Feature Channels: Public Health

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Socioeconomic status can affect life expectancy, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher said in a study published today.

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Diners who are skeptical of the food safety practices in ethnic restaurants have new research to back up some of their assumptions. In a study of independently owned restaurants in 14 Kansas counties, Kansas State University researchers found a significantly higher number of food safety violations in ethnic restaurants than in nonethnic restaurants.

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With the national trend toward quitting smoking flat, psychologists are finding some success with treatments aimed at helping smokers from underserved groups, including racial and ethnic minorities and those with psychiatric disorders.

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It pays to advertise. It especially pays to advertise in Spanish if you want Spanish speakers to use a telephone helpline to quit smoking.

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Breast cancer rates are declining, but some groups have seen a more significant decline than others, with race, ethnicity and economic background playing a part.

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A campaign that makes seasonal flu vaccinations for hospital staff free, convenient, ubiquitous and hard to ignore succeeds fairly well in moving care providers closer to a state of “herd” immunity and protecting patients from possible infection transmitted by health care workers, according to results of a survey at The Johns Hopkins Hospital.

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A leading immunology research institute has validated the long-held and controversial hypothesis that antibodies – usually the “good guys” in the body’s fight against viruses – instead contribute to severe dengue virus-induced disease, the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology announced today. The finding has major implications for the development of a first-ever vaccine against dengue virus, a growing public health threat which annually infects 50 to 100 million people worldwide, causing a half million cases of the severest form.

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The results of an innovative study to understand what factors may influence who contracts tuberculosis (TB)/HIV co-infection in San Diego show a significant shift in the ethnic makeup of the disease, with the majority of cases now coming from the Hispanic community.

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1) Racial Disparities Found in Vaccination Rates among Elderly in Nursing Homes; 2) WIC Interventions Shown to Reduce Disparities, Especially in African American Population; 3) Surprising Breast Cancer Disparities in Asian Women Urges Further Analysis.

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When it comes to meeting national health goals for physical activity, Mexican-Americans are the most active group in America and may benefit from exercise that researchers typically have not measured. The new research, which used electronic devices to measure people’s movement, challenges other studies that claimed whites are most active.

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An analysis of Union Army pension applications shows that 20 years after the Civil War ended, an expanding Pension Bureau left most black veterans behind. The shift away from the Bureau's color-blind roots was driven by black veterans' receiving less trust for medical claims that were not easily verified.

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Electronic cigarettes should be evaluated, regulated, labeled and packaged in a manner consistent with cartridge content and product effect – even if that effect is a total failure to deliver nicotine as demonstrated in a study supported by the National Cancer Institute and led by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher.

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Texting-on-the-go is one of the latest, ubiquitous hazards to life and limb sparked by our high-tech age.

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The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health finds two-thirds of parents worry about the safety of the H1N1 vaccine while one-half are worried about H1N1 illness. Among parents worried more about the H1N1 vaccine, only 10 percent of their children have been vaccinated.

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Cerebral palsy (CP) has increased in infants born prematurely in the United States, according to data presented by researchers from Loyola University Health System (LUHS). These findings were reported at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in Chicago. They also were published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

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Providing preventive Tamiflu and educating and emphasizing the need for repeated hand sanitizer use and disinfectant spray helped stop the spread of H1N1 influenza at a boys' summer camp in northern Alabama, according to David Kimberlin, M.D., the co-director of the UAB Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.

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Vaccination against seasonal influenza is safe and produces a protective immune response in infants as young as 6 to 12 weeks, concludes a study in the February issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

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“The tobacco industry has always been very nimble and aggressive in its responses to new regulations, and Altria’s current attempts to market smokeless tobacco as ‘less harmful’ are no exception,” says Douglas Luke, Ph.D., professor and director of the Center for Tobacco Policy Research at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “Part of what we're seeing here is the tobacco industry trying to position smokeless tobacco products so that they either do not come under the new Food and Drug Administration regulations or they come under weaker regulations.”

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The University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health has launched the Midwest's first online Doctor of Public Health degree -- only the second such program in the U.S.

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A New Jersey study found that African-Americans with cancer are less likely to survive it than whites, and residents of poor neighborhoods less likely to survive than are those in wealthier areas of the state.

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New research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine may help more smokers keep their New Year’s resolution by helping them quit smoking. Extended use of a nicotine patch – 24 weeks versus the standard eight weeks recommended by manufacturers – boosts the number of smokers who maintain their cigarette abstinence and helps more of those who backslide into the habit while wearing the patch, according to a study which will be published in the February 2 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

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The American Academy of Dermatology (Academy) applauds the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for issuing a consent order that prohibits the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) from making false health and safety claims about indoor tanning. The Academy raised its concerns about the false statements being made by the ITA with the FTC in 2008 after the ITA launched an advertising campaign designed to portray indoor tanning as safe and beneficial. The Academy and several of its leading members cooperated fully with the agency’s investigation into this important public health issue. The FTC is the federal government agency that works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them.

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Clinical and basic science researchers from around the world will convene in Hong Kong from January 28 to 30 for the First International Congress on Abdominal Obesity: “Bridging the Gap between Cardiology and Diabetology.” The congress, sponsored by the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk (ICCR) (www.cardiometabolic-risk.org), is the first-ever specialized forum for sharing new insights and evidence about abdominal obesity and its clinical and public health implications.

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Two days before the earthquake, Lora Iannotti, Ph.D., nutrition and public health expert from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, traveled to Port-au-Prince and Leogane, Haiti, to continue her research about undernutrition and disease prevention in young children. The massive tremor changed her focus from research for the future to survival, with her team helping children in the aftermath of the quake. Iannotti says that there are some immediate actions that can be taken to prevent more lost lives and protect livelihoods.

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Surprisingly, hepatitis B and C together infect three to five times more Americans than the AIDS virus does. In the next 10 years, these two liver-damaging infections will kill about 150,000 people in the US alone, says a new Institute of Medicine report.

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Chronic stress following Hurricane Katrina contributed to a three-fold increase in heart attacks in New Orleans more than two years after levee breaches flooded most of the city, according to researchers at Tulane University School of Medicine.

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Current projections estimate that the number of tobacco-related deaths in China will increase to 2 million annually by 2025. A new study in the February issue of the journal Anesthesiology looks at whether Chinese anesthesiologists are willing to help their patients quit smoking, and ultimately help reduce these projected tobacco-related deaths.

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A new systematic review looks at whether showing patients medical scan images would motivate them to change their behavior to reduce risks to their health.

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For African infants with HIV-positive mothers, reducing exposure to breast milk can lower the rate of HIV transmission. But new research suggests that longer periods of breastfeeding—at least 6 months—are critical for reducing the risk of potentially fatal gastroenteritis. The findings are reported in the January 1, 2010, issue of JAIDS: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

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For people who haven't had chickenpox and are exposed to an ill family member, getting vaccinated within five days can reduce the risk of developing chickenpox—or at least reduce the severity of disease, reports a study in the January issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

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Addressing tobacco use without judging the user appears to help people quit, according to a new review of studies.

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Mexican business leader Carlos Slim Helú today announced the launch of a major research project in genomic medicine that will help accelerate progress in public health in Mexico and around the world.

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Chronically ill older adults who are closely supported by a nurse-physician primary care team are twice as likely to rate their health care as high-quality than those who receive usual care. Guided Care patients were also 70 percent more likely to rate the time they had to wait for an appointment when sick as “excellent” or “good”, and 50 percent more likely to rate the ability to get phone advice as “excellent” or “good.”

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1) Boys Born to Adolescent Dads Are More Likely to Become Young Fathers; 2) Smoking Is More Prevalent among Teen Boys When Discrimination Is Perceived; 3) Same-Sex Versus Different-Sex Relationships Vary with Health Insurance Coverage and Access to Care.

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In Texas, the repeal of a motorcycle helmet law has been followed by a sharp increase in fatal motorcycle crashes, according to a study in the January Southern Medical Journal.

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Woodworking is a popular hobby, with table saws being owned and used by an estimated 6 million to 10 million people in the United States. Although table saws are associated with more injuries than any other woodworking tool, there have been no previously published national studies of table saw-related injuries.

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The death rate from injuries in rural areas of China is higher than in urban areas, according to a new study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Injury Research and Policy. Rural males of all ages were 47 percent more likely to die from injuries than urban males, and the overall rate in rural females was 33 percent higher than in urban females.

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Small amounts of lead in the bodies of healthy children and teens — amounts well below the levels defined as “concerning” by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — may worsen kidney function, according to a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study published in the Jan. 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

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New schedule includes formal recommendations that children older than 6 months get the H1N1 influenza vaccine to guard against swine flu, and that combination vaccines are generally preferred over separate injections, says UAB's David Kimberlin, a member of the AAP's infectious disease committee.

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It is not too late for those who have not been immunized against the novel H1N1 influenza A virus or seasonal influenza to protect themselves from a potentially serious and possibly fatal illness. “Flu is very unpredictable,” said Dr. Peter Wenger, an associate professor in the departments of Preventive Medicine & Community Health and Pediatrics at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School. Another wave of widespread flu illness could occur as the winter progresses, possibly even into March or April, he added. “The prudent course is to protect yourself and those around you, and the best way to do that is through vaccination,” he said. National Influenza Vaccination Week , which runs Jan. 10-16, 2010, is a great time to take action.

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Lessons learned from the first 13 children at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center to become critically ill from the H1N1 virus show that although all patients survived, serious complications developed quickly, unpredictably, with great variations from patient to patient and with serious need for vigilant monitoring and quick treatment adjustments.

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Closing schools for less than two weeks during an influenza epidemic has no effect on infection rates, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, RTI International and the Allegheny County Health Department.

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About three-quarters of U.S. children received recommended vaccinations in 2008, up from about half in 2000, reports a new study from the CDC.

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Cigarette smoking is a well-known risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but new research from Johns Hopkins suggests that quitting the habit may actually raise diabetes risk in the short term.

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Many U.S. adults with major depression do not receive treatment for depression or therapy based on treatment guidelines, and some racial and ethnic groups have even lower rates of adequate depression care, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

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Young hunters between the ages of 15 and 34 are the most likely to suffer serious injuries in tree stand-related incidents, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Center for Injury Sciences (CIS). The same researchers’ findings, though, suggest that such injuries are preventable.

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Brazilian researchers have performed the first-ever autopsy study to examine the precise causes of death in victims of the H1N1 swine flu.

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A study suggests that a new compound, one on the threshold of final testing in humans, may be more potent and safer for treating “bird flu” than the antiviral drug best known by the trade name Tamiflu.

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Investigators have identified 295 human cell factors that influenza A strains must harness to infect a cell, including the currently circulating swine-origin H1N1.

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One dose of vaccine may be effective to protect infants and children and reduce transmission of the H1N1 virus, according to a study in JAMA, published online today because of its public health implications. The study will appear in the January 6 print edition of the journal.