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Section: Health

Poll: Americans See Drug Addiction as Disease

A slim majority of Americans see prescription drug addiction as a disease that requires medical treatment, but most would not welcome those suffering from the problem into their neighborhoods, workplaces or families. New survey results reveal Americans’ complex view of addiction as the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history ripples through communities nationwide. More than […]

April 9, 2018

drugs medicine pharmacy

Millennials at Risk for Heart Disease

Many heart disease risk factors are the same for everyone. Lifestyle choices such as insufficient exercise, obesity, nicotine addition and excessive alcohol consumption are factors that put many adults at risk. But Dr. Regis Fernandes, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic (a nonprofit medical practice and research group in Rochester, Minnesota), says such behaviors seem […]

April 9, 2018

heart-attack-main

Proposed Regulations Could Penalize Immigrants

The latest leaks in Washington indicate that the Trump administration remains serious about discouraging documented immigrants and their children from using federally funded health and nutrition programs – a policy change that could have wide-ranging implications for the Philadelphia School District and its students. “What they’re saying is that they’re going to greatly broaden the […]

April 9, 2018

school-cafeteria-lunch-finkle with diverse health 4 10 18

Sports, Sponsorships and Obesity

Last September, the National Football League struck a deal with Frito-Lay that allowed the company to produce limited-edition bags of Tostitos tortilla chips, with each package bearing the logo of one of 19 featured NFL teams. Several months earlier, Major League Baseball announced that Nathan’s Famous would be its first-ever official hot dog. Now the […]

April 4, 2018

Sports Sponsorships and Obesity

Transgender Health Care Endangered

A few years ago, Stephan Rivera, a 31-year-old native of the Bronx, New York, consulted two doctors about his prospects for “top surgery,” a double mastectomy. “I was like, I really just want to cut them off,” he recalls. Although he was generally content —working as a teacher’s aide in a public school and living with […]

April 4, 2018

Transgender Health Care

NIH Rejected Alcohol Ad Study during Quest for Industry Funds

It’s rare for officials at the National Institutes of Health to summon university scientists from hundreds of miles away. So when Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University and a colleague got the call to meet with the director of NIH’s Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, he said, “I knew we were in trouble.” He […]

April 4, 2018

NIH Rejects Alcohol Study

Opioid Firm Blames Government for Native American Crisis

A top U.S. opioid distributor is pointing fingers at the government for the deluge of prescription painkillers that have poured into Native American communities at alarmingly high rates. McKesson Corp., one of the country’s three big wholesale drug distributors, is embroiled in litigation brought by Oklahoma-based Cherokee Nation, the country’s largest tribal group, which has […]

April 4, 2018

Opioid Native Americans

Microplastics Found in Nearly All Bottled Water

Drining from a plastic water bottle likely means ingesting microplastic particles, a new study claims, prompting fresh concerns — and calls for scientific research — on the possible health implications of widespread plastics pollution. A study carried out on more than 250 water bottles sourced from 11 brands in nine different countries revealed the Microplastic contamination […]

April 4, 2018

Bottled Water Contaminations

New Iowa Law Allows Plans that Skirt ACA

Iowa will allow people to buy a cheaper form of health insurance that skirts Affordable Care Act rules, under legislation signed into law Monday by the state’s Republican governor. The law will allow Iowa’s Farm Bureau to partner with a designated insurance company to offer so-called health benefit plans that technically aren’t defined as insurance. […]

April 4, 2018

VA Choice Could Open Way to Privatization

For the last year, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin insisted the VA would not be privatized on his watch. Now, thanks to a Koch-supported coup at the top of the second-largest department in government, his watch has ended — and the battle over privatization persists. For years the Koch brothers have been hovering around the […]

April 4, 2018

First Responders Improving Interactions for People with Autism

First responders areare increasingly likely to respond to an incident involving a person with autism. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the fastest-growing developmental disability affecting about 1 in 68 children in the United States. On a global scale approximately 1 percent of the world population has ASD. How can first responders adapt their response when […]

April 4, 2018

Portrait of cute autistic boy with headphones

No Experience

You can’t make this stuff up: President Trump has announced he will nominate a medical doctor who has no discernible management experience to run the second-largest agency in the federal government. Can presidents be sued for malpractice? The man Trump has named to become secretary of veterans affairs, Dr. Ronny Jackson, happens to be the […]

April 2, 2018

Health Care for Reservation Inmates Raises Concern

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — At a tribal jail in Washington state, an inmate with a broken leg banged on his cell door, screaming for pain medication, only to be denied. Hundreds of miles away, a diabetic man jailed on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming needed insulin, yet government records say authorities were unable to […]

April 2, 2018

Reservations Health Care

Sewage Leaks Plague Elite Washington Hospital

“A black, grainy foul-smelling substance” coated the floor of an operating room at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, which also suffered from at least one “active leak” of sewage, according to a review by the District of Columbia health department last August. That health department report was cited in a lawsuit filed against the hospital by the […]

April 2, 2018

Hospital Sewage Leak

Soda Industry Fighting Back on Local Taxes

Watch out public health advocates – as soda tax campaigns are bubbling up in cities across the nation to combat obesity, diabetes and other serious health conditions – the beverage industry is working to choke off this expression of local democracy. A state bill banning localities from taxing food and beverages came out of nowhere in Michigan […]

April 2, 2018

States Need More Rules to Protect Insurance Market

Without more rules in place, state regulators won’t be able to fully protect the individual health insurance market from adverse selection when the individual mandate penalty ends in 2019 and if the Trump administration expands association health plans (AHPs) and short-term catastrophic plans, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. States can “ensure a level playing […]

April 2, 2018

Insurance Market

Report: Minority Women Undertreated for Perinatal Depression

In a new position paper, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University urge federal policymakers to appropriate funds toward diagnosis and treatment of perinatal depression in minority women — a group they say has been lacking in such care. Such a move would include increasing the number of medical providers who are trained […]

April 2, 2018

Perinatal Depression

Sanders: ‘We Know Nothing About VA Pick’

Sen. Bernie Sanders wouldn’t commit to supporting President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, on Sunday. In an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the Vermont independent noted that Jackson, Trump’s personal physician, is a virtual unknown on veterans issues. He also expressed concerns the Trump administration […]

April 2, 2018