Public Health
Asking Where And When The Next Disease Outbreak Could Happen
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It was one of those things you hear about on the news: an outbreak of monkeypox in the Chicago area. An animal dealer placed infected rats from Africa next to a crate of prairie dogs. The disease spread to the prairie dogs, which were then sold in pet stores across the nation. Dozens of people in multiple states were sickened from contact with the animals.
The incident gave K-State veterinary medicine graduate Christine Ellis a little bit of global perspective. At the time, she was working as an associate veterinarian at The Midwest Bird and Exotic Animal Hospital in the Chicago area.
Public health and cancer prevention: Success and future challenges in cancer policy
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Medical research has revealed much about cancer prevention, but is the information reaching all Americans, and are they acting on it” Today, at the American Association for Cancer Research’s Sixth Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, being held from December 5 to 8 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, researchers explore the question of how best to translate cancer prevention science into public health policy.
Quitting smoking and inoculation with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine are two ways that major segments of the general population can drastically lower their risk of developing certain cancers, yet researchers have found that these messages are not necessarily translating into action by the public. Likewise, researchers found that minority women fare worse between time of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, then do Caucasian women, highlighting a worrisome gap in health care among racial and ethnic minorities.
1 in 10 patients comes to harm while in hospital
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One in 10 NHS patients comes to harm while in hospital as a result of their clinical care, suggests a study in Quality and Safety in Health Care.
The findings are based on a review of the case notes of a random sample of just over 1000 patients admitted to one large teaching hospital in the north of England during the first six months of 2004.
Don’t treat AIDS victims with disdain, Pope says
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Pope Benedict on Wednesday called for increased efforts to stop the spread of AIDS and said victims of the disease should not be treated with disdain.
“I am spiritually close to those who suffer from this terrible sickness as well as to their families, particularly if they have lost a loved one. I assure them all of my prayers,” he said ahead of this Saturday’s World AIDS Day.
U.S. obesity rates level off: government study
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After 25 years of successive increases, obesity rates in the United States are holding steady, government health officials said on Wednesday.
But Americans are still plenty fat, with more than a third of U.S. adults found to be obese in 2005-2006, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Anti-smoking strategy targets fourth-graders, parents in rural and urban Georgia
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A smoking-prevention strategy that targets black fourth-graders and their parents is under study in urban and rural Georgia.
Researchers want to know if they can keep these children from smoking and help smoking parents quit, according to Dr. Martha S. Tingen, nurse researcher at the Medical College of Georgia’s Georgia Prevention Institute, and Interim Program Leader for Cancer Prevention and Control, MCG Cancer Center.
Medicaid strains US emergency rooms
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The U.S. government’s Medicaid program for the poor may put more financial burden on overcrowded hospital emergency rooms than the nation’s 47 million uninsured, according to a study published on Thursday.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco and Stanford University found that the uninsured patients paid 35 percent of their overall emergency room bills in 2004, versus 33 percent for Medicaid.
Tobacco deaths to reach 10 mln a year by 2030: group
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Tobacco-related deaths are expected to double to 10 million a year by 2030, with most fatalities in developing countries, a senior World Lung Foundation (WLF) official said on Friday.
Judith Longstaff Mackay, the organization’s global tobacco control program coordinator, said while cigarette markets were getting smaller in advanced economies, the opposite was true for developing states, where the number of smokers and the volume each consumes is growing.
Having a baby? It will cost more than $7K
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According to a new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the cost of having a baby, from the first prenatal visit to delivery, averaged roughly $7,600 (in 2004 dollars) for an uncomplicated birth.
“Although there have been more than 4 million births each year in the United States since 2000, there is little information in the literature regarding the average medical expenditures generated over the course of a pregnancy,” note Steven R. Machlin and Frederick Rohde of AHRQ, who worked on the report.
New Study Doubles Survival To Hospital Discharge After Cardiac Arrest
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A new seven-city study on the impact of new CPR techniques supports the widespread use of the American Heart Association’s new 2005 CPR guidelines, according to the study authors in a presentation at the AHA’s Scientific Sessions November 4 in Orlando.
Lead author, Tom P. Aufderheide, MD, Professor of Emergency Medicine, and Director of the Resuscitation Research Center in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, presented the data showing a doubling of hospital discharge rates when the AHA’s new CPR guidelines were consistently and effectively applied to 893 patients.
Overweight and Obesity Cause 6,000 Cancers a Year in UK Women
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Following last week’s report by the World Cancer Research Fund, evidence of the relevance of obesity to the risk of a wide range of cancers in UK women is published online by the BMJ today.
The study shows that overweight and obese women in the UK are at a higher risk of developing and dying from cancer. In fact, the researchers estimate that 5% of all cancers (about 6,000 annually) are attributable to being overweight or obese.
Parents less distressed than non-parents: survey
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Parents may complain that their kids “drive them crazy,” but results of a survey suggest that the opposite might actually be true.
The survey of more than 33,400 U.S. adults identified lower levels of anxiety, depression, or other measures of psychological distress among parents than among non-parenting adults of the same age.
Blacks more likely to leave hospital against advice
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African Americans are more likely than their white or Hispanic counterparts to check themselves out of the hospital against their doctors’ advice, a new study has found.
In an analysis of more than 3 million discharges from U.S. hospitals in 2002, the researchers found that 1.4 percent were made against medical advice. Compared with white patients, African Americans were 35 percent more likely to opt for such a “self-discharge,” the researchers report in the American Journal of Public Health.
Obesity estimated to cost U.S. billions
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A new study suggests that obesity among older Americans costs taxpayers billions of extra dollars in Medicare expenses—a financial burden that will only grow in years to come.
Using data from Medicare surveys conducted between 1992 and 2001, researchers found that men who were obese at age 65 had lifetime healthcare expenses that were up to13 percent higher than normal-weight men their age. Among women, that figure was as high as 17 percent.
Catholic condom ban fueling HIV spread in Latam
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The rapid spread in Latin America of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is made worse by the Roman Catholic Church’s stand against using condoms, a U.N. official said on Monday.
Some 1.7 million people across Latin America have HIV infection or AIDS, and the epidemic is spreading swiftly with up to 410,000 new cases in 2006, up from as many as 320,000 new cases in 2004, according the UN AIDS program, UNAIDS.
