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As election day nears, health issues remain central

KHN hosts a discussion with former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle and conservative health care analyst Avik Roy to explore the plans advanced by President Barack Obama and GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. Romney focuses on some of those themes in a new ad incorporating video from this week's town hall debate.

19 Oct 2012

Two leading health systems announce plan to merge

Trinity Health and Catholic Health East plan to consolidate operations. Together, the two systems will span 21 states and include more than 70 hospitals.

19 Oct 2012

Link between norovirus outbreaks and excess hospitalization and mortality in nursing homes

In a study that included more than 300 Medicare-certified nursing homes, rates of hospitalization and death were substantially increased during outbreaks of norovirus gastroenteritis vs. non-outbreak periods, according to a study appearing in the October 24/31 issue of JAMA.

19 Oct 2012

Simple strategies can make big difference in maternal mortality

Aissata Sall Yade, a communications assistant for the Senegal Urban Reproductive Health Initiative, part of IntraHealth International, writes in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog about Aissatou Dia Fall, a head midwife at Senegal's Gallo Dia Health Center in Yeumbeul, and her efforts to improve access to health care for women in the community.

19 Oct 2012

NPR series on polio examines efforts to fight disease in Pakistan

In its ongoing series examining efforts to eradicate polio, NPR's "All Things Considered" aired a story on Wednesday looking at how health care workers in Pakistan are attempting to overcome challenges to immunizing the child population.

19 Oct 2012

House and Senate races turning on health, abortion issues

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is focusing on Medicare and women's health issues in new TV ads, as Missouri Rep. Todd Akin strengthens his ties to evangelicals.

19 Oct 2012

Examining how issue of abortion portrayed in Kenyan Constitution

In an opinion piece in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog, David Olson, a global health communications consultant who worked as a communications adviser to the Reproductive Health and Rights Alliance in Kenya earlier this year, describes how "abortion rights [in the country] have been liberalized in certain cases in a Constitution approved in a public referendum two years ago."

19 Oct 2012

Book about triple negative breast cancer

Hope, Treatment, and Recovery by Patricia Prijatel is exactly that-an encouraging guide to surviving a disease often referred to as, "a particularly aggressive and difficult to treat form of cancer." Prijatel is a health journalist who, at the age of 60 was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer [TNBC] a disease which disproportionately affects young women and women of African descent. No book existed on TNBC at the time of Prijatel's diagnosis.

19 Oct 2012

Uruguay's Congress approves bill to legalize abortion during first trimester

"Uruguay's Congress voted narrowly on Wednesday to legalize abortions during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, a rare move in largely Catholic Latin America that underscores the country's liberal leanings," Reuters reports.

19 Oct 2012

Integrative Medicine helps people heal faster

The body has an innate desire to heal itself. Encouraging self-healing is the focus of Greenwich Hospital's Integrative Medicine Program.

19 Oct 2012

First Edition: October 19, 2012

Today's headlines include reports about how Medicare and women's health issues are playing in a number of House and Senate races.

19 Oct 2012

Collaborative care improves depression and anxiety outcomes

Collaborative care, a model that involves multiple clinicians working with a patient, significantly improves depression and anxiety outcomes compared to standard primary care treatment for up to two years, finds a new review by The Cochrane Library.

19 Oct 2012

New report shows increasing HIV prevalence, incidence in Uganda

"An HIV/AIDS report by advocacy organizations in Uganda indicates that new transmissions are on the rise amidst troubling trends of increasing prevalence and incidence," Uganda's New Vision reports.

19 Oct 2012

Weill Cornell Medical College researcher wins 2012 William B. Coley Award

Dr. Laurie H. Glimcher, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medical College and provost for medical affairs of Cornell University, is a winner of the 2012 William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute for her outstanding achievements in immunology and cancer research.

19 Oct 2012

Governments should focus 'scant resources' on food security before biofuels

"The latest calculations show that U.S. ethanol policies have increased the food bills of poor food-importing countries by more than $9 billion (£5.6 billion) since 2006," Olivier De Schutter, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, writes in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog.

19 Oct 2012

Current draft of India's Food Security Bill excludes many from public food system

India's National Food Security Bill, "expected to be discussed in Parliament later this year, ... holds out hope of addressing some of the nation's most persistent and pervasive problems," Ashwin Parulkar, a research scholar at the Centre for Equity Studies, writes in the Wall Street Journal's "India Real Time" blog.

19 Oct 2012

Viewpoints: NYT's Kristof on the death of his friend; Obama, Romney fight for women

I wrote in my last column about my uninsured college roommate, Scott Androes, and his battle with Stage 4 prostate cancer - and a dysfunctional American health care system. I was taken aback by how many readers were savagely unsympathetic. "Your friend made a foolish choice, and actions have consequences," one reader said in a Twitter message.

19 Oct 2012

Lack of 'fiscal cliff' talk offers proof that the urgent issue is frozen until after election

The fact that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and President Barack Obama have not discussed looming automatic spending cuts leads this roundup of Capitol Hill news.

19 Oct 2012

Okla. lawsuit provides first test of legal arguments against health law's insurance exchanges

Some of the lawsuit's backers maintain that last summer's Supreme Court health law decision would not be the "law's last trip" to the high court.

19 Oct 2012

Number of new TB infections fall, but drug resistance, lack of funding could slow progress, WHO reports

"New tuberculosis [TB] infections dropped 2.2 percent worldwide last year, but with nearly nine million new infections, the World Health Organization said TB remains a massive problem that could worsen if countries shortchange funding to fight it," Reuters reports.

19 Oct 2012