Latest KFF Health News Stories
USAID, NGO Partners Testing Nutritional Impact Assessment Tool
USAID is working with non-governmental organization partners to test a “nutritional impact assessment tool” that “‘would be a way for organizations designing or reviewing agricultural programs to mitigate any risks or potential negative effects on nutrition — in other words a “do no harm” approach,’ said Michael Zeilinger, head of the nutrition division with USAID’s office of health, infectious disease and nutrition,” IRIN reports. “‘As we start to design major agriculture programs around value chains and increasing production (such as Feed the Future and Global Agriculture and Food Security Program), we should really remember that there are some practices in agriculture that may have potential negative effects on nutrition, and this is just to make sure that they’re thought through,’ Zeilinger told IRIN.”
Perry, Romney Continue In GOP Primary Spotlight
News outlets report on the ongoing sparring between the two candidates and on Perry’s health policy record as Texas governor. Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann points to her rivals’ positions on issues including health care and says Republicans should not settle for a moderate candidate. Also, NPR flashes back to GOP candidate Herman Cain’s 1994 debate performance. And, on the other side of the political spectrum, The Associated Press reports that Democrats are shifting their campaign message away from the health law and toward Medicare.
GlobalPost Interviews Reproductive Health Expert Frederick Sai
GlobalPost’s “Global Pulse” blog features an interview with Frederick Sai, a Ghanaian physician who is a member of Aspen’s Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health and a former president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and director of population at the World Bank. Sai addresses his interest in reproductive health, motivating leaders to talk about family planning, and how his experience as a medical doctor changed his views on family planning, according to the article (Donnelly, 9/26).
Survey Shows Rise In Unprotected Sex Among Youth, Raises Concern About Sex Education
“The number of young people having unprotected sex in the West has risen sharply over the past two years,” according to a global survey conducted by the International Planned Parenthood Federation between April and May of this year, Agence France-Presse reports. The study was funded by Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, the news agency notes (9/26). The survey, titled “Clueless or Clued Up: Your right to be informed about contraception,” prepared for World Contraception Day on September 26, “questioned more than 6,000 young people from 26 countries … on their attitudes toward sex and contraception” and “reports that the number of young people having unsafe sex with a new partner increased by 111 percent in France, 39 percent in the USA and 19 percent in Britain in the last three years,” Reuters notes (9/25).
Viewpoints: Lots Of Advice For Super Committee On Medicare, Medicaid
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the country.
Global Health ‘Blunders’ Can Lend Useful Lessons
New York Times reporter Lawrence Altman recounts his experience in the mid-1960s with a measles immunization campaign in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) during his time with the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC in a “Doctor’s World” perspective piece in the newspaper. Altman says that although the effort to expand the immunization campaign from a small field trial to a regional program “failed miserably,” the “lessons learned from these blunders led to a new program that wiped out smallpox, still the only human disease to have been eradicated from the planet.”
‘Urgent Action’ Needed To Prevent Resistance To Antiretroviral Therapy
“The clear pattern of increasing antiretroviral resistance in lower-income settings must be considered in the context of the worldwide HIV-control agenda,” especially because “the increasing rates of antiretroviral resistance in low-income settings represent a potential threat to the emerging treatment-as-prevention strategy,” Evan Wood and Julio Montaner of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS write in a Lancet Infectious Diseases opinion piece, adding, “Urgent action is needed.” They describe steps to help lower the threat of resistance, including deploying proven preventive strategies, “early and sustained” highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) to prevent vertical transmission, and programs to provide HAART to 15 million people worldwide by 2015.
The New York Times on Monday published a special section, titled “Small Fixes,” containing several articles examining how low-cost innovations could help save thousands of lives. The articles examine issues as diverse as using circumcision to reduce the risk of HIV infection among men to a water-filtering straw that can provide one person with clean drinking water for up to one year. Other articles examine paper diagnostic tests for liver damage, using vinegar to diagnose precancerous cervical lesions, nectar poisons to kill disease-carrying mosquitos, a wetsuit-like compression suit that can save a woman experiencing hemorrhaging after giving birth, and scratch-off labels on medicines that allow a user to text message a code and discover whether the drugs are counterfeit, among others (Various authors, 9/26).
Peru Hopes To Continue Fight Against Child Malnutrition Under New Government
Despite a seven percent annual growth rate over the past five years and a prediction from former President Alan Garcia that Peru will meet the millennium development goals (MDGs), “chronic infant malnutrition has been difficult to stamp out, particularly in rural areas,” the Guardian’s “Poverty Matters Blog” reports. In addition to geography challenging health workers in this mountainous country, language barriers, economic class and habits of eating lower-cost, low-protein foods contribute to malnutrition in children five years of age or younger, according to the blog.
Selling The American ‘Health Ecosystem’ Internationally?
A coalition of U.S. health care businesses is seeking to help rebuild the American economy by helping other nations meet worldwide demand for health care in aging populations with sales of American insurance, medical devices and record-keeping technology.
Report Raises Questions About High Costs Of Cancer Care
The report, which was published in the September issue of Lancet Oncology, notes that, while cancer care is more advanced than ever before, it is also more expensive. It poses this question: Will the related expenses bankrupt the world’s economies?
Some Low-Income Minn. Residents Must Change Health Plans
Also in Medicaid news, Washington state begins new program that limits emergency department visits for Medicaid enrolless. Oregon also reports gains in efforts to get children coverage.
Survey: Many Physicians Say Their Patients Receive Too Much Care
About half, however, said they were giving their patients “the right amount of care.” In other news, a study from the Archives of Internal Medicine, according to Medscape, concluded that more frequent office visits by patients leads to faster diabetes control.
State Roundup: Conn.’s New Insurance Commissioner Getting Noticed
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
With Health Dollars At Stake, Interest Groups Focus On ‘Super Committee’
The Connecticut Mirror reports that the sheer amount of money in play as the debt panel searches for $1.2 trillion in savings over the next decade has “the health sector on edge.”
Specialty Groups: Docs Shouldn’t Pay For Medicare Formula Fix
A medical specialty organization questions why physicians should have to pay for the Medicare doctor pay fix when they didn’t cause the underlying problem in the first place.
First Edition: September 27, 2011
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports that the Obama administration decided not to ask the full 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to take up a challenge to the health law, making it likely that the Supreme Court could rule on the measure’s constitutionality early next year. Also in the news, part 2 of KHN’s “Building Ambitions” series.
Public Health Institute To Receive $209.5M In ‘Cooperative Agreement’ Funding From USAID
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) announced Friday that the Oakland-based Public Health Institute will receive $209.5 million in “cooperative agreement” funding from USAID, NBC/Bay City News reports. “The award, nearly twice as large as previous USAID agreements, will go to support the Public Health Institute’s role in the Global Health Fellows Program,” which “recruits and trains health professionals for placement in Washington, D.C., and abroad to strengthen USAID’s public health outreach,” the news service writes (9/24).
Immediate Action Needed To Curb Spread Of TB, Especially Among Children
In this entry in the Huffington Post’s “Impact” blog, Kolleen Bouchane, director of ACTION, an international partnership of advocates working to mobilize resources to treat and prevent the spread of tuberculosis (TB), examines the need for improved TB vaccines and diagnostics in order to curb the spread of multidrug-resistant TB, especially among children, and highlights ACTION’s new report (.pdf), “Children and Tuberculosis: Exposing a Hidden Epidemic,” which she says “exposes the link between TB and orphaned and vulnerable children, malnourished children or children living with HIV.”
