life expectancies, employment rates and housing conditions.
-
In the study, published online in the journal Cancer on September 8, 2008 - only 40 percent of colon cancer survivors who were followed for three years had all the right doctor visits and tests.
-
Provena Covenant Medical Center Urbana will appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn a ruling last month by a state appeals court that put the hospital's tax exemption in jeopardy.
Posted by: Staff on September 11, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-10
-
A majority of the students surveyed also said they don't think adequate health care is a guaranteed right or that access to health care is a problem in the U.S....
-
A new system that assigned a medical home to patients, usually a primary care practice, cut hospital admissions by 20 percent and costs by 7 percent....
Posted by: Staff on September 10, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-08
-
According to a survey from the Mercer consulting firm, 59 percent of companies intend to raise the amount worker will be required to pay for health care in 2009.
-
The level of healthcare inequality across the country is disclosed in a detailed report which shows some areas are spending twice as much tackling heart disease and cancer as others.
-
A federal judge in Brooklyn decided to unseal confidential materials about Eli Lilly’s top-selling antipsychotic drug, citing questions about the way drugs are approved for new uses.
-
Sen. Chuck Grassley is pounding on two non-profit hospitals demanding to know whether they restrict the care they give patients based on their ability to pay.
Posted by: Staff on September 08, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-04
-
A new study shows that life expectancy is declining in parts of rural America â including several counties in West Virginia.
Posted by: Staff on September 04, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-09-03
-
If your doctor or hospital is unhappy with the payment it receives from your insurance company and decides to bill you for the balance, do you have to pay? Often, the answer is no.
-
The US health system spends far more on the "technology" of care (e.g., drugs, devices) than on achieving equity in its delivery.
-
Reducing and eliminating disparities in health is a matter of life and death. Each year in the United States, thousands of individuals die unnecessarily from easily preventable diseases and conditions.
Posted by: Staff on September 03, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-8-29
-
Download the full report.
-
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
links for 2008-8-27
-
A Case Study of Intra-institutional Determinants of Uncompensated Care at Healthcare Institutions With Differing Ownership Models.
-
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
links for 2008-8-26
-
Small-town medicine in the Internet age
-
U.S. nonprofit hospitals face mounting pressures that could adversely affect their bottomlines, according to reports released on Monday.
-
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
links for 2008-08-25
-
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.
-
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
links for 2008-08-23
-
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
-
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
links for 2008-8-22
-
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
-
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
links for 2008-08-21
-
Shifting financial responsibility to individuals has been an uphill climb.
-
Diet, genetics, lifestyle and environmental factors could explain the higher rates of liver, stomach and gallbladder cancers.
-
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
links for 2008-08-13
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
links for 2008-08-12
-
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.
-
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.
-
The president of the Navajo Nation has vetoed a ban on smoking and chewing tobacco in public places.
-
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.
-
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
links for 2008-8-11
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
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
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
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
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
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
links for 2008-07-31
-
FLorida health department figures show that from 2000 to 2006, the number of black-infant deaths in Orange County increased from 41 to 61 a year. In 2000, a black baby died every 11 days. In 2006, it was every six days.
-
An individual’s health is affected by her social world, and that world can shift dramatically when the distance between the rich and poor widens. With a secure income people have a sense of control of their lives. But, when people adopt a pattern of con
-
Minority patients and those with lower SES were less likely to have survival knowledge and more likely to be uncertain as to recurrence. Location of treatment and provider characteristics did not affect knowledge disparities.
Posted by: Staff on July 31, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-30
-
Data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that a nearly decadelong decline in infant-mortality rates has stalled, and that African-American children are twice as likely as white babies to die before their first birthday.
Posted by: Staff on July 30, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-29
-
Under a new law, the fats long linked to health problems must be excised from restaurants and retail baked goods.
-
From what has been called a perfect storm of disgruntled patients, legislators and medical professionals, the quality movement in health care has been born.
-
OMNA on Tour is a traveling education program designed to inform communities around the nation about the significance and impact on community well-being of ethnic and racial disparities in mental health.
-
African-American infants are more than twice as likely as white infants to die before their first birthday, and the racial gap has gotten wider over time. That startling statistic has prompted efforts to address race-based disparities in infant mortality,
-
In 2005... 87 percent of all Franklin County homicide victims younger than 18 were black. “And they're roughly 20 percent of the population,” said Kathleen Cowen of Columbus Public Health. “So that's the disparity.”
Posted by: Staff on July 29, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-28
Posted by: Staff on July 28, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-24
-
...if you live in the American South, chances are you take more medications than you would if you lived on the other side of the Mason-Dixon Line.
-
In recent years many children in CA have moved from private insurnace to public programs. Looming budget cuts may leave those children uninsured.
-
Using kidneys from donors who died of cardiovascular causes may help reduce disparities for black patients awaiting a kidney transplant, says a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions.
Posted by: Staff on July 24, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-23
-
The reports, one on men's health disparities and the other on the status of women and girls, are both "part of a project we started last year to look at the needs of the community," said Claude-Alix Jacob, the city's chief public health officer. "We want
-
With gas prices hovering around $4 a gallon, my patients are cutting back on medical care. A 59-year-old woman decided not to have a mammogram this year. At her age, she should be screened for colon cancer, too, but she is holding off until she becomes el
-
Jill McGivering investigates if there can be a health system which provides universal access, quality care and a healthier population at an acceptable price. (MP3)
-
Government rhetoric on choice and localism rings hollow in a community where more and more decisions are being taken by agencies in which we have no say.
-
Americans expect that our children will be better off than their parents, and that scientific breakthroughs will eventually conquer disease. Evidence that health care in this country is slipping backward is, therefore, deeply troubling.
Posted by: Staff on July 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-22
-
When Planned Parenthood representatives began handing out free condoms during an information session with recent Vietnamese immigrants in Orange County last year, a hush fell over the room.
-
representatives from seven South Dakota tribes discussed health issues with Sanford officials and former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich. The health disparities research center, which is one of Sanford's five research institutes, works with 27 different
-
"Up until now, previous reports have shown that with non-small cell lung cancer, the differences (between the races) in survival rates may have had something to do with biological differences," Bryant said. "We wanted to evaluate that: Is there really a b
Posted by: Staff on July 22, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-21
-
peer nutrition education has a positive influence on diabetes self-management and breastfeeding outcomes, as well as on general nutrition knowledge and dietary intake behaviours, among Latinos in the US.
-
Comparing the way people of different races and incomes get prescriptions may sound like an obscure bit of research.
-
last week the 61-year-old was told he could have the free treatment if he paid Health at Home nurses £1,000 a month to administer it. Mr Clark faces having to come up with the cash if he decides to go ahead.
Posted by: Staff on July 21, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-18
-
Global warming will affect the health and welfare of every American, but the poor, elderly, and children will suffer the most, according to a new White House science report released Thursday.
-
Global variation in cancer survival was very wide. 5-year relative survival for breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer was generally higher in North America, Australia, Japan, and northern, western, and southern Europe, and lower in Algeria, Brazil, and
Posted by: Staff on July 18, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-17
-
American medical care may be the most expensive in the world, but that does not mean it is worth every penny.
-
The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, he
-
Kent State officials are considering a plan to create a school of public health. It would be the second public health school in Ohio.
-
Editorial cartoon on kids and prescription drugs
Posted by: Staff on July 17, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-16
-
Lying in her hospital bed, Jeronna Pierre was told the baby girl she carried for eight months had died in her womb. Nine months later, at three months pregnant, she lost a baby again. Pierre, an Aventura resident, is part of a disturbing trend in Miami-Da
-
One of the primary topics of discussion at the NAACP’s 99th Convention, being held this week in Cincinnati, is health disparities affecting the African-American community.
Posted by: Staff on July 16, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-14
-
Letting outside auditors scour Medicare bills sure can turn up a lot of overbilling. A pilot program that netted the government nearly $700 million from three states is now being expanded to recover more Medicare money gone astray.
-
Americans forked over $49 billion for pet products and services last year, up $11.5 billion from 2003; other than consumer electronics, pet products are the fastest-growing retail segment.
-
Interesting article on inequality and the need for institutional change.
-
f your provider says that some medication will be helpful to you, it is very important that both you and your provider handle your prescriptions in a responsible way to be sure you are getting what you need. The following steps can help you with your pres
Posted by: Staff on July 14, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-11
-
When children see others in pain, their brains respond as if it were happening to them, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
-
The medical profession must have diversity in the physician workforce—equivalent to that in the general population—and equity in health care delivery for all persons. A unity of purpose must be achieved among all physicians, and the associations that
-
This is called a "silent health crisis," because society often does not focus on men's health, while men tend to lead unhealthy lifestyles and take more risky behaviors than women, the Duval County Health Department reported.
Posted by: Staff on July 11, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-10
-
The American Medical Association is issuing a formal apology for more than a century of discriminatory policies that excluded blacks from participating in a group long considered the voice of U.S. doctors.
-
We sought to determine whether an elevated burden of chronic kidney disease is found among disadvantaged groups living in the United States, Australia, and Thailand.
Posted by: Staff on July 10, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-09
-
A 15-year-old boy who needs a new liver has been taken off a hospital's waiting list because of his unstable home life, the Miami Herald reports.
-
I know it seems ridiculous that a sparsely-populated rural area would need THREE hospitalist programs, but you might appreciate some of the subtleties after reading the following.
-
More and more doctors are fed up with private insurers. It’s not just a question of how stingy they are, but how difficult it is to get reimbursed. Paperwork, phone calls, insurers who play games by deliberately making reimbursement forms difficult to
-
he preferred treatment for kidney failure is an organ transplant. But although African-Americans suffer from kidney disease at higher rates than whites, they are less likely to be referred for transplants, less likely to be placed on a waiting list and le
-
In reviewing the charts of 4,556 white patients and 2,258 black patients treated by 90 physicians, researchers found that black patients often had worse outcomes than white patients.
-
Across the state, minorities and residents of rural areas are under-represented in cancer trials, according to a new study from University of Maryland researchers. And the study found that rates of participation among African-Americans are dropping.
Posted by: Staff on July 09, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-08
-
African-American children with mild to moderate kidney disease have worse anemia than their white counterparts, report researchers from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center in what is believed to be the first study of anemia among children with milder fo
-
About one-fifth of Americans live in rural areas, and providing health care to them is a challenge financially and logistically. Only 10 percent of the nation's doctors practice in rural areas, and rural residents tend to be poorer and less likely to have
-
With the release of a study that details how Cambridge men are dying at higher rates than their female counterparts, the Cambridge Public Health Department is moving forward with its programs targeting men’s health.
-
Humphreys’ book indicts many people in power in the government, the Sanitary Commission, and the army for decisions "great and small, careless and deliberate" that doomed thousands of black soldiers to an early grave. The historian’s tale, however, ca
Posted by: Staff on July 08, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-07
-
Now through mid-October, a series of ''local conversations'' will take place in Akron and 13 other Ohio communities as part of a national effort to determine the barriers to health-care equality for blacks, as well as Asian-Americans, Native Americans and
-
With the health of Maori in this district showing little improvement, it was time to set a date for equality, said Maori Ora Associates senior health adviser Dr Peter Jansen.
-
Quality improvement rates are lower than widely documented increases in health care spending. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimate health care expenditures rose by a 6.7 percent average annual rate over the same period.
-
This paper serves as a blueprint for translating principles for the elimination of racial–ethnic disparities in health care into specific actions that are relevant for individual clinical practices. We describe what is known about reducing racial–ethn
Posted by: Staff on July 07, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-03
-
The gulf between rich and poor is still wide, with a high degree of inequality, the author of a study ranking New Zealand's richest and poorest areas says.
-
Does the UK have one health system or four?
Posted by: Staff on July 03, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-02
-
There is reason to believe that these concepts promoted for the developing world broadly apply within the United States. More than 11 million southern, low-income, and urban blacks have health outcomes worse than residents of low- to middle-income develop
-
The Center for Community Solutions hopes that a two-year community dialogue project it recently wrapped up will result in more men accessing more local health services.
-
On June 19, a woman collapsed and lay face down on the floor of the waiting room at a Brooklyn hospital for an hour before anyone checked on her. By that time, she was dead.
-
The study looks at the prevalence of asthma among 10 racial and ethnic groups in New York City and how housing and neighborhood conditions can contribute to a disparity in prevalence.
Posted by: Staff on July 02, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-07-01
-
Health officials found the overall death rate for males in Cambridge was 34 percent higher than for females. Men also had higher rates of death from heart disease and cancer, as well as a greater chance of becoming infected with HIV/AIDS, according to the
-
Parenting while poor almost always leads to suspicion. At least 60 percent of child-welfare cases in the United States involve solely allegations of neglect, usually for inadequate food, clothing, shelter or inadequate supervision or guardianship. Not sur
Posted by: Staff on July 01, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-30
-
A national study conducted by UC Davis researchers reveals that blacks, Asians and Hispanics are less likely to undergo colorectal cancer screening than whites. Among blacks and Hispanics, the disparity in screening appears to be primarily due to socioeco
-
"There is very strong evidence that hospital staff are more likely to suspect drug use on the part of black mothers and these mothers are more likely to have their children removed and put in foster care," said Dorothy Roberts, the Kirkland & Ellis profes
Posted by: Staff on June 30, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-27
-
A new study suggests that American men are much more likely than women are to be unaware that they suffer from high blood pressure. African-American men with the condition are at the highest risk, with only one in seven both aware of their illness and ab
-
One in five people put off a trip to the doctor or went without health care last year, often because of money.
-
Will there be universal internet access before universal health care?
-
A wonderful post by Dr. Val
Posted by: Staff on June 27, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-26
-
As it stands, the contours of the national health system are steep and uneven. Health care quality, like education or justice, is one yardstick by which to measure nationhood as designated by functioning national institutions. More should be done by polic
-
Until he was 17, Charles Goodwin spent most of his teen years living with foster families and interacting with caseworkers who never fully understood him for a basic reason: None shared his Native American heritage.
-
[M]embers of the N.C. Commission of Indian Affairs, spoke Wednesday about their work to improve access to education, reduce health disparities, encourage economic development and preserve cultural identity. The American Indian Center at UNC-Chapel Hill or
Posted by: Staff on June 26, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-25
-
The number of underinsured has risen by 60 percent since 2003. When added to those who are uninsured at some point during the year, 42 percent of all adults—and 72 percent of those with incomes below twice the poverty level—are inadequately or unstabl
-
A study by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that lower-income children made almost twice as many visits to hospital emergency departments than higher-income children in 2005.
-
Black men in Jacksonville, Fla., are less likely than white men to have a primary care physician or health insurance, according to a recent report by the Duval County Health Department, the Florida Times-Union reports.
-
Availability of the gold standard treatment for heart attack varies across England and Wales, a report says.
Posted by: Staff on June 25, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-24
-
How do you navigate the complex U.S. health care system? Easy, you hire a $100,000/year tour guide.
-
"Despite all the worsening economic news we are hearing - from the housing slump, to gas surpassing $4 a gallon, there is some light. We do not have to face a darker economic outlook in health care if we properly address health disparities. That's a cost
-
Determinants of racial/ethnic CRC screening disparities vary among minority groups, suggesting the need for different interventions to mitigate those disparities. Whereas socioeconomic, access, and language barriers seem to drive the CRC screening dispari
-
[John Babb] cited estimates that place the number of medically uninsured Latinos in the United States at around 37 percent. The number of uninsured for the rest of America is at 16 percent. He estimated that only one of 11 Latinos with a mental health dis
-
..children across the city experienced many improvements in health, economic and educational status during 2006 – yet disparities in health, wealth and opportunity for New York City's young persist between various neighborhoods and ethnicities, accordin
-
Overcrowded hospitals that try to cope with growing patient loads by churning them through more quickly may be helping the spread of drug-resistant germs, Australian researchers
Posted by: Staff on June 24, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-23
-
Officials say the region's No. 1 health care disparity is the lack of a Level 2 trauma center, which provides comprehensive trauma care and 24-hour availability of essential personnel and equipment. Last week's announcement that the trauma center at St. J
-
Cancer patients with low socioeconomic status (SES) have more advanced cancers at diagnosis, receive less aggressive treatment, and have a higher risk of dying in the five years following cancer diagnosis, according to a new study. The study, which will a
-
The report by the Florida Council for the Social Status of Black Men and Boys highlights a number of disparities between black males and the rest of society:
-
Citing other disparities, such as how the poor must pay more for utility deposits, [Barbara Ehrenreich], ''So let's have a little less talk about how the poor should learn to manage their money, and a little more attention to all the ways that money is be
-
In a 6-3 decision announced yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that businesses that administer their own plans or insurance companies that administer a company plan have a financial conflict of interest because they save money virtually every time they re
Posted by: Staff on June 23, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-20
-
Overall, the 2,407 people who participated in the $1.2 million program were much sicker than the general population, with higher than normal rates of high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes and other conditions, according to results released by public....
-
In Multnomah County, African-Americans are twice as likely as whites to die from diabetes and two to six times more likely to be diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. Across America, 40 percent of black men die prematurely from cardiovascular....
-
Listen to Doctor Anonymous on BlogTalkRadio with Dr. David Loeb who is pediatric cancer doctor. He is author of Doctor Davids Blog. BlogTalkRadio is the leading social radio network with thousands of shows from....
-
Large disparities in young people’s health and health-related behaviours across Europe and North America and strong but complex relationships between adolescent health and the socioeconomic status of families: these are the main findings of a new and....
Posted by: Staff on June 20, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-19
-
This day (June 19) marks the moment when slaves throughout the South were informed that the "peculiar institution'' of slavery had been abolished.
-
Health and education are two sides of the same coin, each impacts the other and they combine to impact ultimately the well-being of our residents and our communities. Inequities in health status and education for communities of color are real in our state
-
The United States spends substantially more per person on health care than any other country, and yet US health outcomes are the same as or worse than those in other coutries.1-2 In 2005, the last year for which comparative statistics are available, the U
-
Doctor confesses he's thinking about quitting medicine to open up a convenience store.
Posted by: Staff on June 19, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-18
-
There was no better place than New Orleans — devastated by vast inequalities in health care and other social supports even before Hurricane Katrina — for the release of a report, Lifeline to Health Equity: Policies For Real Health Care Reform.
-
There is a clear north-south divide in patterns of binge drinking and unhealthy eating which help explain a growing life expectancy gap, new analysis shows....
-
In Oregon, Native Americans and Hispanics are far less likely to have health insurance or to receive adequate prenatal care. Whites in Multnomah County have a significantly higher rate of care during early pregnancy than other county residents.
-
Asian-Pacific Islanders are 16 percent more likely than whites to die from serious, but treatable, complications in U.S. hospitals, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
-
Ben S. Bernanke told Congress that health spending would “rise relentlessly” unless lawmakers overhauled the health care system.
Posted by: Staff on June 18, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-17
-
California prison medical release legislation: is it compassionate, or just dumping expensive patients? (Thanks Les Morgan for the lead.)
-
How does your state compare in maternal and childhood health?
-
Nutrition experts say children in low-income families are far more likely to be obese than those from wealthier homes. A study by Dr Jenny O'Dea, associate professor of child health research at the University of Sydney, revealed that childhood obesity is
-
As many of us know, the government-sponsored Medicare health insurance system is running out of funding. The high cost of life-prolonging medical technologies combined with a dramatically increased demand for them (as our population becomes older and sick
-
Every patient-physician relationship is unique. But some research shows that a patient's race can be a particularly strong indicator of how successful some relationships are in achieving treatment goals.
-
Life expectancies for women living in South Carolina’s poorest areas appear to be stagnating or getting shorter. Data collected and examined during a 16-year span (1983-1999) by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Wa
Posted by: Staff on June 17, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-16
-
Thirty- eight percent were receiving special education services. In adjusted analyses, Black children were less likely than White children to receive these services (odds ratio [O.R.] = 0.78); among the children in special education, Black children were m
-
Blacks are more likely than whites to die of breast and prostate cancer. Researchers want to know why.
-
...female veterans aren't getting the same quality of outpatient care as men in about one-third of the VA's 139 facilities that offer it, the report said. That appeared to validate the complaints of advocates and some members of Congress who have said mor
-
For years, doctors have struggled to get some TB patients to take all their medication, which generally involves a six-month regimen of multiple drugs.
Now a student-led group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a way to use cell p
Posted by: Staff on June 16, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-13
-
Michael Murphy, a part-time real estate agent and college instructor, has a frank and dismal view of what will happen if the Russian River Dental Clinic no longer accepts Medi-Cal. "My teeth would rot in my skull," said Murphy, a Camp Meeker resident whose jobs don't offer medical benefits.
-
"Continuing the trend for elderly patients over the next few years could cause the emergency care system to collapse," said Mary Pat McKay, MD, of the George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC.
-
On examination, Mr L was a chronically ill–appearing man whose breathing was aided by nasal oxygen and who sat on a bedside "neuro" chair. He had a fourth cranial nerve palsy and disconjugate gaze, facial droop, hoarse voice, absent gag reflex, and coar
-
WhiteCoat Rants tells us the answer is, 'A squirrel with mange.' I'm not sure I want to know the question.
-
Did I drink raw milk as a kid? Occasionally, yes. Were my parents super-careful about the cleanliness of the milk? Yes. Did I ever get sick from raw milk? No. Would I give raw milk to my kids? No.
-
Health Wonk Review: Washington Week
-
black Medicare patients in Wisconsin with diabetes and circulation disorders are more likely to have a leg amputated than whites in the state with the same medical conditions, according to a study of Medicare claims commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson
-
From her Mediterranean-style townhouse, a high school dropout named Rita Campos Ramirez orchestrated what prosecutors call the largest health-care fraud by one person. Over nearly four years, she electronically submitted more than 140,000 Medicare claims
Posted by: Staff on June 13, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-12
-
Full transparency is important for the public - and especially the doctors' fellow practitioners in the treatment of children - to judge study results by the doctors who report favorably on the use of antipsychotic drugs that are usually prescribed for adults and have serious side effects.
-
Walgreen’s plans to open retail clinics in Massachusetts is stirring up new controversy over whether such outlets pose a threat to more traditional forms of primary care.
-
The average American is living past age 78, though life spans are still shorter than in other developed countries, according to new data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
-
Join us tonight for The Doctor Anonymous Show number 38. Our scheduled guests are from the site called The Doctors Channel. But, still as of this posting, I have not received confirmation that they are indeed coming to the show tonight. So this show shoul
-
Nartey related a story about an African immigrant family who perplexed staff with their insistence that their dying matriarch's swollen leg be drained. Nartey spoke with the family and realized that villagers back home would think the swollen leg had been
Posted by: Staff on June 12, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-11
-
many inhabitants live amidst the disintegration of services, finds a basic services assessment published by regional governments on Tuesday. Those bearing the brunt of the inequality are children and the elderly.
-
... blacks typically were less likely to receive recommended care than whites within a given region. But the most striking disparities were found from place to place.
-
Compared with children in English-primary-language households, children in non-English-primary-language households experienced multiple disparities in medical and oral health, access to care, and use of services.
Posted by: Staff on June 11, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-10
-
Alan Johnson outlined fresh plans to tackle health inequalities today as he admitted that the health gap between rich and poor is widening
-
A study finds that white patients on average fare better than black patients treated by the same doctors
-
Editoral from the Archives of Internal Medicine
-
Racial differences in DM outcomes are primarily related to patients' characteristics and with-physician effects, wherein individual physicians achieve less favorable outcomes among their black patients than their white patients.
-
NYTimes.com article on the recent Achives of Internal Medicine article.
-
The number of underinsured Americans - those with health insurance but also high medical expenses compared with their incomes - rose 60 percent from 2003 to 2007 and hit middle- and higher-income families hardest, a new study found.
-
The number of underinsured U.S. adults—that is, people who have health coverage that does not adequately protect them from high medical expenses—has risen dramatically, a Commonwealth Fund study finds. As of 2007, there were an estimated 25 million un
Posted by: Staff on June 10, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-09
-
An increase in neighborhood SES was shown to correlate with an increase in intake of fruit and vegetables.
-
Black patients in the Rochester area have their legs amputated from complications with diabetes or vascular disease at a rate more than six times that of white people, a disparity that far exceeds the racial gaps in other parts of western New York, a stud
Posted by: Staff on June 09, 2008
Category: Lunch Break Reading
links for 2008-06-06
-
Race and place of residence can have a staggering impact on the course and quality of the medical treatment a patient receives, according to new research.
-
“We have an all-out crisis here,” said Carol Meyer, the director of gove