Latest KFF Health News Stories
Medicaid Cost-Shifting Measures Move Forward In Fla., Wis.
Medicaid cost-saving measures are moving forward in Florida, which wants to shift more cost burden to its counties and Wisconsin, which may cut people from the rolls.
Guidelines For Cervical Cancer Screening Revised
New schedule depends on age, but women between 30 and 65 can wait five years between screenings if they get both a Pap test and an HPV test.
State Roundup: Ariz.’s Long-Term Care Plan; N.H. Moves To Repeal ‘Certificate-Of-Need’
A selection of health policy news from Arizona, Colorado, New Hampshire, Minnesota, California and Massachusetts.
Translating The Health Law Into Reality One Regulation At A Time
Part of implementing the health law includes replacing jargon in health insurance policies with plain English. Meanwhile, the release of a federal mental health parity rule is held up to coordinate it with the overhaul.
A selection of editorials and opinions on health care policy from around the country.
What’s In Store At The Supreme Court
News outlets report on the issues in play when the high court hears the health law oral arguments later this month, how particular justices might form their opinions and lay out the new, all-or-nothing position adopted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Longer Looks: Med Students Spurn Primary Care For Hospital Jobs
This week’s articles come from Time magazine, The Atlantic, American Medical News, Columbia Journalism Review and the AARP Bulletin.
Nearly 25% Of Yemenis Face Severe Hunger, Preliminary WFP Survey Finds
“Almost five million Yemenis are unable to produce or buy the food they need, according to preliminary findings of a United Nations survey,” the U.N. News Centre reports (3/14). A World Food Programme (WFP) “survey on food security among 8,000 households in 19 of the country’s 21 governorates concluded that approximately five million people — about 22 percent of the population — are facing severe hunger, double the 2009 number and above the threshold at which food aid is required,” the Guardian reports (Ford, 3/14). The survey, “which was produced in collaboration with the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Yemeni Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), also found that a further five million people are at risk of becoming severely food insecure as they face rising food prices and conflict,” the U.N. News Centre notes (3/14).
IPS Explores Challenges To Providing Family Planning Services In Cote d’Ivoire
Inter Press Service explores how patriarchal tradition, cultural values, low government health spending, and a lack of access to supplies and education pose challenges to women who wish to obtain family planning services in Cote d’Ivoire. In the West African country, “family planning is widely regarded as a ‘women’s issue’ that husbands do not have to concern themselves with,” therefore, “very few men use the small number of public services on offer, while women continue to struggle to realize their sexual and reproductive rights,” the news service writes. The article discusses a clinic “run by the non-governmental health organization Ivorian Association for Family Well-Being (AIBEF),” which is the “one clinic that offers family planning services free of charge” in Abidjan, the country’s commercial capital (Palitza, 3/15).
A “[l]ack of services and information about adolescent reproductive health [in the Philippines] is fueling the rise of teen pregnancies and hurting child survival rates, according to health experts,” IRIN reports. “‘Teenage pregnancy is becoming a great problem in the country. These young mothers are unable to give quality care to their babies, hence these babies usually are sickly and malnourished,’ Jacqueline Kitong, reproductive health adviser in the Philippines for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told IRIN,” according to the news service.
Joint Fact Sheet On U.S.-U.K. Partnership For Global Development
A joint fact sheet on the U.S.-U.K. Partnership for Global Development is available on the White House website. “Through the Partnership, we are working together to achieve better results by advancing economic growth; preventing conflict in fragile states; improving global health, particularly for girls and women; strengthening mutual accountability, transparency, and measurement of results; and mitigating the effects of climate change,” the fact sheet states, elaborating on joint efforts in each of these areas (3/14).
Promoting Women’s Rights, Addressing Inequalities Essential To AIDS Fight
“The Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues (S/GWI) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) are committed to advancing the rights and health of women and girls around the world,” U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby and Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer write in this post in the State Department “DipNote” blog, commemorating International Women’s Day, which was observed on March 8. “Promoting the rights of women and addressing gender inequities and gender norms are essential steps to reducing HIV risk and increasing access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services — for both women and men,” they add (3/14).
In this post in the Huffington Post’s “Impact” blog, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe examines the role of the fight against AIDS in sustaining economic and social development in Africa. “Africa is breaking records,” he writes, noting the economic growth, increased access to information, rise in democracy, decline in poverty, increased school enrollment — especially for girls — and decline in AIDS-related deaths on the continent. “Africa is now poised to push towards a new vision of: zero new HIV infections, zero discrimination and zero AIDS-related deaths,” and “it needs everyone’s support,” he continues.
Japan Makes Largest-Ever Contribution To Global Fund
Japan on Monday provided a $340 million contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, “the highest amount that Japan has ever made in 10 years of vigorous support for the Global Fund,” according to a fund press release. “This new contribution represents a significant increase over Japan’s previous highest contribution of $246 million in 2010” and “raises Japan’s contributions to the Global Fund to more than $1.6 billion since its creation in 2002,” the press release states (3/13).
Joint Initiative To Support GBV Programs With PEPFAR Funding
Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby on Monday “announced a joint initiative to provide $4.65 million in small grants to grassroots organizations to address gender-based violence (GBV) issues” through HIV/AIDS programs, according to a State Department press release. With funding coming from PEPFAR, “the initiative supports programs that prevent and respond to GBV, with a link to HIV prevention, treatment and care,” the press release states, adding, “Grants of up to $100,000 for programs that leverage existing HIV/AIDS platforms will be awarded to organizations working in one of more than 80 PEPFAR countries” (3/14).
Kenyan Nurses End 2-Week Strike; Kenyan PM Odinga Revokes Mass Dismissal
“Tens of thousands of Kenyan nurses agreed Wednesday to end a two-week strike after talks with Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who revoked their mass dismissal during the standoff,” Agence France-Presse reports. “‘The meeting agreed that the ongoing health workers strike should be called off immediately and all the officers return to work unconditionally,’ a statement from Odinga’s office said,” the news service notes. “The nurses stopped work on March 1 to protest the government’s failure to raise wages as agreed last year, when they also demanded improved services in Kenya’s mostly ill-equipped public hospitals,” the news service writes, adding, “The strike has crippled hospitals, with patients sometimes being sent home untreated, [with] others languishing in wards unattended” (3/14).
U.S. Must Recommit Itself To Ending AIDS, Scientifically And Financially
“There is a lot of optimism now in the community of public health officials and advocates who work on AIDS. … But, even as we know more, there are still disputes about how best to move forward on both prevention and treatment,” commentator Richard Socarides, a former White House adviser under President Bill Clinton, writes in the New Yorker’s “News Desk” blog. “Such is the nature of AIDS, especially as it involves an attempt to understand the complexity of human behavior as it relates to sex,” he adds.
Delayed Response To Food Crisis, Pipeline Constraints Leave Thousands Without Food Aid In Chad
“Late Chadian government recognition of a food crisis, a slow build-up from aid agencies, and severe pipeline constraints due to closed Libyan and Nigerian borders mean food aid has not yet arrived in Chad, despite many thousands of people having already run out of food,” IRIN reports. “While staff in agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP) are working furiously to beat the clock, a lead time of up to six months to get food to where it is needed means that the very soonest food will start to arrive is sometime in April,” the news service adds.
ARV Given To HIV-Positive Children Boosts Preventive Power Of Key Malaria Drug, Study Shows
An antiretroviral (ARV) drug given to HIV-positive children “can boost the preventive power of a key malaria drug,” according to a study conducted in Uganda and presented last week at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, ScienceNow reports. The researchers, led by clinicians Diane Havlir of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Moses Kamya of Makerere University College of Health Sciences, “compare[d] two different cocktails of anti-HIV drugs, only one of which contained protease inhibitors, in HIV-infected children who live in a malarial area of [Uganda]” and found “that one protease inhibitor indeed helped stave off malaria.”
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about emerging Congressional budget battles and political strategies surrounding the health law.
