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Sebelius names Chair of Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday named Helene Gayle, president and chief executive of the charity CARE USA, as the chair the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, Reuters reports.

26 Aug 2009

Healthy San Francisco enrollees express high levels of satisfaction with city's health access program and survey shows signs of improved access to care

As states and cities struggle with the economic recession and possible fiscal pressure on public health care programs, a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey of enrollees in Healthy San Francisco (HSF), the city's health care access program for the uninsured, reports high rates of satisfaction and signs that the program has improved access to care for those uninsured residents who have enrolled.

26 Aug 2009

Importance of access to oral health care emphasized

Kool Smiles, a leading general dentistry provider for kids and parents, opened the doors to its newest location in the Bashford area of Louisville, KY.

26 Aug 2009

Positive results obtained from phase 3 clinical trial of lurasidone for treating schizophrenia

Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd., (DSP) announced today positive results from PEARL 2 - a phase 3 clinical trial of lurasidone for the treatment of patients with schizophrenia. In this trial, both lurasidone 40 and 120 mg/day were significantly more effective than placebo for the treatment of schizophrenia. Lurasidone was well-tolerated with an overall discontinuation rate that was similar to placebo.

26 Aug 2009

FAIR Health Plan provides cost effective healthcare to the uninsured

Nearly everyone in America can agree that the current healthcare system is broken. Now we have a real solution, the Federal Act Insurance Restructure (FAIR) Health Plan, a functional and cost-effective healthcare system. The FAIR Health Plan is designed to meet all of the strategic goals that the American people deserve. It is largely based on successful healthcare systems that are proven sustainable over the long term.

26 Aug 2009

Analysis of pending health reform bill points to huge cuts in Medicare funding

A new American Health Care Association analysis of the pending House health reform bill when combined with the impact of a recently-enacted Medicare regulation cutting Medicare-funded nursing home care by $12 billion will result in total cuts of $44 billion over ten years.

26 Aug 2009

Half of Somalia needs emergency aid, significant deterioration in food security, report says

Somalia faces its "worst humanitarian crisis since civil war began in the country 18 years ago, with half of the country's population in need of emergency aid," the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU), a U.N. agency, said in a report (pdf) released Monday, Bloomberg reports (McLure, 8/25).

26 Aug 2009

Bioethicists and safety experts suggest guidelines for policy makers to improve patient safety

Is it more urgent for hospitals, doctors and nurses to focus resources on preventing the thousands of falls that injure hospitalized patients each year, or to home in on preventing rare but dramatic instances of wrong-side surgery? Is it best to concentrate immediately on preventing pediatric medical errors or on preventing drug interactions in the elderly?

26 Aug 2009

University of Kentucky receives grant from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The University of Kentucky College of Public Health's Center for Public Health Systems and Services Research (CPHSSR) has been awarded a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

26 Aug 2009

Online patient data may open new doors in medical research

Since the Internet's earliest days, patients have used the Web to share experiences and learn about diseases and treatments. But now [advocates say] online communities have the potential to transform medical research," the New York Times reports.

26 Aug 2009

Public and private sector players ready to tackle North America’s upcoming flu season

An MIT Sloan School of Management expert on U.S. vaccine markets is “cautiously hopeful” that public and private sector players are far better prepared for North America’s upcoming flu season than they have been for earlier flu pandemics.

26 Aug 2009

Staff continues health reform heavy lifting while Obama vacations

The White House staff continues its tireless work on health care reform as President Obama vacations on Martha's Vineyard, The New York Times reports.

26 Aug 2009

Sabril (vigabatrin) Oral Solution receives approval from FDA

Sabril (vigabatrin) Oral Solution has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat infantile spasms in children ages 1 month to 2 years. Sabril is the first drug in the United States approved to treat the disorder, characterized by a severe type of seizure that usually appears in the first year of life, typically between ages 4 months and 8 months.

26 Aug 2009

Reform efforts focus attention on regional innovations in care delivery

As health reform efforts loom over Congress, news outlets find models of innovation in their own backyards. Geisinger Health System in rural Pennsylvania, a Florida satellite of the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente Northwest in Oregon and Washington state, and Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond, Va., all get some attention.

26 Aug 2009

Smokers twice as likely to get active TB, study finds

"A study in Taiwan has found that smokers are twice as likely to develop active tuberculosis compared to people who have never smoked, prompting calls for policymakers to be tougher on smoking," Reuters reports (Lyn, 8/24).

26 Aug 2009

Chicago physician segment likely to grow more consolidated in future

HealthLeaders-InterStudy, a leading provider of managed care market intelligence, reports that while the medical community in Chicago is more consolidated than most large cities, with multiple large physician groups affiliated with health systems, the physician segment is likely to grow even more consolidated in the future.

26 Aug 2009

White House increases deficit projection; CBO offers slightly better outlook

"The federal government faces exploding deficits and mounting debt over the next decade, White House and congressional budget officials projected Tuesday in competing but similar economic forecasts, " The Associated Press reports.

26 Aug 2009

Vertical farms could solve food production problems, opinion piece says

"If climate change and population growth progress at their current pace, in roughly 50 years farming as we know it will no longer exist," which means that the "majority of people could soon be without enough food or water," Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, warns in a New York Times opinion piece

26 Aug 2009

Program to help runaway girls proves effective

A nurse intervention program that helps sexually exploited runaway girls re-connect to family, school and health care reduces trauma and restores healthy behaviors, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia researcher Elizabeth Saewyc and Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota nurse practitioner Laurel Edinburgh.

26 Aug 2009

Report warns H1N1 could affect half of U.S. population

A U.S. presidential panel report released Monday estimates H1N1 (swine) flu could infect up to half of the country's population, the Washington Post reports.

26 Aug 2009