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Curbing consequences of obesity takes personal responsibility

A recently released OECD report "spells out the toll obesity can take on one's health and on health care costs," Indianapolis Star reporter Barb Berggoetz writes in this Star opinion piece, adding, "Obese people die on average eight to 10 years sooner than people at normal weight."

24 Feb 2012

Vt., Okla. lawmakers mull creating health insurance exchanges

Lawmakers in Vermont and Oklahoma are the latest to grapple with creating a state health insurance exchange. In Vermont, the governor is defending his proposal for an exchange for small businesses while Oklahoma lawmakers are mulling creating their own so the federal government doesn't do it for them.

24 Feb 2012

Federal rules for HIT 'meaningful use' expected today

Federal health IT officials said Wednesday that the proposed rules for the second stage of the federal program to fund electronic health records will be released Thursday. Office of the National Coordinator Director Farzad Mostashari and other top officials made the announcement at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in Las Vegas to two ballrooms packed full of people who had hoped to see the details earlier this week.

24 Feb 2012

India lags in efforts to meet Millennium Development Goals

"India is lagging in its effort to reach United Nations goals to reduce poverty and improve health and sanitation, but has shown significant progress boosting education, treating AIDS and addressing environmental concerns," Noeleen Heyzer, executive secretary of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, said last week, the New York Times' "India Ink" blog reports.

24 Feb 2012

New insurance coverage option may have negative effects on veteran's health care

While the Affordable Care Act will expand health insurance coverage for low-income persons through Medicaid and state health-insurance exchanges, including much-needed care for 1.8 million uninsured veterans in the U.S., the new insurance coverage option also may have a number of unintended negative effects on health care for veterans, said Kenneth W. Kizer, director of the Institute for Population Health Improvement at UC Davis Health System.

24 Feb 2012

Researchers begin clinical trial of first visceral leishmaniasis vaccine

"Researchers say they've developed the first vaccine for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) -- a disease that affects 500,000 people each year and has been called the 'parasitic version of HIV,'" although the diseases are unrelated, U.S. News reports.

24 Feb 2012

CHAI official discusses Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria

In this post in the Results for Development Institute's "Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment" blog, Project Director Jean Arkedis and Program Associate Edith Han interview Megumi Gordon, deputy director for malaria at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), "to take an exclusive look into the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria (AMFm) and its innovative mechanism to increase access to antimalarials."

24 Feb 2012

Research!America shares findings about global health R&D in New Jersey

In this post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition's (GHTC) "Breakthroughs" blog, Mandy Goldberg, global health research and development (R&D) advocacy intern at Research!America, shares the organization's findings about the state of New Jersey from an analysis conducted in target states to measure the health and economic impact of global health R&D in the U.S.

24 Feb 2012

Draft national plan to fight Alzheimer's released

A framework for the plan was unveiled in January. This more fleshed-out version builds on that outline, makes treatment a top priority and focuses on the burden the disease places on families and caregivers.

24 Feb 2012

Feds award health exchange grants to 10 states

The Department of Health and Human Services is sending $229 million in exchange establishment grants to 10 states -- half of which are receiving this funding for a second time around. However, an Associated Press analysis found that progress among states in setting up these health insurance marketplaces remains uneven.

24 Feb 2012

Castlight Health named among Fast Company's annual Most Innovative Companies

Castlight Health, developer of a personalized health care shopping portal offering unbiased information about health care cost and quality, announced that it has been named one of the world's most innovative companies in 2012 by Fast Company. Fast Company listed Castlight Health fourth on its list of the top ten most innovative companies in the health care industry.

24 Feb 2012

Scalia could be unlikely health law ally

The fate of President Barack Obama's health-care law may hinge on the administration's ability to enlist an unlikely ally: Justice Antonin Scalia, the pillar of the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative wing.

24 Feb 2012

Va. lawmakers backdown from requiring invasive, pre-abortion ultrasound

Virginia lawmakers backed off a proposal Wednesday to require women seeking abortions get an transvaginal ultrasound after Gov. Bob McDonnell said he wouldn't support it. Virginia House lawmakers instead approved an amended bill requiring only an external ultrasound.

24 Feb 2012

Governor of Illinois urges Medicaid cuts

Pat Quinn, the Democratic governor, underscored the need for cuts to Medicaid and the state worker pension system, but some critics said his proposals did not offer enough specifics about how to reduce the state's underfinanced liabilities.

24 Feb 2012

Health issues create political flashpoints during GOP presidential primary debate

GOP candidates sparred during last night's face-off over a range of issues including the Massachusetts health law that Mitt Romney signed while that state's governor, family planning and contraception, and abortion.

24 Feb 2012

Workshop increases pharmacy and medical students' empathy

One year ago, a landmark study led by Mohammadreza Hojat, Ph.D., research professor, Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Thomas Jefferson University, quantified a relationship between physicians' empathy and their patients' positive clinical outcomes, suggesting that a physician's empathy is an important factor associated with clinical competence.

24 Feb 2012

State legislatures contemplate controlling costs, health IT, prescribing authority

The proposed premium hikes for hundreds of thousands of California consumers with individual coverage would outpace the cost of overall medical care, which has risen just 3.6 percent in the last year.

24 Feb 2012

Ga. vasectomy bill goes viral

A Democratic lawmaker has proposed denying men vasectomies as a parody of a Republican bill that would prohibit abortions for women more than 20 weeks pregnant. Elsewhere, a Wisconsin bill would require physicians to give women a physical exam and be present when giving abortion-inducing drugs.

24 Feb 2012

More people than ever overweight, obese in developed countries, OECD report says

"More people in developed countries are overweight or obese than ever before, dooming them to years of ill health, pushing up health care costs and piling more pressure on health systems, a report by the OECD found on Tuesday," Reuters reports.

24 Feb 2012

Blog examines gap between mental health disease burden, attention given to problem

This post in KPLU's "Humanosphere" blog examines the "gap between the disease burden of mental illness and the amount of funding and attention devoted to solving the problem," referencing a post published Friday in the Global Health Interest Forum's "Blog of Scientists for Global Health," written by Paul Southworth, a visiting scholar on malaria and vaccine science at the NIH.

24 Feb 2012