healthcare
kkrisberg | April 18, 2014Women aren’t the only ones at risk for depression and in need of screening services when a new baby comes into their lives. Young fathers face significant mental health challenges as well, according to a new study.
Published in the May issue of Pediatrics, researchers found that fathers who live in the same households as their children experience a decrease in depressive symptoms in the period immediately before their children are born. However, depressive symptoms among young fathers, who were around 25 years old when they became fathers, increased an average of 68 percent throughout their…
kkrisberg | April 11, 2014Unfortunately, it’s not too terribly surprising that diseases of the developing world don’t attract as much research attention as diseases common in wealthier countries. However, a new study not only underscores that trend, it actually found zero relationship between global disease burden and health research.
Designed to identify the reasons behind global health research disparities, the study compared the global disease burden (defined as healthy life years lost to disease or disability) of 111 diseases against relevant research articles using data from the World Health Organization and the…
kkrisberg | April 4, 2014When Brian Castrucci sees signs up at local retailers offering discounts to police officers and firefighters, he thinks: Why not public health too?
“How do we better brand ourselves as those who protect and serve,” asks Castrucci, chief program and strategy officer at the de Beaumont Foundation, which supports a variety of projects aimed at strengthening the nation’s public health system. “I’ve never been a victim of crime, but I still value the police. I’ve never had a fire in my home, but I still value the fire department. …I want people to value prevention. I want people to know (public…
kkrisberg | March 28, 2014This year’s County Health Rankings once again illustrate why geography and good health go hand-in-hand. They’re also a poignant reminder that there may be no better way to improve health for all than by focusing on the social determinants of health.
Released earlier this week, the 2014 County Health Rankings compare each state’s counties on 29 factors that impact health, from tobacco use to high school graduation rates to access to healthy food choices. In examining the differences between counties, the report found that the least healthy counties were home to twice the premature death rate,…
kkrisberg | March 24, 2014Thanks to a unanimous vote of California’s Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board last Thursday, workers get to hold on to a robust chemical right-to-know rule that puts their health and safety first. The vote also means that California workers will reap the benefits of more meaningful right-to-know rules than those at the federal level.
“It’s a human right to know about the hazards of the work you’re doing,” said Dorothy Wigmore, occupational health specialist at Worksafe, a state-based organization dedicated to eliminating workplace hazards. “If employers don’t know about the…
kkrisberg | March 14, 2014It’s not the first study to examine the enormous health and economic benefits of vaccines. But it’s certainly another impressive reminder about the power — and value — of prevention.
In a study published online earlier this month in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that childhood immunizations among babies born in 2009 will prevent 42,000 early deaths and 20 million cases of disease, saving the nation $13.5 billion in directs costs (medical costs and disease outbreak control) and more than $68 billion in total societal costs (premature death and lost productivity). That means that…
lborkowski | March 5, 2014Brian Castrucci, who’s worked in city and state health departments and is now Chief Program and Strategy Director at the de Beaumont Foundation, likes to ask people two questions: Do you know who your primary care provider is? And, Do you know who’s head of your local public health department? The fact that many people can answer the first question but not the second, he says, demonstrates why public health needs to partner with health care.
“US medical providers are giving people some of the best medical care in the world, but if they’re returning patients to communities and environments…
lborkowski | February 26, 2014One of the Millennium Development Goals -- a set of goals to improve global well-being by 2015 -- is to reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate of children under age five. The good news for MDG progress is that the under-five mortality rate has been cut nearly in half, from 90 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 48 in 2012. The bad news is that 6.6 million young children still die every year, and those deaths are concentrated in the world's poorest regions. Eight-one percent of these deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, many of them in babies' first 24 hours of life.
A…
kkrisberg | February 14, 2014Most people infected with mosquito-borne West Nile virus don’t experience any symptoms at all. However, the tiny percentage of cases that do end up in the hospital total hundreds of millions of dollars in medical costs and lost productivity.
Published earlier this week in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, researchers estimated that the cumulative cost of reported hospitalized cases of West Nile virus between 1999 and 2012 totaled $778 million. The study is the first to examine the economic burden of West Nile on infected patients who were hospitalized with conditions such…
kkrisberg | February 7, 2014Higher insurance rates don’t mean people stop seeking care at publically funded health centers, found a recent study of family planning clinics in Massachusetts. The findings speak to serious concerns within public health circles that policy-makers may point to higher insurance rates as a justification to cut critical public health funding.
Published in the Jan. 24 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the study examines trends among uninsured patients seeking care at Massachusetts health centers that receive Title X Family Planning Program funds. (The federal Title X program…
kkrisberg | January 31, 2014In a first-of-its-kind study, a researcher has estimated that the health-related economic savings of removing bisphenol A from our food supply is a whopping $1.74 billion annually. And that’s a conservative estimate.
“This study is a case in point of the economic burden borne by society due to the failure to regulate environmental chemicals in a proactive way,” study author Leonardo Trasande told me.
With evidence mounting that bisphenol A (BPA) exposure is a serious health risk, Trasande, an associate professor in pediatrics, environmental medicine and health policy at New York University,…
egrossman | January 31, 2014“Millions of Americans use antibacterial hand soap and body wash products. Although consumers generally view these products as effective tools to help prevent the spread of germs, there is currently no evidence that they are any more effective at preventing illness than washing with plain soap and water,” wrote the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in issuing a proposed rule last month. “Further, some data suggest that long-term exposure to certain active ingredients used in antibacterial products—for example, triclosan (liquid soaps) and triclocarban (bar soaps)—could pose health risks,…
kkrisberg | January 17, 2014“There’s a lot we don’t know about preterm birth and we know even less about the disparities in those births.”
Those are words from Ondine von Ehrenstein, an assistant professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, who recently examined the links between occupational exposures and preterm birth rates among Hispanic women. Perhaps not surprisingly to those in the public health world, von Ehrenstein and her research colleagues did find that Hispanic women are at particular risk for preterm birth associated with certain occupational…
kkrisberg | January 14, 2014It’s probably my earliest public health memory — the image of Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and his grandfatherly beard on the television warning my elementary school self about the dangers of smoking. He was the first doctor I knew by name.
But while Koop may be the surgeon general that people of my generation most likely associate with the public health movement to reduce smoking, he wasn’t the first to speak out against tobacco. Koop was carrying on a legacy that began decades before with the nation’s ninth surgeon general, Luther Terry, who on Jan. 11, 1964, released the first surgeon…
kkrisberg | January 8, 2014With so much pressure on the Affordable Care Act to immediately live up to high expectations, and with opponents who seem gleeful at the news that Americans are having a hard time signing up for affordable health care, it’s reassuring to read that the health reform law can readily take a few blows and keep moving forward.
In a December analysis released by the Urban Institute, authors Linda Blumberg and John Holahan write that the “Affordable Care Act is unlikely to suffer long-term damage even if the marketplaces experience low enrollment and some adverse selection in the first year.” (…
lborkowski | January 6, 2014Now that it’s 2014, millions more people in the US have health insurance coverage (either Medicaid or private insurance), thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In the weeks ahead, many of the newly insured will be visiting healthcare providers to address ongoing health concerns. The Washington Post’s Sandhya Somashekhar and Karen Tumulty highlighted one person with a pent-up demand for healthcare, Sharon Kelly of Louisville, Kentucky:
Kelly said that having Medicaid coverage on Jan. 1 “is a huge relief,” adding, “I’m a redhead and I used to live in California. I have things on my skin that are…
lborkowski | January 2, 2014While we’re on vacation, we’re re-posting content from last year. This post was originally published on January 30, 2013. Since then, the Senate has passed an immigration-reform bill, but the House has not voted on it.
By Liz Borkowski
In Wonkblog yesterday, Sarah Kliff highlighted an important aspect of immigration reform: Undocumented immigrants who gain legal status will also gain access to the Affordable Care Act’s options for getting health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the ACA would reduce our nonelderly uninsured by 32 million, but 23 million people would…
kkrisberg | December 13, 2013On average, eating healthy costs about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, a new study finds. The extra cost seems insignificant at first — a small cup of coffee often costs more — but it all adds up to be a considerable barrier for many low-income families.
Researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health set out to find the evidence behind the conventional wisdom that healthier foods cost more, conducting the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date of price differences between healthy and unhealthy foods. In examining data from 10 high-income nations, researchers found…
cmonforton | December 9, 2013I spent Sunday morning in the ER of my local community hospital in Hays County, Texas. While my husband lay on the gurney having an IV line inserted, I distracted his attention by conversing with the nurse. I can’t recall what prompted it, but the nurse, Elizabeth, offered her experience with this year’s influenza season.
“I’ve been an ER nurse for 10 years. When it comes to the flu, this year was a lot different. We’ve only seen a handful of cases.”
Like many U.S. hospitals, it's used by the community for primary care.
I asked Elizabeth if she had any ideas to explain why they're not seeing…
lborkowski | December 2, 2013by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
President Obama's health reform has been derailed in a collision with health insurance software, but this is hardly a unique experience. In 1995, I was invited to Prague to try to help the Czech Republic reconcile two co-existing public health practice cultures–the hygiene police of the Soviet era and the German tradition of social medicine.
Our delegation found another crisis in the works, around the creation of private health insurance that had started in 1990. Payroll deductions bought private health insurance that covered basic physician and hospital service.…