Latest KFF Health News Stories
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.”
With Increasing Population, Now Is Not The Time To Cut International Family Planning Funding
Robert Walker, executive vice president of the Population Institute, writes in this Huffington Post opinion piece that despite an increase in government and NGO support for maternal and child health programs, including family planning services, announced last week by the U.N. as part of its Every Woman, Every Child campaign, “the world’s largest donor nation, the United States, is retreating on its commitments to international family planning, and other donor nations may follow suit.”
As Interest In Global Health Rises In U.S., San Francisco Stands At Forefront Of Field
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a growing interest in global health throughout the U.S. and how Jaime Sepulveda, who served as head of epidemiology in Mexico in the early 1980s and who took over the Global Health Sciences division at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) earlier this month, “hopes to make the Bay Area a powerhouse in research and development of global health policies worldwide.” The newspaper writes, “In the past five years, global health has taken off at the Bay Area’s top research institutions,” adding, “Both UCSF and Stanford have opened new global health centers, and Kaiser Permanente — the Bay Area’s largest health care provider — has formalized a program to send its doctors and nurses overseas.”
Gates Foundation Report For G20 Supports Taxing Financial Transactions, Tobacco, Fuel To Aid Poor
A report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that was commissioned by the G20 chair “proposes raising new funding for poorer countries by taxing financial transactions, tobacco, and shipping and aviation fuels, according to details of a G20 report obtained by Reuters,” the news service reports. “The Gates Foundation was tasked by current G20 chair, France, to look at how the governments of its member countries could raise new money for aid to developing nations, including plugging an estimated $80-100 billion funding gap to help the poor adapt to climate change,” the news agency writes. The report “suggests even a small tax of 10 basis points on equities and two basis points on bonds would raise about $48 billion among G20 member states, or $9 billion if only adopted by larger European countries,” Reuters notes (Wroughton, 9/23). “Longstanding proposals for a tax on currency transactions have often been met by skepticism by governments, which argue it would drive currency trading from one financial center to another,” the Financial Times reports (Beattie, 9/23).
The Nation Examines Rise In Unregulated Drug Trials In South America
The Nation examines how a surge in the outsourcing of clinical trials to contract research organizations (CROs) and a resulting increase in the number of trials being conducted in the developing world, where “regulations aren’t as onerous, patient recruitment is easier and informed consent is less clearly defined,” has led to a rise in unregulated drug trials in South America, noting that, according to a 2010 report by the inspector general of the HHS, “40 to 65 percent of clinical trials on FDA-regulated products in 2008 took place overseas. Of nearly 6,500 foreign trial sites that year, the FDA inspected only forty-five — less than one percent.”
