Health Care News and Research

RSS

SAMHSA announces 29 new grants to leverage health information technology

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) announced today it is awarding up to 29 new grants, totaling up to $25 million over three years, to expand use of health information technology to increase access to behavioral health services.

12 Oct 2011

Time examines maternal mortality in Afghanistan

Time examines the issue of maternal mortality in Afghanistan, where the Health Ministry says "about 18,000 Afghan women die during childbirth every year" writing, "According to a recent report by the NGO Save the Children, Afghanistan ranked as the worst place to give birth, followed by Niger and Chad."

12 Oct 2011

Arguing for better family planning worldwide is not coercive

In this post in the Guardian's "Response" column, Jenny Tonge, chair of the U.K. all-party parliamentary group on population, development and reproductive health, responds to a Guardian opinion piece published last month entitled "Welcome baby seven billion: we've room on Earth for you."

12 Oct 2011

Breast cancer education and detection a challenge in Egypt

In this Washington Times Communities column, Anwaar Abdalla, a lecturer on Civilization and Cultural Affairs at Egypt's Helwan University, writes, "While breast cancer is a global issue, in Egypt, the figure for people suffering from breast cancer is alarming," adding, "According to official statistics of the National Cancer Institute (Cairo University), breast cancer accounts for 35.1 percent of the cases of cancer in Egypt."

12 Oct 2011

HHS OIG will investigate 'incident to' Medicare billing

A watchdog agency in the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to know how many office visits, consultations, eye exams, skin grafts, and other services are performed by unqualified nonphysicians under Medicare's "incident-to" billing rules.

12 Oct 2011

Counterfeit drugs risk lives, threaten pharmaceutical industry in India

BBC News examines how counterfeit or substandard medicines are threatening India's fast-growing pharmaceutical industry, writing, "Worth over $12 billion, the industry is expected to grow more than four-fold in the coming decade," but fake drugs in the system are risking both the lives of patients and the reputation of drug makers.

12 Oct 2011

Neuroscience 2011 conference to held in Washington

New research findings about the brain, nervous system, and related disorders will be presented at Neuroscience 2011 in Washington, Nov. 12-16. Among the many findings are how the brain adapts during development, learning, and decision-making; how genes and the environment work in tandem to influence behavior and disease; and how novel science is changing the understanding of pain, mental illness, and aging.

12 Oct 2011

Do weight-loss incentive programs actually work?

Such experiments live at the nexus of cost-benefit analysis, behavioral psychology and the obesity crisis. The best programs are carefully calculated to exploit human nature: our love of a windfall, the risk of losing a small but significant financial stake, the camaraderie of a team effort, the heat of competition. All in the hope it may push us to do something difficult and unpleasant: shed pounds.

12 Oct 2011

Study finds experimental vaccine protects monkeys from blinding trachoma

"An attenuated, or weakened, strain of Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria can be used as a vaccine to prevent or reduce the severity of trachoma, the world's leading cause of infectious blindness, suggest findings from a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study in monkeys," an NIH press release reports.

12 Oct 2011

GOP candidates prepare for debate; Romney appears to be everyone's target

The Republican presidential hopefuls will face off Tuesday evening in New Hampshire. Even before the event begins, candidates are staking their ground. Texas Gov. Rick Perry went on the offensive, releasing a web video attacking former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney's health care positions. Meanwhile, the debate will be very important to Herman Cain, who has been climbing in the polls, and Michele Bachmann, who has fallen precipitously.

12 Oct 2011

Democrats and Republicans agree: Super committee's work should be less secret

The New York Times reports that both parties are calling for a window into the deficit-reduction panel's deliberations. Meanwhile, Politico Pro offers scenarios regarding how the committee could potentially address Medicare's "doc-fix" issue.

12 Oct 2011

Liberty University asks high court to review health-law ruling

This Virginia university became the latest party to ask the Supreme Court to intervene and to resolve the questions regarding the constitutionality of the health law.

12 Oct 2011

A 'one-size-fits-all' approach to mental health leads to global 'diagnostic inflation'

In this Globalist opinion piece, Ian Dowbiggin, an author and professor of history at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, examines the issue of "diagnostic inflation" within the psychiatry field in the last half century and how, "as Ethan Watters and others have argued, lately American psychiatry has been exporting its diagnoses and treatments to other cultures, 'homogenizing how the world goes mad.'"

12 Oct 2011

India's Aurobindo Pharma first major generic drugmaker to Join UNITAID's Medicines Patent Pool

"India's Aurobindo Pharma has become the first major generic drugmaker to join" the Medicines Patent Pool, launched by the UNITAID health financing system and "designed to make HIV/AIDS treatments more widely available to the poor," Reuters reports.

12 Oct 2011

WFP launches phone cash program to help Ivory Coast residents

"Working with a local telecommunications company, the World Food Programme (WFP) has developed a program in the Ivory Coast to facilitate cash transfers that can be used by thousands of Ivorians to buy food despite a climate of political violence," according to a Foreign Policy Association blog post.

12 Oct 2011

Roundup: Calif. insurer's Avastin decision; Kansas dental care; Gov. Brown vetoes nursing bill

Blue Shield of California will stop covering new Avastin prescriptions for breast cancer patients starting Oct. 17. Patients already on the drug will still be covered, and exceptions could be made for individual cases reviewed by a panel of cancer experts. The not-for-profit insurer cited an unprecedented vote by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration panel that found the drug was not effective enough against breast cancer to risk its potentially dangerous side effects.

12 Oct 2011

U.S. donates record $56M to WFP for nutrition programs in Ethiopia

The U.S. has pledged a record $56 million donation from PEPFAR to the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) aimed to "dramatically increase resources for programs in Ethiopia providing vital nutrition assistance to people living with HIV (PLHIV)," according to a WFP press release.

12 Oct 2011

Evidence suggests mosquitos in Kenya have developed chemical resistance, KEMRI official says

Speaking at a national malaria forum in Nairobi on Monday, Charles Mbogo of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) presented new evidence showing that malaria-causing mosquitos in Kenya have developed resistance to the most common chemicals derived from pyrethroids and DDT, which "could be a major blow to the country's strategy to eradicate malaria by 2017," Nigeria's the Nation reports.

12 Oct 2011

UNAIDS delegation to Russian Federation visits specialized AIDS clinic, plays in charity soccer match

"On the first of a four-day mission to the Russian Federation, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe and UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador James Chau visited a specialized HIV clinic near Saint Petersburg that cares for children who have been orphaned by AIDS and pregnant women living with HIV," according to a UNAIDS feature story.

12 Oct 2011

NIH awards United Therapeutics $45 million contract to develop potential oral treatment for viruses

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded United Therapeutics Corporation a contract for up to $45 million over five years "to help develop a potential oral treatment for viruses like influenza and the mosquito-borne tropical fever dengue," the Associated Press/Washington Post reports.

12 Oct 2011