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Public Health

Obama raises U.S. goal on fighting AIDS

AIDS/HIV • • Public HealthDec 04 11

President Barack Obama vowed to boost U.S. efforts to fight AIDS with a new target of providing treatment to 6 million people worldwide by 2013, up from an earlier goal of 4 million.

At a celebrity-studded World AIDS Day event on Thursday, Obama also challenged other nations to boost their commitments to fund treatment and called on China to “step up” as a major donor in the effort to expand access to AIDS drugs.

“We can beat this disease. We can win this fight. We just have to keep at it, today, tomorrow, and every day until we get to zero,” Obama said at the forum, where he credited his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, for his efforts to combat AIDS and HIV.

“As we go forward, we need to keep refining our strategy so that we’re saving as many lives as possible. We need to listen when the scientific community focuses on prevention,” Obama said.

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Most insurers met spending limits under law: GAO

Public HealthDec 01 11

Most U.S. health insurers last year would have satisfied the much-disputed spending rules under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, according to a new report by a congressional watchdog agency.

The rules require insurers such as Aetna and UnitedHealth to spend most of customers’ premium payments on medical care, not administrative costs or profit, or risk paying patients a rebate.

Since the requirement went into effect in January, a number of states have sought waivers to get leeway in how fast the rules go into effect, which they say would keep insurers from abandoning the individual insurance market.

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Body rebuilding: Researchers regenerate muscle in mice

Public HealthNov 29 11

A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI’s Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.

The team used a novel protocol to coax mature human muscle cells into a stem cell-like state and grew those reprogrammed cells on biopolymer microthreads. The threads were placed in a wound created by surgically removing a large section of leg muscle from a mouse. Over time, the threads and cells restored near-normal function to the muscle, as reported in the paper “Restoration of Skeletal Muscle Defects with Adult Human Cells Delivered on Fibrin Microthreads,” published in the current issue of the journal Tissue Engineering. Surprisingly, the microthreads, which were used simply as a scaffold to support the reprogrammed human cells, actually seemed to accelerate the regeneration process by recruiting progenitor mouse muscle cells, suggesting that they alone could become a therapeutic tool for treating major muscle trauma.

“We are pleased with the progress of this work, and frankly we were surprised by the level of muscle regeneration that was achieved,” said Raymond Page, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at WPI, chief scientific officer at CellThera, and corresponding author on the paper.

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U.S. healthcare cuts minimal, more pain looms

Public HealthNov 23 11

The breakdown of deficit talks in Congress will exact little pain on the U.S. healthcare industry, but it’s a temporary reprieve from steeper cuts that could be put back on the table in 2013.

The failure of the congressional “super committee” to reach a deal triggers a two percent across-the-board cut to Medicare, the government program that provides coverage to millions of older and disabled Americans.

That translates into about $123 billion over the next decade—far lighter than the $500 billion to $700 billion in cuts that could have hit hospitals, doctors and beneficiaries, as well as insurers, drugmakers and nursing homes, if the panel had reached a deal.

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Text-message bullying becoming more common

Children's Health • • Public HealthNov 22 11

A growing number of U.S. kids say they have been picked on via text messaging, while there has been little change in online harassment, researchers reported Monday.

Of more than 1,100 middle school and high school students surveyed in 2008, 24 percent said they had ever been “harassed” by texting. That was up from about 14 percent in a survey of the same kids the year before.

“Harassment” meant that peers had spread rumors about them, made “rude or mean comments,” or threatened them.

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New Report Highlights LGBT Older Adults’ Needs, Identifies Policy Opportunities

Public Health • • Sexual HealthNov 16 11

The National Academy on an Aging Society and Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) today released the first-ever issue of the acclaimed Public Policy & Aging Report (PPAR) on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) aging, highlighting gaps in policy and research on LGBT older adults, and current and future solutions to address the needs of LGBT elders.

“Given the voluminous gerontological literature that has built up over the past half-century, it is hard to imagine that any set of aging populations has been largely ignored or under-investigated. Yet, LGBT older adults have remained nearly invisible to the community of advocates, researchers, practitioners, administrators, and politicians who associate themselves with the modern aging enterprise,” said PPAR Editor Robert Hudson, PhD, chair of the Department of Social Policy at the Boston University School of Social Work. “This issue of Public Policy & Aging Report takes a step toward filling that void.”

LGBT older adults make up a significant share of America’s 65+ population, and their numbers are expected to double in size over the next several decades, reaching more than 3 million by 2030.  An increase in numbers signals a growing need to ensure that the policies designed to protect our nation’s elders take into account the needs of LGBT older adults.

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More Americans than not want health law repeal: poll

Public HealthNov 16 11

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to review President Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms, more Americans want to it repealed than want to keep it, a poll released on Wednesday shows.

A Gallup survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults found that 47 percent favor the repeal of healthcare reform, versus 42 percent who want the law kept in place. Eleven percent had no opinion.

But the survey also showed that 50 percent of Americans believe the federal government has a responsibility to make sure everyone has health coverage, compared with 46 percent who do not.

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Dr. John F. Burke, Dies at 89; Created Synthetic Skin

Public HealthNov 06 11

Artificial skin had been the holy grail in treating burn victims for a century when Dr. John F. Burke began wrestling with some of the perennial obstacles to making it: finding a flexible material that would protect against infection and dehydration, that could be made from ordinary substances, that would not be rejected by a patient’s immune system and that would look like normal skin.

In 1969, Dr. Burke, a Harvard Medical School professor and a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, took those specifications to Dr. Ioannis V. Yannas, a professor of fibers and polymers in M.I.T.’s department of mechanical engineering.

Eleven years later, a team led by the two men developed a material — an amalgam of plastics, cow tissue and shark cartilage — that became the first commercially reproducible, synthetic human skin. It would save the lives of innumerable severely burned people worldwide.

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Military retirees fret about healthcare fees

Public HealthNov 02 11

When Wayne Johnson flew missions in Vietnam in the 1960s, one of the allures of a military career was the pledge that those who risked their lives for the United States would be repaid with healthcare in old age.

Now, as the 65-year-old retired Air Force major nears an age when he may need to bank on that promise, support is building in Washington for changes that could make it more costly for military retirees and their dependents to receive healthcare. It is a move Johnson finds worrying.

“It’s something that was an unwritten contract when we joined the military back in the ‘60s,” said Johnson, who flew an OV-10 Bronco light strike aircraft as a forward air controller in Vietnam. “And now to change the rules when it’s time to use it, certainly it’s a violation of trust.”

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Republican Cain says ad not promoting smoking

Public Health • • Tobacco & MarijuanaNov 01 11

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Sunday said he was not promoting smoking in an ad that showed his chief of staff puffing on a cigarette.

The ad stirred much debate over what message it was trying to convey. Cain, a non-smoker, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” and said there was no subliminal signal intended.

“One of the themes within this campaign is let Herman be Herman. Mark Block is a smoker and we say let Mark be Mark,” Cain said, referring to his chief of staff. “That’s all we’re trying to say because we believe let people be people. He doesn’t deny that he’s a smoker.”

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China arrests 18 in illegal transplant crackdown

Public HealthOct 26 11

Police in eastern China have arrested 18 people after a raid on two clinics offering illegal organ transplants, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.

The clinics in Jinan, Shandong’s provincial capital, were raided on Sunday as doctors were preparing a kidney transplant, Xinhua cited local police as saying.

“Police were tipped off earlier this month, and then launched a probe with the city’s health bureau against the two clinics. They found that vehicles and people regularly shuttled between the two clinics, which were not far away from each other,” the report said.

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China vaccinates 4.5 million people in fight against polio

Immunology • • Infections • • Public HealthOct 18 11

China vaccinated 4.5 million children and young adults over the last five weeks in the western region of Xinjiang in a fight against polio after the disease paralyzed 17 people and killed one of them, the World Health Organization said.

Polio has broken out in China for the first time since 1999 and scientists say the strain originated from Pakistan. The outbreak marked the latest setback to a global campaign to eradicate polio, now endemic in only four countries—Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Nigeria.

“Even if they don’t come down with any symptoms (carriers), by giving them polio vaccine we make that person less infectious,” said Oliver Rosenbauer, WHO spokesman for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Geneva.

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Child abuse in birds: Study documents ‘cycle of violence’ in nature

Public HealthOct 03 11

For one species of seabird in the Galápagos, the child abuse “cycle of violence” found in humans plays out in the wild.

The new study of Nazca boobies by Wake Forest University researchers provides the first evidence from the animal world showing those who are abused when they are young often grow up to be abusers. The study appears in the October issue of the ornithology journal, The Auk.

“We were surprised by the intense interest that many adults show in unrelated young, involving really rough treatment,” said Wake Forest Professor of Biology Dave Anderson, who led the study with Wake Forest graduate student Martina Müller. “A bird’s history as a target of abuse proved to be a strong predictor of its adult behavior.”

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Well-Child Visits Suffer From Time Squeeze: Study

Children's Health • • Public HealthSep 25 11

Longer well-child visits for babies and toddlers make for happier parents because doctors can fit in more advice and answer more questions, a new study finds.

But most well-child visits last less than 20 minutes and pediatricians are getting even more time-crunched as health care systems look to cut extra expenses any way they can, researchers write in Pediatrics.

“The disability rates for children continue to increase, and the nature of disability is changing,” with more kids getting diagnosed with behavioral and developmental problems, lead author Dr. Neal Halfon, from the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, told Reuters Health.

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Healthcare Costs Expected to Increase by Lowest Rate in a Decade

Public HealthSep 25 11

American companies will likely pay an average of 5.4 percent more for health benefits in 2012, marking the lowest increase in costs since 1997.

American companies will likely pay an average of 5.4 percent more for health benefits in 2012, according to national survey by benefits consulting firm Mercer. This would mark the lowest increase since 1997. However, employees can expect the cost of their health benefits to continue increasing at a faster pace than their earnings.

The annual survey included responses from almost 1,600 employers. The findings of the analysis reflect employer efforts to cut costs by such methods as offering employees lower-cost health plans having increased paycheck contributions and higher deductibles.

Without any cost-cutting measures, employer health benefit costs are expected to increase by 7.1 percent, on average, which is a decline of close to 2 percent when compared to average annual increases of around 9 percent annually over the last five years.

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