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Health and fitness tips for office workers

Summer has been over for a few weeks now and vacations have come and gone. With cooler weather approaching, many of us are back into our regular fall month work routines. And for those with sedentary jobs, being back in the office many times means less physical activity and more sitting throughout the day.

20 Oct 2011

Florida State receives eight-year LCME accreditation

The Florida State University College of Medicine has been granted a maximum eight-year accreditation by the sanctioning body of U.S. medical schools.

20 Oct 2011

University of Delaware receives DoD grant to create and manage BADER Consortium

The Department of Defense (DoD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) Peer Reviewed Orthopaedic Research Program (PRORP) has awarded a $19.7 million grant to the University of Delaware to create and manage a consortium that will improve the quality of life for warfighters who suffer significant limb injuries in combat.

20 Oct 2011

Pediatrician offers ten Halloween safety tips

Halloween is approaching, and many parents may wonder if trick-or-treating is safe. Dr. Luz Adriana Matiz, pediatrician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, suggests that with a few precautions, Halloween can be a happy and safe occasion for all. Dr. Matiz suggests that children limit trick-or-treating to familiar neighborhoods and neighbors.

20 Oct 2011

Gates Foundation provides funding for relief efforts in Horn of Africa

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation "on Tuesday announced a $2.5 million grant to Mercy Corps to fund relief and longer-term recovery efforts in drought-stricken Wajir County on Kenya's border with Somalia," representing "more than 40 percent of the $5.4 million in private funds that Mercy Corps has raised to date for Horn of Africa relief efforts," the Seattle Times reports.

20 Oct 2011

Department of Health Care Services dismantles ADHC program for California seniors

The State of California is facing a budget crisis and, as usual, the most vulnerable and needy face the biggest cuts. The Department of Health Care Services is dismantling a vital program for our state's seniors, and Governor Jerry Brown has reneged on a deal to replace the program with some kind of viable alternative.

20 Oct 2011

Higher Medicare premiums will undermine social security's raise

Social Security reciepients are expected to get a 3.5 percent cost-of-living increase in January, but a boost in the cost of Medicare Part B premiums will likely offset some of the impact.

20 Oct 2011

HHS issues regs to reduce red tape for hospitals, providers

The Obama administration moved Tuesday to roll back numerous rules that apply to hospitals and other health care providers after concluding that the standards were obsolete or overly burdensome to the industry. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the proposed changes, which would apply to more than 6,000 hospitals, would save providers nearly $1.1 billion a year without creating any "consequential risks for patients."

20 Oct 2011

Aggressive Behaviour Risk Assessment Tool can reduce violence in clinical settings

Using a specially designed risk assessment tool within 24 hours of admission was an effective way of identifying which hospital patients in medical and surgical units would become violent. Researchers studied more than 2,000 patients admitted to an acute care hospital over a five-month period. As well as identify the traits that were most likely to lead to violence, they found that a disproportionate number of elderly patients and males became violent.

20 Oct 2011

Experts recommending fewer cancer screenings

New cervical cancer screening guidelines are the latest example of this emerging cautious view.

20 Oct 2011

Kenya aims to reduce preventable deaths by 50% by December 2012

GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog examines how Kenya is working to decrease the number of preventable deaths under a "recently launched ... campaign called 'Let's Live,' which sets a target of reducing preventable deaths in Kenya by 50 percent by December 2012."

20 Oct 2011

USAID funding PATH projects to improve health in resource-poor settings

USAID this week announced investments in two new projects to be led by the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), according to a USAID press release.

20 Oct 2011

JAMA study: Heart failure hospitalization rates fall

The rate of hospital admissions for elderly patients in the U.S. fell by nearly 30 percent in the past decade, based on an analysis of Medicare data. This finding, being published today, is viewed as progress against cardiovascular disease and the costs associated with this illness.

20 Oct 2011

Commonwealth Fund: U.S. weak on health care quality, access, affordability

The report concluded that these weaknesses in the American health system are having a "profound effect" on the overall health of the nation's population.

20 Oct 2011

IRIN examines improvements in maternal, infant mortality indicators in Myanmar

IRIN examines maternal and child health in "conflict-afflicted eastern Myanmar, [where] until recently obstetric care was often crude, unsterile and dangerous for both mother and child, health experts say." To address high rates of maternal and infant mortality in the region, "in 2005 several CBOs, the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins University, and the Global Health Access Program launched the Mobile Obstetric Medics (MOM) project -- dramatically boosting access to care," IRIN writes.

20 Oct 2011

Future-Directed Therapy for patients with major depression

Patients with major depression do better by learning to create a more positive outlook about the future, rather than by focusing on negative thoughts about their past experiences, researchers at Cedars-Sinai say after developing a new treatment that helps patients do this.

20 Oct 2011

Bill, Melinda Gates speak at Malaria Forum, laud progress in fight against disease

"Eradicating malaria is not a vague, unrealistic aspiration but a tough, ambitious goal that can be reached within the next few decades," Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said on Tuesday at the international Malaria Forum in Seattle, Reuters reports.

20 Oct 2011

Haiti has highest rate of cholera worldwide one year after disease outbreak began

Paul Farmer, a founder of Partners in Health (PIH) and U.N. deputy special envoy to Haiti, in an interview with the Associated Press/Washington Post "said cholera has sickened more than 450,000 people in a nation of 10 million, or nearly five percent of the population, and killed more than 6,000," giving the Caribbean nation "the highest rate of cholera in the world a mere year after the disease first arrived."

20 Oct 2011

Lancet series revisits issue of global mental health four years after first examination

Four years after the Lancet "published a special series on global mental health, highlighting the gap in provision between rich countries and the rest of the world," the journal has published a new series, including an "editorial accompanying the series, welcoming the initiatives in global mental health in the past four years, but saying 'there is still a long way to go and many challenges to face,'" IRIN reports.

20 Oct 2011

Efforts to scale up medical education in developing countries must increase, study says

In a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine, "Francesca Celletti from the WHO, Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues argue that a transformation in the scale-up of medical education in low- and middle-income countries is needed," according to a PLoS press release.

20 Oct 2011