The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
54,561 - 54,580 of 112,177 Results
The Obama administration announced Monday that it won't press for an en banc appeal to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. Such an action would have delayed the legal process and likely pushed back the timing of a final Supreme Court decision until at least 2013.
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."
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'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).
"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).
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the country.
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."
"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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
News outlets report on a variety of state health policy issues.
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."
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.
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.
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).
© 2026 KFF