Public/Global Health

The deficit supercommittee's default cuts would slam medical research, disease prevention and public health, Kaiser Health News reports.

New recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics allows preschoolers as young as 4 to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs, Bloomberg reports.

Some states are seeking flexibility to push the federal health law further, reports The Washington Post.

People with eating disorders are fighting insurers to have their conditions covered, reports The New York Times.

A new study published in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine says U.S. cellphone safety guidelines underestimate harmful radiation absorbed by children.

The number of people receiving healthcare through a program that puts doctors in underserved areas has more than doubled since President Obama took office, the Health and Human Services Department said Thursday.

The National Health Service Corps offers both scholarships and a loan repayment program to doctors who agree to practice in communities — mostly rural areas — that don’t have enough doctors to meet their needs.

One in five Americans lives in an underserved area, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.

There are now more than 10,000 clinicians in the corps, compared with just 3,600 in 2008, HHS said. The program served roughly 3.7 million people when Obama took office and serves about 10.5 million now. Funding for the expansion came mostly from the stimulus and the healthcare reform law.

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The Drug Policy Alliance says President Obama's medical marijuana policy is worse than under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Cancer survivors' lives could improve considerably with rehabilitation, Kaiser Health News reports.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and two other drugmakers must pay $162.5 million in punitive damages for selling the anesthetic Propofol in a way that led three colonoscopy patients to develop Hepatitis C, Bloomberg reports.

Most clinicians don't report medical near-misses or errors, FierceHealthcare reports based on a recent Johns Hopkins survey.

Racial and ethnic disparities continue to plague the U.S. health system, Kaiser Health News reports.

The statistics are part of the CDC's Healthy People 2010 report, released Thursday.

The four California U.S. attorneys' offices are conducting a coordinated crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries this week, Bloomberg reports. 

The U.S. Preventive Service Task Force will recommend that healthy men don't need prostate cancer screenings with prostate specific antigen (PSA) because the test does not save lives and often leads to unnecessary testing, interventions and treatment, MedPage Today reports.

More than half of all local health departments cut their public health programs between the summers of 2010 and 2011, says a new report from the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

More than half — 55 percent — reported reducing or eliminating at least one program, with maternal and child health services hit the hardest (21 percent saw cuts). Other personal health services and emergency preparedness also got the ax (20 percent), while only 9 percent of departments cut their epidemiology and surveillance programs.

As a result, the nationwide public health workforce is also shrinking.

During the first half of 2011, 44 percent of local health departments lost at least one employee, collectively shedding 5,400 jobs. Since 2008, the number of jobs lost to layoffs and attrition rises to 34,400.

The report concludes that that worst is yet to come, with 52 percent of local health departments expecting further cuts in the next fiscal year.

Baby boomers' misplaced optimism about the quality of their health after retirement is "drawn from a deep well of self-delusion," NPR reports.

Politico analyzes the White House's gamble in asking the Supreme Court to rule on the healthcare law right before the 2012 election.

Disability rights groups plan to sue the state of California to block $100 million in service cuts, the Los Angeles Times reports.

South Africa's plan to introduce national health insurance coverage risks blowing its deficit-reduction aims, reports Bloomberg.

The U.S. is dead last among 16 high-income countries when it comes to avoiding deaths that could have been prevented with quick access to effective healthcare, according to a new study supported by the Commonwealth Fund. 

The rate of avoidable deaths was 96 per 100,000 in 2006-2007, according to the study, almost twice the 55 per 100,000 rate of leader France. Worse, the U.S. rate declined by only 20 percent since 1997-1998, far slower than the other nations' 31 percent average drop.

The study contradicts critics of European-style universal healthcare systems who claim it would lead to rationing and worse health outcomes.

"This study points to substantial opportunity to prevent premature death in the United States," Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen said in a statement. "We spend far more than any of the comparison countries — up to twice as much — yet are improving less rapidly."

The study examined deaths that occurred before age 75 from causes like treatable cancer, diabetes, childhood infections/respiratory diseases and complications from surgeries. It will be published in the November issue of the journal Health Policy.

The House on Tuesday afternoon approved two bills aimed at increasing funding for a federal autism program and children's hospitals.

By voice vote, the House approved H.R. 2005, the Combating Autism Reauthorization Act. The bill reauthorizes a program at the Department of Health and Human Services to research autism.

Also by voice vote, members approved H.R. 1852, the Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act, which provides funding for children's hospital training programs.

The House adjourned just before 4:30 p.m., and is expected back at 6:30 p.m. for votes on three other votes on three other noncontroversial bills. One is H.R. 2646, providing funding for Veterans healthcare facilities, and the two others were debated earlier Tuesday.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday strongly rejected the assertion by Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) that poverty amounts to a “death sentence” in the United States.

That correlation was the subject of a hearing led by Sanders, chairman of the Senate Health subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging. Sanders cited research showing that poor people lack access to health insurance and thus to quality healthcare, leading to illnesses that can be fatal.

“Poverty in America is in fact a death sentence, and tens and tens of thousands of our people are experiencing that reality,” Sanders said.

Paul, the subcommittee’s ranking member, rejected that view. He said correlating poverty with death in the United States is embracing “socialism” and that such a connection can only be found in the Third World.

“If poverty is a death sentence, it’s big government that has acted as judge and jury,” Paul said.

He said poor children today are healthier than middle-class adults a generation ago, and that poorer health among low-income families is due largely to such lifestyle choices as smoking. Obesity rates are also significantly higher in low-income populations.

“The rich are getting richer, but the poor are getting richer even faster,” Paul said.

The agriculture spending bill that Senate appropriators unanimously approved Wednesday directs regulators to hurry up with their recommendations for limiting the use of antibiotics in farm animals.

The Food and Drug Administration last year issued draft guidance recommending that farmers stop using antibiotics to produce more and bigger poultry and livestock after concluding that the practice has contributed to an increase in drug resistance that "poses a serious public health threat." Farming and drug industry interests oppose restrictions, however, and a year later the controversial voluntary guidance is still in the works.

"The FDA has not yet identified a timeframe for finalizing and implementing this guidance or for taking other proposed steps to address antimicrobial resistance," the spending bill says. "Therefore, the Committee directs the FDA to set a timeline for when (the guidance) and any implementing guidance will be finalized. … The Committee also recommends that FDA examine medically important antimicrobial drugs currently approved for use in food-producing animals and take steps to assure that such products are aligned with current safety standards." Read more...