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APAPO honors House Democratic Leader with Outstanding Leadership Award

Representative Nancy Pelosi was honored last night by the American Psychological Association Practice Organization for her advocacy work and legislative accomplishments on mental health issues.

16 Mar 2011

U.S. aid has been reaching Libya, U.S. officials say

Though safety concerns have prevented U.S. disaster experts from entering Libya and seeing the situation first-hand, State Department officials said Monday that U.S. partners have been dispensing aid, CNN reports.

16 Mar 2011

EU parliament approves resolution calling for countries to revise pandemic response

On the heels of the release of a draft report by an independent panel of experts examining the WHO's response to H1N1, BMJ News reports on a recently approved resolution and accompanying report released by the European Union parliament that calls on EU countries to revise their flu prevention plans "to make them more effective, coherent, and flexible" and for the WHO to revise its definition of pandemic to take into account not only geographical spread of disease but also severity.

16 Mar 2011

Florida Legislature must modernize state's 14-year-old tobacco policies: Citizens For Fairness

The Florida Legislature must modernize the state's 14-year-old tobacco policies said Citizens for Fairness in Florida, a coalition of individuals, retailers, manufacturers, health care advocates, and statewide organizations.

16 Mar 2011

Efforts take shape to simplify end-of-life wishes, improve care

The programs are known as Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment, or Polst. They are meant to complement advance directives, sometimes known as living wills, in which people state in broad terms how much medical intervention they will want when their condition no longer allows them to communicate.

16 Mar 2011

$10 million in CDC grants awarded to combat hospital-acquired infections

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday awarded $10 million to five medical centers to develop and test new approaches to combating infections acquired in hospitals and other care settings.

16 Mar 2011

AFGE: Proposed cost saving strategy may diminish both access, quality of health care for veterans

On Wednesday, March 2, the American Federation of Government Employees provided testimony before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee on the proposed budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs for Fiscal Year 2012.

16 Mar 2011

Improving care for Medicaid's sickest 5% could help reduce funding gap

Politico reports that the Obama administration is targeting this very needy population, many of whom are known as dual eligibles, for better care because — although their numbers are actually quite small — the amount of program money they use is quite large.

16 Mar 2011

Hospitals with higher diagnosis frequency for chronic conditions have lower case-fatality rate

An examination of data for more than 5 million Medicare beneficiaries finds that hospital regions that have a greater frequency of diagnoses have a lower case-fatality rate for chronic conditions such as coronary artery disease and kidney failure, according to a study in the March 16 issue of JAMA.

16 Mar 2011

Advances in imaging ability to discover heart defects in newborns

The Medical Imaging Laboratory in Trondheim is making advances in imaging methods for both ultrasound and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. One benefit will be an enhanced ability to discover heart defects in newborns.

16 Mar 2011

State roundup: Fla. seeks MLR waiver; hospitals struggle

Alabama's Robert Bentley is one of two current governors to have "doctor" on his résumé. In an interview with Stateline last week, Bentley elaborated on his health care agenda. His plan emphasizes individual health savings accounts, which he says will lower costs by letting patients decide how they want to spend their health care dollars. He wants to give state tax breaks to businesses that purchase insurance for their employees and state-based incentives to attract more insurance carriers.

16 Mar 2011

New self-monitoring blood glucose sensor uses tear fluid as sample

People with diabetes could be helped by a new type of self-monitoring blood glucose sensor being developed by Arizona State University engineers and clinicians at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

16 Mar 2011

Viewpoints: Texas' painful budget cuts; Congress 'should' attack deficit, Medicare costs

The real problem is that liberals and conservatives alike have over the years gauged an elected official's support for the goals of a program by the money he or she has been willing to spend on it. Thus, liberals measure one's support for education, welfare and health programs by how much more one votes to fund them each year.

16 Mar 2011

A Medicare mistake: Paying for Viagra

The Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General concluded that the program paid more than $3 million in 2007 and 2008 for this drug, even though it is against the law for Medicare to pay for Viagra prescriptions.

16 Mar 2011

Post-stroke depression management can lead to better physical functioning

Stroke patients who are not successfully treated for depression are at higher risk of losing some of their capability to function normally, according to a study in the March 15, 2011 issue of the journal Neurology.

16 Mar 2011

Nuclear fallout-related health fears rise in Japan

Concerns regarding health risks "rose dramatically in Japan Tuesday" after officials said more radiation was released at a nuclear power plant that was damaged in the tsunami, the Associated Press reports. In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Naoto Kan said radiation had been emitted from four reactors. "The level seems very high, and there is still a very high risk of more radiation coming out," he said.

16 Mar 2011

Pentagon plans to target Tricare spending

As soaring medical costs have forced steep cuts to benefits offered by government and private plans, the program, known as Tricare, has grown more generous.

16 Mar 2011

Human growth, height, size: Reasons to be small

Almost everybody these days thinks that it is best to be tall, meaning much taller than the average traditional height of Asian populations, and even taller than the current average height of populations in high-income countries. It is also often believed – though people might be shy to admit this – that tall people are intrinsically superior to short people. The expressions 'look up to' and 'look down on' are significant.

15 Mar 2011

Heavy smoking dropped drastically over last four decades: Study

A new study has shown that the rate of “pack-a-day” or more smokers in the United States has fallen sharply since 1965, particularly in California. There is evidence from earlier literature that a smaller percentage of Americans smoke now than in previous decades. This new study was published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It shows that high-intensity smoking is also less common.

15 Mar 2011

Newer, more expensive treatments for prostate cancer adopted rapidly

With 180,000 men diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, it is one of the most common types of cancer in the country. For this reason, it has been cited as a good marker for health care spending in general, reflective of the greater trends across the United States.

15 Mar 2011