A comprehensive national response to climate change should be informed by reliable data coordinated through climate services and a greenhouse gas monitoring and management system to provide timely information tailored to decision makers at all levels, says a report by the National Research Council. The report recommends several mechanisms for improving communication about climate science and responses and calls for a systematic framework for making and evaluating decisions about how to effectively manage the risks posed by climate change…
It can make blood look like cream of tomato soup. Patients with high levels of triglycerides in their blood, a disease called hypertriglyceridemia (HTG) face an increased risk for heart disease and stroke. HTG affects one in 20 people in North America and is also associated with obesity, diabetes and pancreatitis. Most people now understand the importance of LDL, the bad cholesterol and HDL, the good cholesterol, to their overall health. But high triglycerides are like the Rodney Dangerfield of the lipid world: they get less respect and notoriety compared to their cholesterol cousins…
Annals of Family Medicine: Physician Satisfaction With Chronic Care Processes: A Cluster-Randomized Trial Of Guided Care - The authors randomly assigned teams of physicians and their chronically ill older patients into groups that either provided Guided Care - an educated registered nurse works with a primary care practice team to enhance quality of care - or usual care…
Excerpts from journals, press releases and blogs focusing on the AIDS conference in Vienna appear below. Other notable global health items will be included in next week’s comprehensive edition of Recent Releases. Blog: HIV/AIDS Community Needs Cooperation In response to criticism from advocates at AIDS 2010 that the U.S. is retreating from funding HIV/AIDS, a blog post on the Huffington Post writes that “President Obama has steadily increased funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which was created by President Bush and has strong bipartisan support…
During the closing ceremonies of the International AIDS Conference-AIDS 2010, President Barack Obama “on Friday pledged to redouble efforts to fight HIV and AIDS through his Global Health Initiative, despite dealing with economic hard times in the wake of a global recession,” Reuters reports. According to the news service, “Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said their focus was on a broad, sustainable and effective approach to the global epidemic” (Kelland, 7/23)…
House Democrats are arguing again for the passage of a public option to compete with private health plans and reduce the deficit, news outlets report. “Armed with a new score from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showing their public plan saves $68 billion between 2014 and 2020, liberal Democrats vowed Thursday to fight for their proposal’s passage next year,” The Hill reports. “The CBO also says premiums in the public plan would be 5 percent to 7 percent lower than the premiums offered by private plans in the state health insurance exchanges that are due to begin operating in 2014…
Reuters: Insurance companies are banding together to weaken a key health law rule that requires them to spend as much as 85 percent of their revenues on medical care, according to the advocacy group Health Care for America Now. At issue is the definition of ‘medical loss ratio,’ the percentage of money spent by insurers on medical care, “rather than salaries, overhead and other administrative expenses…
The following summarizes selected women’s health-related blog entries. ~ “The Obama Administration Takes a Page From Stupak’s Playbook,” Allie Bohm, ACLU’s Blog of Rights: On July 14, “the Obama administration inexplicably announced that it is bringing back Stupak in the high-risk pools required by the law,” Bohm writes. There is “nothing in the new health reform law (PL 111-148) that requires this restriction, and it is deeply disturbing that a pro-choice administration would voluntarily impose such an anti-choice measure,” she continues…
Three quarters of British adults support the removal of shop displays of tobacco (73 per cent) and a complete ban on cigarette vending machines (77 per cent) according to a new survey commissioned by Cancer Research UK this weekend. These latest figures show the public supports the health community in urging the government to move forward with regulations to protect children from tobacco marketing. The 2009 Health Act was passed by parliament which set clear deadlines to remove cigarette vending machines in 2011 and to put tobacco displays out of sight in all shops by the end of 2013…
UNICEF experts in HIV and AIDS, gathered from over 35 countries, said that the just concluded International AIDS Conference re-affirmed the critical importance of preventing mother to child transmission of HIV. However stigma is still a major factor in keeping women and young people from accessing the services they need. The number of children born with the virus every year is around 400,000. AIDS 2010 made the goal of effective elimination of HIV in newborns a worldwide priority…