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Flu immunization targets fall short for health workers and pregnant women

According to a new survey despite recent improvements in influenza vaccination rates among U.S. health care personnel, their rates for the 2010-2011 flu season still fell short of national health objectives.

18 Aug 2011

AHRQ awards Johns Hopkins Evidence-based Practice Center $475,000 for study on effective wound care

An estimated $25 billion is spent annually on treating chronic wounds on patients in the United States. These chronic wounds deeply affect the quality of life of more than six million people who have them. The most common types of chronic skin wounds and skin ulcers are related to venous disease (conditions related to or caused by veins that become diseased or abnormal).

18 Aug 2011

First Edition: August 18, 2011

"The SSI program for children is rapidly expanding, with the biggest increase among kids with mental, behavioral and learning disorders, including ADHD, speech delays, autism, and bipolar disorder. But as it pulls in children like Hulston, the program is sparking criticism in Congress.

18 Aug 2011

PrEP raises questions regarding 'risk disinhibition' and drug resistance

Nature News reports on "the possibility of unintended public-health consequences" of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV and pharmaceutical company Gilead's plan to ask the FDA to evaluate its combination antiretroviral (ARV) drug Truvada for use in healthy people.

18 Aug 2011

Tobacco companies sue federal government over graphic warnings

Tobacco companies want a judge to put a stop to new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and pictures of diseased lungs, saying they unfairly urge adults to shun their legal products and will cost millions to produce.

18 Aug 2011

How the Medco-Express Scripts merger could impact consumer pocketbooks

You probably haven't heard of either Express Scripts or Medco Health Services, but their plans to merge in a $29 billion deal, announced last month, may have an impact on your pocketbook.

18 Aug 2011

Pressure-reduction mattresses could help hospitals reduce health care costs

Hospitals could reduce health care costs arising from pressure ulcers, commonly known as bedsores, by investing in pressure-reduction mattresses for elderly patients in emergency departments, according to new research from the University of Toronto.

18 Aug 2011

MSF warns global shortage of drug-resistant TB treatment likely

As countries increase the use of the GeneXpert test, a two-hour molecular TB test released in 2010, "enabl[ing] them to diagnose more patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), a worldwide shortage of the drugs to treat these patients is likely, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warns," according to PlusNews.

18 Aug 2011

Henry Schein authorizes repurchase of $200M shares of common stock

Henry Schein, Inc., the largest provider of health care products and services to office-based practitioners, today announced that its Board of Directors has authorized the repurchase of up to $200 million of shares of the Company's common stock.

18 Aug 2011

U.S. research collaboration addresses threat of cancer in Latin America

In a post in the State Department's "DipNote" blog, Krysten Carrera, a Presidential Management fellow at the National Cancer Institute currently serving in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, discusses "the growing international effort to address the threat of chronic non-communicable diseases."

18 Aug 2011

Multi-country study of severe pneumonia in hospitalized children

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health announced on Tuesday the launch of "a groundbreaking new study called the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) study … a large multi-country case-control study of severe pneumonia in hospitalized children under five years of age … being conducted in Bangladesh, The Gambia, Kenya, Mali, South Africa, Thailand, and Zambia," according to a JHSPH press release.

18 Aug 2011

ACLU files challenge to Kansas law restricting abortion coverage

The American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday filed suit to block a Kansas law restricting access to insurance coverage for abortion. Kansas law prohibits comprehensive insurance policies from covering abortion, except to save the life of a pregnant woman. Abortion coverage can be purchased separately, but the ACLU says it's not available to all women.

18 Aug 2011

National campaign in China aims to rectify gender imbalance

Authorities in China "have begun a national campaign to crack down on procedures used to determine a fetus' sex for anything other than medical purposes and abortions performed because a fetus is of a certain sex" in an effort to curb the country's growing gender ratio imbalance, China Daily reports.

18 Aug 2011

World must invest equally in bird flu prevention and response

The "reports during the past two weeks of two recent infections and another death" from H5N1 (avian) influenza "raised little concern except among public health officials," Robert Gatter, co-director of the Center for Health Law Studies and professor of law at Saint Louis University, writes in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece, adding that "the fact that bird flu in developing nations receives little public attention reveals that the world has become complacent about this threat."

18 Aug 2011

Interests line up to guide 'super committee' decisions

The American Medical Association is among the groups taking a message to Congress — but it goes beyond trying to avoid the 2 percent cut that would be triggered if the deficit reduction panel doesn't meet its savings target. The AMA hopes to link fixing the scheduled Medicare physician payment cut to what it terms "any serious proposal" to address the nation's fiscal challenges.

18 Aug 2011

Conference to expand awareness about benefits of human tissue research

When you have blood taken for a test or have tissue removed for a biopsy, it may be used for medical research. While there are clear benefits to such research, medical and health care professionals need to be aware of cultural and confidentiality concerns on the part of patients.

18 Aug 2011

Long-delayed forms to provide coverage details likely to be released today

Part of the health law, these rules will lay out, among other things, a new standard form that will provide consumers who are shopping for health coverage with policy details, such as deductibles and specific costs for certain medical circumstances.

18 Aug 2011

ADA releases papers that examine dental safety net programs

The American Dental Association today released the second in a series of papers that examine the challenges and solutions to bringing good oral health to millions of Americans, including the growing population whose only possible source of dental care is the so-called oral health safety net.

18 Aug 2011

New collaboration for development of new malaria vaccine

"The Infectious Disease Research Institute (IDRI) today announced a new Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), focused on support of a collaboration with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) for the development of a new vaccine against malaria," an IDRI press release states.

18 Aug 2011

DNDi addresses 'alarming lack' of R&D for neglected diseases

In a Center for Global Health R&D Policy Assessment blog post, the third part of the center's Product Development Partnership (PDP) mini-series, "Bernard Pecoul from the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) discusses their experience with partnerships to develop treatments for neglected diseases."

18 Aug 2011