Public/Global Health

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday announced new voluntary steps to limit antibiotic use in animal agriculture in order to safeguard their effectiveness in protecting human health.

The agency released three documents as part of an effort FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg called "critical" to protect public health.

"The new strategy will ensure farmers and veterinarians can care for animals while ensuring the medicines people need remain safe and effective," Hamburg said. "We are also reaching out to animal producers who operate on a smaller scale or in remote locations to help ensure the drugs they need to protect the health of their animals are still available."

The United States spends more on healthcare but lags behind the rest of the industrialized world in life expectancy and childhood mortality because the government "chronically" underfunds public health systems, the Institute of Medicine argues in a new report out Tuesday.

The report calls for doubling federal spending on public health from $11.6 billion to $24 billion a year "as a starting point to meet the needs of public health departments." The report points out that Americans spent $8,086 per person in medical care in 2009 versus $251 in public health spending.

The IOM's Committee on Public Health Strategies to Improve Health goes on to recommend that government advisers develop a "minimum package of public health services" that every community should receive from its state and local health departments. It suggests creating a new transaction tax on medical care services to help pay for the increased spending, which over time could lower healthcare costs by reducing obesity and tobacco use.

The new executive director of President Obama's Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues began work Monday.

Lisa Lee, a 14-year employee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, takes over from National Institutes of Health lawyer Valerie Bonham.

The 13-member advisory commission was established in November 2009 to evaluate bioethical issues concerning healthcare and biomedical research. It has played a central role in investigating federal research on Guatemalan prisoners in the 1940s while advising the White House on the benefits and risks of synthetic biology and assessing the rules that currently protect human research subjects.

"Lisa Lee's background in ethics and policy issues and her deep experience at CDC will prove invaluable as the Commission navigates its next set of timely and sensitive questions," Commission Chairwoman Amy Gutmann said in a statement. "As we welcome Lisa, we also salute Valerie Bonham for her tireless effort in helping the Commission produce its first reports on synthetic biology, unethical research in Guatemala, and human subjects research."

The Food and Drug Administration approved a test that detects the presence of telltale signs of Alzheimer's, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Arizona struck a deal with the federal government to allow nearly 22,000 poor kids to gain health insurance coverage under Medicaid, Kaiser Health News reports.

Michigan health officials are seeking to create a long-term care system for the elderly, the Detroit News reports.

Massachusetts is moving away from fee-for-service healthcare to save money, The Associated Press reports.

Pharmacy Benefit Manager Express Scripts has asked a federal judge to toss out objections to its merger with Medco Health Solutions, Bloomberg reports.

The World Trade Organization demanded Wednesday that the Obama administration drop or amend its ban on flavored cigarettes that are used to target minors.

Nine physician specialty organizations representing 375,000 physicians on Wednesday unveiled 45 commonly used tests and procedures they say are often unnecessary and should be questioned by doctors and patients.

The private sector is moving full speed ahead with recommendations to cut costs even as the healthcare reform law's investments in so-called "comparative effectiveness research" hang in jeopardy at the Supreme Court. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has estimated that as much as 30 percent of healthcare in the United States is wasted.

"This is an independent effort … but it's all part of the same realization that the public and the government and frankly the whole private sector recognizes, which is that the costs of care are unsustainable," said Christine Cassel, president and CEO of the ABIM Foundation, which is spearheading the "Choosing Wisely" campaign along with Consumer Reports. "What this effort does is it puts specific kinds of tests and treatments that are identified by the specialists in that field."

The Obama administration awarded $72 million to 10 states on Tuesday to establish or expand home visitation programs for pregnant women, parents, caregivers and children.

The grants were awarded under the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program created by President Obama's healthcare reform law.

"Home visits from an experienced counselor can help provide skills and links to important services and early childhood education," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in announcing the grants.

Public health researchers on Tuesday unveiled a county-by-county breakdown of health statistics aimed at empowering communities and health officials to take action locally.

The collaborative project between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute doesn't allow comparisons across state lines, but instead aims to give communities the information they need to improve. David Altman, the chairman of the County Health Roadmaps National Advisory Board, said the county-by-county approach was needed because "national data does not stimulate local action."

"All too often communities take action, but it's directed at the wrong things," Altman told the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's NewPublicHealth blog. "Partnerships grow out of using local data because they have very clear objectives to focus on. That is unique and part of the great value of these programs."

The Health and Human Services Department has revamped its StopBullying.gov web site to focus on providing information the public can use to prevent and stop bullying rather than just raising awareness. Read more...

Rep. Edward Markey blasted the Obama administration's rejection of a petition to ban the chemical bisphenol A.