JAMA. 2010;304(10):1056. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.1288
Author: Rebecca Voelker
“A recent alarm warning against complacency in polio vaccination has come from an unlikely place: Canada. Infectious poliomyelitis, eradicated in much of the world during the past 2 decades, remains endemic only in Nigeria, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. But a new outbreak last spring in Tajikistan has resulted in 452 laboratory-confirmed cases of wild poliovirus type 1 and 20 deaths. At least 7 related cases have been reported in the Russian Federation. The outbreak is the first to strike a World Health Organization (WHO)–certified polio-free region. Tajikistan is in the WHO European Region, which was certified polio-free in 2002. Tajikistan’s outbreak, imported from northern India, prompted a bluntly worded editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).”
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Archive for category Public Health
Wall Street Journal- 31 August, 2010
Author: Janet Adamy
“In preliminary guidelines released last week, the Food and Drug Administration said the scope of the law stretches beyond restaurants to encompass airlines, trains, grocery-store food courts, movie theaters and convenience stores that qualify as chains. Within grocery stores, the agency said, it is considering including salad bars, store bakeries, pizza bars and delicatessens.”
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The Age- 08 September, 2010
Author: Danny Rose
“A major report on preventable illness in Australia has called for junk food, alcohol and cigarette price hikes, an increase in the legal drinking age and mandatory salt limits for common foods.”
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Washington Post-06 September, 2010
Author: Dan Eggen
“Egg producers are alarmed by efforts to ban small cages for hens, a movement that has gained momentum in an increasing number of states.In California, new legislation spearheaded by the Humane Society of the United States will eliminate the use of conventional battery cages starting in 2015.”
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Washington Post - 06 September, 2010
Author: Lyndsey Layton
“The Food and Drug Administration is poised to approve the first genetically modified animal for human consumption, a highly anticipated decision that is stirring controversy and could mark a turning point in the way American food is produced.”
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Health Affairs, 29, no. 9 (2010): 1697-1705, doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2010.0038
Authors: Megan Sandel, Mark Hansen, Robert Kahn, Ellen Lawton, Edward Paul, Victoria Parker, Samantha Morton, and Barry Zuckerman
“Health care is undermined when patients don’t receive the benefit of laws intended to address social determinants of health, such as housing and food. Medical-legal partnerships, which now exist in more than 200 clinical sites in the United States, integrate lawyers into health care to address legal problems that create and perpetuate poor health. This paper describes how such medical-legal partnerships can change clinical systems—for example, by adding legal form letters to electronic health records to help low-income patients rectify substandard housing conditions.”
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Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2010;164(9):878-879. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2010.152
Editorial: J. Michael McGinnis
“Marketing works. This was a basic finding of the 2006 report of the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Food Marketing to Children and Youth. That report, Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity? presented a comprehensive and rigorous assessment of all qualified scientific studies published on the relationship between food and beverage marketing patterns and practices and the dietary attitudes, beliefs, practices, and nutrition-related status of children and youth. The committee concluded that the evidence supported a causal relationship between television advertising targeted to children and teenagers and their food preferences, short-term food consumption, and—for children—longer-term dietary patterns. With respect to marketing’s direct and causal association with overweight and obesity, the Institute of Medicine committee determined that the studies that were assessed were not long enough to offer a formal finding one way or the other…”
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N Engl J Med 2010; 363:901-903September 2, 2010
Authors: David E. Fisher, and William D. James
“An estimated 1 million times per day, someone in the United States uses ultraviolet (UV) radiation for skin tanning. According to the indoor tanning industry, tanning beds are used by 30 million Americans, or about 10% of the U.S. population, each year (www.theita.com/indoor). These users include minors, who often have ready access to tanning beds. In response to considerable grassroots and political opposition to indoor tanning, in late March the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened an advisory panel to review the safety of the procedure. The FDA is expected to announce a decision soon on whether and how to reclassify tanning lamps and possibly to address minors’ access to them.”
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Scotsman- 31 August, 2010
Author: Andrew Whitaker
“A NEW health service aimed at cutting the millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent on wasted medicines has been launched. Scottish health boards can lose millions of pounds a year on prescription drugs annually, often due to patients ordering more than they need.”
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SMH, By Louise Hall, 28 August 2010
“A UN official says he is ”very impressed” by the medically supervised injecting centre in Kings Cross, which has been operating on a trial basis for almost a decade. The executive director of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, said it was a ”pragmatic, cost-effective” way to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and prevent deaths of intravenous drug users, who were often homeless or mentally ill. Mr Sidibe would not be drawn on the state government’s decision not to grant the centre a permanent licence, which forces Parliament to vote on an extension of the relevant legislation every four years.”
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