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Recommendations to curb high rates of obesity among young children

Limiting television and other media use, encouraging infants and young children in preschool and child care to spend more time in physically active play, and requiring child care providers to promote healthy sleeping practices are some of the actions needed to curb high rates of obesity among America's youngest children, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine.

24 Jun 2011

athenahealth announces new client and employee training center at Point Lookout facility

athenahealth, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced that it has closed on the purchase of property in Northport, Maine for $7.7 million.

24 Jun 2011

Combined pediatric neuroscience programs at Barrow Neurological Institute

St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center and Phoenix Children's Hospital jointly announced this week their pediatric neuroscience programs are combining under the newly formed Barrow Neurological Institute at Phoenix Children's Hospital.

24 Jun 2011

Disordered eating behaviors carried into young adulthood and beyond

Adolescents who diet and develop disordered eating behaviors (unhealthy and extreme weight control behaviors and binge eating) carry these unhealthy practices into young adulthood and beyond, according to a study conducted by University of Minnesota researchers and published in the July 2011 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

24 Jun 2011

First Edition: June 24, 2011

In today's headlines, reports that Republicans have quit the debt-ceiling negotiations and details about how the Supreme Court sided with drug makers in two decisions.

24 Jun 2011

Galileo's advanced visual analytics platform to be launched at BIO 2011 conference

Galileo Analytics announced today that it will debut Galileo Cosmos, Galileo's advanced visual analytics platform at the BIO 2011 conference in Washington, DC, providing a powerful new dimension to Galileo's suite of analytical tools and enhancing the company's ability to mine complex sets of de-identified health data.

24 Jun 2011

Up to 5M Pakistanis at risk from floods this year, U.N. says

"Up to five million people in Pakistan are at risk from floods this year, partly due to poor reconstruction and the inadequate rehabilitation of survivors who are still reeling from last year's epic deluge, the U.N. said on Wednesday," Reuters reports.

24 Jun 2011

CMS official grilled on Medicare Secondary Payer program

Politics were at work as Deborah Taylor, the chief financial officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, faced tough questioning during a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee On Oversight and Investigations hearing regarding the financial controls applied to this aspect of Medicare — a generally complex and obscure part of the program.

24 Jun 2011

Global development companies form coalition to gain more visibility

More than 50 companies involved in global development work have formed the Coalition of International Development Companies "in hopes of gaining more visibility for their work with the U.S. Agency for International Development as well as with other government agencies and nongovernmental organizations," Washington Technology reports.

24 Jun 2011

Leadership addresses Feed the Future Forum

The Knowledge-Driven International Development (KDID) Portal's "Agrilinks" blog features a summary of several of the speakers who presented at the Feed the Future Forum, including Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities;

24 Jun 2011

Gender-based sex selection harms women's health in Asia, U.N. report says

"Gender biased sex selection, widespread in many parts of Asia, has serious and profoundly debilitating effects on the mental and physical health of women, says a report by five United Nations agencies," BMJ reports.

24 Jun 2011

G20 agriculture ministers reach deal aimed at addressing high food prices

"G20 farm ministers settled a deal on Thursday to tackle high food prices, agreeing to a watered-down declaration that fell short of France's ambitious proposals to tighten regulation of commodity markets," Reuters reports.

24 Jun 2011

Breast milk is an incredible low-tech solution for infant malnutrition

In his latest New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof discusses the health benefits of breast milk for preventing childhood malnutrition. "When we think of global poverty, we sometimes assume that the challenges are so vast that any solutions must be extraordinarily complex and expensive.

24 Jun 2011

Epilepsy may arise from complex mixture of altered ion channels

Imagine two flat screen televisions tuned to the same channel and sitting side-by-side. From a distance, their pictures are virtually the same, however up close, you can see subtle variations in the pixels - one blurred here, another dropped out there.

24 Jun 2011

Arguments held in NJ Appeals Court over health law challenge

A federal appeals court hearing arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of last year's U.S. health reform law focused primarily on whether plaintiffs need to demonstrate they are suffering economic harm now or will when the part of the law mandating that everyone have health coverage takes effect.

24 Jun 2011

ABA honors Acorda Therapeutics president with 2011 Stevie Award

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. announced that Ron Cohen, M.D., President and CEO of Acorda Therapeutics, was awarded the 2011 Stevie Award for Executive of the Year in the Health Products & Services category at the 9th Annual American Business Awards (ABA) ceremony held on June 20, 2011.

24 Jun 2011

Mass. Attorney General says plan to curb health costs not working

Early results show that putting doctors and hospitals on a budget — a payment method promoted as a way to curb health costs — has not saved money in Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley concluded in a report released yesterday.

24 Jun 2011

Automated screening system helps identify cases of unexpected drug diversions

Electronic data from automated drug dispensing carts can help to identify drug diversion by anesthesia care providers, according to a report in the July issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society.

24 Jun 2011

Find a better way to incorporate evidence into health policy

"Research evidence has undoubtedly been crucial in formulating countless global health policies which have saved many millions of lives," but "at the same time, we believe there are several common fallacies about its 'real world' application," Gavin Yamey and Richard Feachem of the Evidence to Policy initiative write in an Evidence-Based Medicine perspective.

24 Jun 2011

Ashoka and Boehringer Ingelheim initiative to promote health

The social entrepreneurial organization Ashoka and pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim on Tuesday announced they are launching a three-year global initiative aimed at "promoting healthy individuals, families and communities by identifying and supporting the most promising solutions to challenging health problems," according to an Ashoka press release.

24 Jun 2011