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UAB dietitian suggests five foods for healthier eating

With the hectic hustle and bustle of daily life — managing family, career, home and more — it is no wonder that creativity in the kitchen can fall to the wayside. To help people get out of a food rut and eat healthier this year, a dietitian from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) suggests adding five foods to the grocery cart.

29 Jan 2013

Viewpoints: Debating P4P; ‘Tactical retreat' by GOP; The virtues of across-the-board spending cuts

Instead of granting automatic pay increases, N.Y. City's public hospital system will pay them based on how well they reduce costs, increase patient satisfaction and improve the quality of care. The Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city's 11 public hospitals, deserves praise for an ambitious proposal that will need to be refined as it is put into practice.

28 Jan 2013

Poll: 6 in 10 oppose cutting Medicare to lower deficit

A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that most of the public wants deficit reduction, but they want it without cutting major social programs like Medicare and Medicaid. On health care, the public favors requiring drug makers to give the government 'a better deal' on medications for low-income seniors and making higher-income seniors pay more for coverage to reduce the deficit. Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Foundation.

28 Jan 2013

Some states reconsider funding for mental health care

In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings in Connecticut, state lawmakers and governors talk about boosting mental health care.

28 Jan 2013

GOP vows to stick to principles, including Medicare and Medicaid

News outlets covered the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee, where party members said they needed to adjust their tone, but not their conservative positions, including on entitlements.

28 Jan 2013

Senate hearing urges action on Obama mental health care agenda

Democrats and Republicans expressed concerns about gaps in the system at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

28 Jan 2013

Lawmakers target fiscal cliff's provision aiding Amgen for elimination

The fiscal cliff legislation approved earlier this month excluded Amgen's Sensipar, which is used by kidney dialysis patients, from Medicare price controls for an additional two years.

28 Jan 2013

New ESF position paper identifies needs and steps to improve teaching skills in higher education

A new position paper, The Professionalisation of Academics as Teachers in Higher Education, has been published today by the European Science Foundation.

28 Jan 2013

Germany commits to providing 1B euros to Global Fund through 2016

"Germany will give one billion euros $1.3 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the country's minister for economic cooperation and development Dirk Niebel said Thursday" during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, CNN reports.

28 Jan 2013

'Vaccine diplomacy' could reduce disease burden on Korean Peninsula

"North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a New Year's Day speech, called for reductions in international tension and an end to confrontation with South Korea, while raising the prospect of reunification between the North and South," Peter Hotez, president and director of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, notes in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, asking, "Could 'vaccine diplomacy' work on the Korean peninsula?."

28 Jan 2013

Paper says hospitals that do treat patients with anemia have better outcomes

Up to one-third of patients undergoing surgery in Ontario have a treatable form of anemia but are not optimally treated for it.

28 Jan 2013

Health law's Medicaid expansion raises possibilities, problems for states

California Gov. Jerry Brown describes implementing the expansion as "incredibly complex," while Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder sees it an opportunity to address gaps in the mental health system. In Arizona, meanwhile, the expansion is framed as an immigration issue.

28 Jan 2013

Urging U.N. to collect, report data on aging population affected by HIV

"Estimates suggest that by 2040, over nine million people with HIV will be 50 or older in sub-Saharan Africa, triple that of current data," The Body reports, noting, "Despite this, the 2012 UNAIDS report does not mention the aging of HIV," and "because it does not include data on those aged 50 or older, the report is inaccurate and misleading."

28 Jan 2013

Anti-abortion protestors marking Roe v. Wade anniversary with D.C. March

Meanwhile, a coalition including business interests, state officials and educational institutions is gelling around efforts to fight the health law's contraception mandate.

28 Jan 2013

Bill Gates's annual letter to focus on measurement to fight poverty, disease

Writing in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog, Bill Gates, co-chair of the foundation, discusses his annual letter, which will be sent on January 30, according to the blog.

28 Jan 2013

Medicare foots $120 million bill for patient groups not eligible for the program

According to two government reports, the Medicare program was billed for more than $33 million in inmate care and more than $91 million for illegal immigrant care between 2009 and 2011. Medicare generally does not pay for services for either of these patient groups.

28 Jan 2013

Secretary of State nominee Sen. Kerry testifies at Senate confirmation hearing

"In a confirmation hearing unusual for its bipartisan comity, Secretary of State-designate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) pledged Thursday to pursue a different brand of foreign policy -- one rooted in greater cultural understanding of the developing world -- while leading a global fight to combat climate change, which he described as a direct threat to American security," the Boston Globe reports.

28 Jan 2013

Devex interviews WHO NTD department director on roadmap for eliminating 17 diseases

"Lorenzo Savioli, director of WHO's department of neglected tropical diseases, spoke to Devex from Geneva in a phone interview on Wednesday, January 23, days after WHO released a progress report on its year-old roadmap to eliminate 17 tropical diseases," Devex's "Development Newswire" blog reports.

28 Jan 2013

Blogs examine leadership changes that may affect global health as Obama begins second term

"While two new members of House Appropriation Committee's State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee profiled in the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog yesterday voted first for and then against the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, one of the three profiled in the blog on Thursday is an unambiguous supporter of global health initiatives, having played a pivotal role in virtually all legislation guiding America's HIV response for more than a decade," "Science Speaks" reports.

28 Jan 2013

2013 World Health Assembly should focus on new global rules, financing mechanisms for essential health

"This January marks the first anniversary of the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases -- a coordinated effort by endemic countries, non-governmental organizations, drug companies, and donors to improve the lives of more than a billion of the world's poorest people by the end of the decade," a Lancet editorial writes.

28 Jan 2013