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International conference: 'Preventing Overdiagnosis'

Overdiagnosis poses a significant threat to human health by labeling healthy people as sick and wasting resources on unnecessary care, warns Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Fellow at Bond University in Australia, in a feature published on bmj.com today.

31 May 2012

Law aims to illuminate financial links between doctors and pharmaceutical companies

A Colorado School of Public Health researcher has found that laws designed to illuminate financial links between doctors and pharmaceutical companies have little or no effect on what drugs physicians prescribe.

30 May 2012

Overdiagnosis: harming the healthy

Overdiagnosis poses a significant threat to human health by labelling healthy people as sick and wasting resources on unnecessary care, warns Ray Moynihan, Senior Research Fellow at Bond University in Australia, in a feature published on bmj.com today.

30 May 2012

Safety of breast implants

Following the recent scandal, described in May 2012 by the BBC as the “PIP breast implant scandal”, (1) many women may have been put off having breast implants. But how safe exactly is breast enlargement? And how do the different methods compare?

29 May 2012

Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly covers some of the biggest challenges facing public health

The Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly concluded Saturday after adopting 21 resolutions and three decisions on a broad range of health issues. The six days of discussions involved nearly 3000 delegates, including health ministers and senior health officials from amongst the 194 WHO Member States, as well as representatives from civil society and other stakeholders.

28 May 2012

World Health Assembly endorses Global Vaccine Action Plan

Ministers of Health from 194 countries at the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly today endorsed a landmark Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to prevent millions of deaths by 2020 through more equitable access to existing vaccines for people in all communities.

28 May 2012

PSI interviews Gates Foundation official about child health

In this post in PSI's "Healthy Lives" blog, "PSI's Nutrition Research Adviser Dr. Abel Irena talks with Saul Morris, senior program officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, about progress that has been made in child health."

25 May 2012

Editorial, opinion piece examine future of World Health Organization

As the World Health Assembly draws to a close in Geneva this week, and Margaret Chan accepts her appointment to a second five-year term as director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), an editorial and an opinion piece examine the future of the U.N. health agency.

25 May 2012

Conference to showcase patient and family-centered strategies

This is a critical time to be involved in improving health care in the United States as well as in other nations around the world. These challenging times require inspired leadership, innovative solutions, and enduring partnerships to improve health care in community-based health care organizations, hospitals, and health systems.

19 May 2012

PPCI treatment on the rise among Stent for Life Initiative participants

Life saving primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PPCI) treatment is increasing in countries participating in the Stent for Life Initiative.

17 May 2012

Juventas begins enrollment in JVS-100 Phase IIa study for Rutherford Class 4 or 5 CLI

Juventas Therapeutics, a privately-held, clinical-stage company developing novel regenerative therapies for treatment of cardiovascular disease, is pleased to report that it is actively enrolling patients in a placebo-controlled, randomized double-blinded Phase IIa study evaluating the safety and efficacy for JVS-100 in patients with Rutherford Class 4 or 5 critical limb ischemia.

16 May 2012

Viewpoints: Approving drugs quickly; Berwick: In health care, cheaper can mean better; Health costs 'persistent' concern

For about 20 years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has charged pharmaceutical companies "user fees" for reviewing drug-approval applications. The revenue allows the FDA to hire more evaluators, which allows useful drugs to reach patients faster. Now the Prescription Drug User Fee Act needs reauthorization, as it does every five years. Legislators should not dillydally.

15 May 2012

Increased investment in nurses will help strengthen health systems worldwide

"It is in poor countries and communities, where health needs are greatest and physicians are scarce, that nurses take an even greater role in health care delivery, often serving as the sole providers in rural villages or urban slums," Sheila Davis, director of global nursing at Partners In Health, writes in a Huffington Post "Impact Blog" opinion piece, noting this is International Nurses Week.

10 May 2012

Globe and Mail examines sustainability of Sierra Leone's free health care system

The Globe and Mail examines the sustainability of Sierra Leone's free health care system, writing, "The reform has been hugely successful and the death rate has dropped sharply. ... But the country's hospitals are overwhelmed with new patients, the drug supply can't keep up, the medical staff are overloaded, and it's unclear if the $36-million program would survive without foreign donations."

10 May 2012

Examining the need for WHO today

Responding to an opinion piece published in Nature Medicine last week in which Tikki Pang, a visiting professor at the National University of Singapore and former director of research policy and cooperation at the WHO, and Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, argue the case for reforming and improving the WHO, KPLU's Tom Paulson writes in a post on KPLU 88.5's "Humanosphere" blog.

10 May 2012

With teamwork and partnerships, successes experienced in Millennium Villages can be extended globally

In this post in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Sonia Sachs, director of health at the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), and Prabhjot Singh, assistant professor of international and public affairs at the MVP, respond to a study on the MVP, published in the Lancet on Tuesday, writing, "These results ... reinforce the global effort to build effective, low-cost, community-led health care systems that can end millions of deaths of young children and pregnant women each year."

10 May 2012

One in six cancer cases worldwide related to preventable or curable infections

New research shows that one in six cancers - amounting to two million a year globally - are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections.

9 May 2012

AHA recognizes HHS’ Charla de Lupus program with HAVE

The American Hospital Association (AHA) has recognized Hospital for Special Surgery's Charla de Lupus (Lupus Chat) program with its Hospital Award for Volunteer Excellence.

5 May 2012

Hospital billing collections company seeks dismissal of Minn. lawsuit

The Minn. state attorney general lodged a suit against Accretive Health arguing that it violated privacy laws when an employee lost a laptop computer with medical data of 23,500 patients. In addition, Accretive is also lashing out at publicity about its efforts to get hospital patients to pay their bills.

2 May 2012