Feature Channels: Public Health

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Billions of US taxpayer dollars have been invested in Africa over the past 15 years to improve care for millions suffering from the HIV/AIDS epidemic; yet health systems on the continent continue to struggle. What if the investments and lessons learned from HIV could be used to improve care for those with other serious chronic conditions? With this question in mind, researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, along with investigators and clinicians based in Uganda, borrowed an HIV/AIDS innovation to seek inroads against rheumatic heart disease in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Boston, MA – (January 22, 2018) – Legislators from both the Massachusetts House and Senate have voted on a Joint Resolution to urge the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and other public and private health providers to screen Asian Americans for diabetes at a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 23, which is a lower screening BMI than for the general population.

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In an effort to reduce patient misdiagnoses and associated poor patient outcomes from lack of prompt treatment, a Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality researcher is helping to lead the way in providing hospitals a new approach to quantify and monitor diagnostic errors in their quality improvement efforts. The approach, called Symptom-Disease Pair Analysis of Diagnostic Error, or SPADE, is featured in a paper published today in BMJ Quality & Safety.

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More than 700,000 Americans were hospitalized due to illnesses associated with the seasonal flu during the 2014–15 flu season, according to federal estimates. A radical new approach to vaccine development at UCLA may help lower that figure for future flu seasons.

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Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine, in collaboration with a team of researchers at the George Washington University and the René Rachou Institute, have received funding from the National Institutes of Health for a Phase Ib clinical trial for a Schistosomiasis vaccine in an endemic area of Brazil.

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New data analysis suggests that people born at the time of the 1957 H2N2 or Asian Flu pandemic were at a higher risk of dying during the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic as well as the resurgent H1N1 outbreak in 2013-2014. And it is not the first time this has happened.

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Lauri Andress, an assistant professor in the West Virginia University School of Public Health, is working to disrupt the current model for how seniors in rural Appalachia access healthy food.

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A new article publishing in the forthcoming volume of the Annual Review of Public Health focuses on harm minimization and smoking cessation, with alternative nicotine products like e-cigarettes emerging as a promising avenue for people who want to quit smoking.

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Canadian researchers’ innovative work promises to make vaccines more effective against tuberculosis and other infectious diseases like the flu.

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A new study from Duke Health has found pregnant women experienced less secondhand smoke exposure since the 2009 passage of the ‘smoking ban’ in North Carolina, which outlawed smoking inside public places such as bars and restaurants.

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An original analysis by researchers at New York University College of Global Public Health and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University finds that a federal tax on junk food is both legally and administratively feasible.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the suicide rate in the United States increased by 34 percent between 2000 and 2016. While that rate seems high, a team of researchers led by a West Virginia University faculty member believes it is seriously underestimated.

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Orthodontic care, such as braces, bite plates and retainers, typically costs between $3,000 and $8,000. But research out of the West Virginia University School of Dentistry suggests that only half of Appalachian orthodontia patients can complete their treatment.

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Non-communicable diseases — such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and diabetes — are responsible for more than 36 million deaths across the globe each year. 14 million of these constitute premature mortality, and 90 percent of these premature deaths take place in low- and middle-income countries.

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New Appropriateness Criteria Patient Summaries can help patients understand which imaging tests are best for their condition or why they may not need a scan at all. The first item in this first-of-its kind series created by patients for patients in everyday language are now published online in JACR.

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There a few common sense, if perhaps overlooked, steps one can take to reduce one’s risk for catching a cold.

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WCG Foundation will host free webinars Jan. 25 and Feb. 5 on how to streamline the application process for experimental medications for intermediate-size populations of desperately ill patients.

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A new grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will allow ISU scientists to develop new tools to predict and combat harmful algal blooms, a growing threat to human and animal health in Iowa’s lakes. Cyanobacteria, which have the ability to produce toxic byproducts, can grow quickly and form blooms that discolor lake water, typically in warm, shallow surface water during the summer months.

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Your Disease Risk measures an individual's risk of 12 common cancers and five major chronic diseases. The tool, developed by researchers at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, incorporates the latest scientific evidence on disease risk.

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George Washington University's Department of Physical Therapy and Health Care Sciences has been renamed to Department of Health, Human Function, and Rehabilitation Sciences.

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UCR study shows how intensive pesticide use is driving mosquito evolution at the genetic level

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A University of Vermont research study, which discovered Instagram photos hold clues to aid in the early detection of depression, was one of the 20 most popular pieces of academic research in all of 2017, according to a new ranking.

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Blacks and Hispanic very preterm infants are more likely to be born at New York City hospitals with higher risk-adjusted neonatal morbidity-mortality rates, and these differences contribute to excess morbidity and mortality among black and Hispanic infants. These differences in hospital of birth explained 39.9% of the black-white disparity and 29.5% of the Hispanic-white disparity in outcomes.

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Half of sepsis survivors never fully recover; Dr. Derek Angus lays out an approach to change that.

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Deciding to stop smoking is one of the most common, beneficial and difficult New Year’s resolutions. Smoking reminders are abundant, nicotine withdrawal is difficult and the resolution process itself is flawed.

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Through gene therapy, researchers engineered blood-forming stem cells (hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells, or HSPCs) to carry chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) genes to make cells that can detect and destroy HIV-infected cells. These engineered cells persisted for more than two years

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Antibiotics could become nearly useless by mid-century against intense infections due to bacteria evolving antibiotic resistance. And alternatives haven't been able to replace them. It's time for a rethink: Try reducing antibiotic use for small infections and find alternate treatments for them. Save antibiotics for the big infections.

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The Medicaid expansions for low-income parents that took place between 1996 and 2011 led to a 2.3 percent decrease in the uninsured rate among women who already had a child and became pregnant again, and a 7.9 percent decrease in the number of mothers who didn’t have insurance while they were pregnant.

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For non-elderly Americans on disability, local prescribing of opioid pain medications is significantly related to county-level economic factors like unemployment and income level, reports a study in the January issue of Medical Care, published by Wolters Kluwer.

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As 2017 comes to a close, many states have enacted laws and regulations expanding access to healthcare provided by advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), according to the 30th Annual Legislative Update in the January issue of The Nurse Practitioner, published by Wolters Kluwer.

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A class of anti-inflammatory drugs already FDA-approved for rheumatoid arthritis could “purge” the reservoir of infected immune cells in people infected by HIV, according to new research.

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In this month’s release, find new embargoed research that links increased hepatitis C numbers to the opioid epidemic, shows Medicaid expansion increasing cancer diagnoses, the ACA expanding breastfeeding and the prevalence of osteoarthritis growing

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The American Thoracic Society Foundation has announced that 16 researchers have been awarded unrestricted research grants totaling more than $1 million to advance pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine around the world. These one-year, $40,000 grants can be used to support basic science, patient-oriented, and public health research.

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Rush University Medical Center and Rush Copley Medical Center each have received five stars, the highest possible rating, for hospital quality from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS, as the centers are known, published the latest overall ratings for hospitals nationwide on their Hospital Compare website today.

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Announcement of $6.5 million gift from Cleveland philanthropists Sara and Chris Connor for integrative health network at University Hospitals in Northeast Ohio. The will enable UH to recruit a core team of physician leaders to treat patients, educate physicians throughout UH and beyond about how to effectively incorporate integrative therapies into their patient care plans, and conduct research.

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Lab Tests Online, AACC’s award-winning public resource on laboratory testing, is pleased to announce that it has launched a dynamic redesign of labtestsonline.org to better help patients, caregivers, and medical professionals understand the many lab tests that are an integral part of healthcare.

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Researchers at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute have led an effort to develop a more accurate way to gauge the incidence of HIV infections in large populations, which will improve research and prevention strategies worldwide.

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A study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found the natural decline in lung function over a 10-year period was slower among former smokers with a diet high in tomatoes and fruits, especially apples, suggesting certain components in these foods might help restore lung damage caused by smoking.

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Pharmaceutical interventions are routinely prescribed to help people quit smoking. However, a new study by University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers suggests that, despite promising results in clinical trials, smoking cessation drugs alone may not be improving the chances of successful quitting among smokers in general.

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The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) has announced its 2017 Rare Disease Research Grant recipients and Dr. D. Scott Merrell, professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, is among the grantees.

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A virologist involved in the debate over "gain of function" and dual-use infectious disease research reflects on the issue, in the wake of NIH action.

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Research to develop and test an intervention that reduces the threat of this health problem for women of childbearing age

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Value in Health, the official journal of ISPOR (the professional society for health economics and outcomes research), announced today the publication of a research report suggesting that the removal of drug coverage caps may lead to improved medication persistence and help reduce the racial therapy gap in the United States.

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The scientists hope understanding how immune cells adapt as they enter different tissues will spur the design of better, more specific, medicines.