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Presidential candidates use tough ads to court single women voters

The competition for these votes has led President Obama's campaign ads to highlight GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's positions on issues such Planned Parenthood funding as well as other women's health and contraception issues.

8 Aug 2012

First Edition: August 7, 2012

Today's headlines include reports that HCA, the largest for-profit hospital chain in the U.S., is facing scrutiny about the medical necessity of some of the cardiac procedures done at some of its facilities.

7 Aug 2012

Health worker training program in Tanzania's Kigoma Region reducing maternal mortality rate

Inter Press Service reports on the successful efforts of Tanzania's Kigoma Region "to train assistant medical officers to conduct life-saving c-sections at its rural health centers," allowing pregnant women with complications to deliver at more local facilities instead of having to travel to regional or district hospitals. Tanzania's maternal mortality rate is high, at 578 deaths for every 100,000 live births, IPS notes.

7 Aug 2012

Investment in health systems 'a critical prerequisite' in beginning to end AIDS

The XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) that took place last week in Washington, D.C., "ignited momentum to shift from 'fighting AIDS' to 'ending AIDS,'" Mohga Kamal-Yanni, senior health adviser at Oxfam International, and Urvarshi Rajcoomer, policy and advocacy adviser at Oxfam in South Africa, write in a Mail & Guardian opinion piece.

3 Aug 2012

Hospitals may give free care to some Colo. theater shooting victims

Several hospitals are giving some free care to or forgiving the bills of the victims of the Colorado theater shooting.

27 Jul 2012

HemoGlobe device can identify women with anemia

Could a low-cost screening device connected to a cell phone save thousands of women and children from anemia-related deaths and disabilities? That's the goal of Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering undergraduates who've developed a noninvasive way to identify women with this dangerous blood disorder in developing nations. The device, HemoGlobe, is designed to convert the existing cell phones of health workers into a "prick-free" system for detecting and reporting anemia at the community level.

25 Jul 2012

Community worker assisting with polio campaign in Pakistan shot, killed

In a statement on Saturday, the World Health Organization and UNICEF said "a local community worker who helped an anti-polio campaign in Pakistan has been shot and killed in Karachi -- days after two of its staff were injured in a shooting in the city," the Associated Press reports.

24 Jul 2012

U.S. travel restrictions on sex workers inhibit effective HIV/AIDS response

"[D]isappointingly, one group that will be absent [from the XIX International AIDS Conference next week] due to U.S. travel restrictions is sex workers," a Lancet editorial states.

21 Jul 2012

Viewpoints: Creating an HIV-free generation; Postal Service's struggle over retiree health benefits

HIV forces us to deal with so much: sex, drugs, poverty, racism, homelessness, homophobia, sexism, illness and death. While our nation's response has been imperfect, we have gotten a lot right. And we are now at a pivotal moment where science has led us to imagine the possibility of an HIV-free generation.

21 Jul 2012

Penn. Medicaid enrollees face reductions in dental coverage

Medicaid, a program funded jointly by the federal government and the states, covers the poor and disabled, and coverage varies by state. Most states don't pay for any dental care. Now, in Pennsylvania, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has reduced Pennsylvania's 2 million adult Medicaid patients to basic dental care -- eliminating root canals, periodontal disease work and limiting the number of dentures a patient can receive. The plan now covers little more than cleanings, fillings -- and extractions."

17 Jul 2012

Johns Hopkins doctoral program graduate explores ways to control infectious diseases

Her passport is stamped with exotic locations: Myanmar, Tibet, South Africa, Vietnam, and Cambodia, as well as Baltimore, MD. But, when Carrie Tudor, PhD, MPH, RN, looks at it, she sees global battlefields in the fight against infectious disease. Her weapons: immunizations, programs to curb tuberculosis and HIV transmission, and a drive to carry on a rich tradition of public health nursing research.

16 Jul 2012

Financial boost to malaria fight would result in beneficial gains

"[A] surge in money for insecticide-treated nets and other interventions" to fight malaria over the past decade has reduced the malaria-related death rate by 26 percent since 2000, and a "new push" to fight the disease, which killed 655,000 people in 2010, would have beneficial results, according to a report set to be released by Ray Chambers, the U.N. special envoy for malaria, an Economist editorial notes.

14 Jul 2012

Roundup: Tough to get on Calif.'s new adult day care

Community-Based Adult Services began March 1 as part of a legal settlement between the state and advocates that sued over Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to eliminate Adult Day Health Care entirely.

11 Jul 2012

Long-term, hospice care questions for baby boomers bubble under surface

Care for baby boomers looms large as news outlets consider what long-term and hospice care for them could look like and how it could affect their prospects for quality care.

4 Jul 2012

First Edition: July 3, 2012

Today's headlines include reports that continue to delve into the policy-oriented and political repercussions of last week's high court decision on the health law.

3 Jul 2012

Health worker training programs working to improve women's health in Afghanistan

"Women in Afghanistan are 70 times more likely to die in childbirth than from a bullet or a bomb, according to Save the Children," CNN reports, adding that is "a grim statistic the women here are trying to change."

29 Jun 2012

Recognizing the role of the health care worker in providing family planning services

In this post in the RH Reality Check blog, Laura Hoemeke, director of communications and knowledge management at IntraHealth International, writes that it "takes a health worker, or more accurately millions of health workers, to meet the need that hundreds of millions of couples worldwide have for family planning."

29 Jun 2012

Health care system or patient-directed programs help prevent or manage diabetes

A new study has found that programs aimed at helping people prevent or manage diabetes are most successful if they are directed at the patient or the health care system. Programs aimed at physicians were only successful for patients with poorer diabetes control.

23 Jun 2012

Cedars-Sinai educational conference to focus on patient empowerment

Brain tumor patients, families and caregivers are invited to an educational conference that will focus on patient empowerment June 23 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

23 Jun 2012

ULH hopes to help women at risk of PPD through new policy

Although 13 percent of new mothers experience postpartum depression (PPD) in the first year after childbirth, few women recognize the symptoms and seldom discuss their feelings with a health care provider. University of Louisville Hospital (ULH) hopes to change this statistic through a new policy to guide hospital-based perinatal nurses in caring for women with risk of PPD.

23 Jun 2012