Latest KFF Health News Stories
Understanding The Economic Impact Of The ‘Girl Effect’
In this post in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog, Jill Sheffield, founder and President of Women Deliver, responds to an opinion piece published in the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog” on Friday in which Ofra Koffman — a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellow in the department for culture, media and creative industries at King’s College London — “questions the contributions that girls and young women can make to economies when they delay childbirth,” and argues “that the so-called ‘Girl Effect’ of delaying childbirth does not necessarily ‘stop poverty before it starts,’ as the Department for International Development (DFID) claims.” Sheffield writes, “The ability to choose if and when to have children is a huge piece of the puzzle to the ‘Girl Effect,’ but it is not the only piece. … The ‘Girl Effect’ is an amalgamation of exactly these three components: security, health, and power” (2/15).
President Obama’s FY13 Budget Request Increases Multilateral Global Health Funding
In this post in the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) “Global Health Policy” blog, Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy and a research fellow at CGD, and Denizhan Duran, a research assistant at CGD, note that while the decreases in funding for the Global Health Initiative (GHI) and PEPFAR in President Obama’s FY 2013 budget request are “alarming,” the “bright spot” is that multilateral programs, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the GAVI Alliance, would get increases in their funding. “Multilateral aid is more efficient. … In the case of U.S. global health aid, potential gains from a shift to multilaterals may be large,” they write (2/15).
Canadian Study Quantifies Effects Of Safe Water, Sanitation On Health For First Time
“In a study of 193 countries to be released Thursday, Canadian-based researchers say they’ve been able to quantify — for the first time — how safe water and public sanitation efforts affect health when factoring out other variables such as a nation’s wealth, fertility or location,” USA Today’s “Your Life” reports (Koch, 2/15). Dividing the countries into four quartiles, researchers at the United Nations University and McMaster University “found that countries ranked in the bottom 25 percent in terms of safe water had about 4.7 more deaths per 1,000 children under five years old compared to countries in the top 25 percent tier” and “when judged on access to adequate sanitation, countries ranked in the bottom 25 percent tier had about 6.6 more deaths per 1,000 children under five years old compared to countries in the top 25 percent tier,” a United Nations University press release states (2/14).
Russian NGOs Fear Fate Of HIV Harm-Reduction Programs As Planned Exit Of Global Fund Occurs
The Moscow Times examines a potential shift in Russia’s public health priorities as programs funded by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria begin to phase out. “While the Global Fund’s eight-year presence in Russia was long expected to end, officials with regional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) largely dependent on the group’s financing say the country is now turning its back on widely accepted harm-reduction strategies and will let independent HIV-prevention groups wither and die,” the newspaper writes.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is set to announce on Thursday morning a five-year initiative among the U.S. and five other countries — Canada, Sweden, Mexico, Ghana and Bangladesh — to cut pollutants that contribute to global warming, the Washington Post reports (Vastag, 2/15). “Short-lived climate pollutants such as methane, black carbon, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) together account for approximately one-third of current global warming, and have significant impacts on public health, the environment, and world food productivity,” a State Department press notice states.
WHO Should Regulate Alcohol Consumption With Legally Binding Convention, Global Health Expert Says
The “WHO should regulate alcohol at the global level, enforcing such regulations as a minimum drinking age, zero-tolerance drunken driving, and bans on unlimited drink specials,” Devi Sridhar, a lecturer in global health politics at the University of Oxford, argues in a commentary published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, Scientific American reports. “[A]lcohol kills more than 2.5 million people annually, more than AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis,” and it is a leading health concern for middle-income populations, “greater than obesity, inactivity and even tobacco,” according to the news service (Wanjek, 2/15).
“Delegates at a meeting convened by the United Nations to draw up strategies to respond to the humanitarian crisis in West Africa’s drought-prone Sahel region [on Wednesday] called for comprehensive and rapid assistance to the millions of people affected, especially children and women,” the U.N. News Centre reports (2/15). “Heads of U.N. agencies and representatives from governments, the African Union and the Economic Community Of West African States met in Rome to discuss a joint response to the situation in the region,” the Guardian notes (Ford, 2/15). “U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization director Jose Graziano da Silva warned there is ‘little time to act,'” according to VOA’s “Breaking News” blog (2/15).
Burkina Faso Government Urged To increase Health Budget As Country Faces ARV Stock Outs
“Burkina Faso’s Network for Access to Essential Medicines (RAME) has called on the Burkinab
After going a year without recording a polio case, Indian health officials have begun vaccinating young children who cross the border to or from Pakistan at the Munabao railway station in Rajasthan state, BBC News reports. “The drive was launched after more than 175 cases of polio were reported in Pakistan, officials said,” the news agency writes (2/16).
First Edition: February 16,2012
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations include the latest reports on congressional efforts to block a cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
Obama Praises Congressional Deal On Doctor Pay, Payroll Taxes
Speaking in Milwaukee, the president noted the progress on Capitol Hill. But negotiators are still fine-tuning the fragile accord, which would keep physicians’ Medicare payments stable. KHN tracked the related coverage.
Tentative ‘Doc Fix’ Deal Would Cut Health Law’s Prevention Fund by $5B
The proposal would also cut Medicare payments to hospitals, other providers and clinical labs as well as Medicaid payments to hospitals that serve the poor.
Conservatives’ Mixed Message On Health Care Mandate
The New York Times explores the history of the individual mandate. In other health law articles, a Gallup poll finds small business owners worried about the costs they will incur and some doctors in favor of a single payer health system file a brief with the Supreme Court opposing the federal law.
Despite Fewer Amputations, Medicare’s Bill For Artificial Feet Rises 60%
The Associated Press examines the complicated issue of health costs by looking at foot amputations from diabetes.
“Malnutrition is the root cause of the deaths of 2.6 million children each year, and the bodies and brains of 450 million more will fail to develop properly due to inadequate diet over the next 15 years unless immediate action is taken, according to a survey published Wednesday by” Save the Children, the Guardian reports (Tisdall, 2/14). “A quarter of young children around the world are not getting enough nutrients to grow properly, and 300 die of malnutrition every hour,” according to the survey, “A Life Free from Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition,” the Independent writes (Valley, 2/15).
Hospitals Would Have To Voluntarily Return Overpayments Under New Proposal
Even as officials announced record recoveries of fraudulent Medicare claims, they proposed new rules to force providers to voluntarily return overpayments within 60 days of discovering them. The proposal is intended to cut down on the need for criminal or civil investigations.
DEA Tries To Stem Prescription Drug Abuse By Suspending Pharmacies
The Drug Enforcement Administration has suspended four Florida pharmacies – and is trying to stop their supplier, Cardinal Health – from selling controlled substances in an effort to fight prescription drug abuse, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Examining CDC’s Role In Global HIV, TB Research And Development
In “the first in a series of conversations with officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discussing the CDC’s role in global HIV and tuberculosis (TB) research and development,” the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog interviews Kayla Laserson, director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)/CDC Field Research Station in Kisumu, Kenya. Laserson answers questions about her work with the CDC, the latest research projects underway at KEMRI/CDC, and progress in Kenya’s HIV response since she began working in Kisumu six years ago, among other topics (Mazzotta, 2/14).
CMS Signals It May Delay Deadline On New Codes To Be Used By Doctors, Hospitals
Acting Director Marilyn Tavenner says the agency will re-examine the October 2013 deadline for the coding system, known as ICD-10. It expands the number of codes used for billing medical services.
Research!America Shares Findings About Global Health R&D In Illinois
In this post in the Global Health Technologies Coalition’s (GHTC) “Breakthroughs” blog, Mandy Goldberg, global health research and development (R&D) advocacy intern at Research!America, shares the organization’s findings about the state of Illinois from an analysis conducted in target states to measure the health and economic impact of global health R&D in the U.S. “Illinois boasts more than 200 academic, government, and non-profit research institutions, as well as seven research and technology parks, all of which contribute significantly to employment within the state,” she writes, adding, “Illinois is one of the top 10 bioscience employers in the United States, with more than 57,000 people working in the industry” (Halnon, 2/14).
