The Health Care Blog

Five Recommendations for an ONC Head Who Understands Health IT Innovation

By David C. Kibbe, Brian Klepper and John Moore. Now that the legislative language of the HITECH Act -- the $20 billion health IT allocation within the economic stimulus package -- has been set, it's time to identify a National...
March 6, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Current Affairs, David Kibbe, Electronic Medical Records, evidenced-based medicine, Health 2.0, Physicians, Policy, Policy/Politics, primary care, public health, Quality, Technology, The Industry, Transparency, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (14)

Musings on Integrating Care at the IOM

By Matthew Holt So I’m in DC figuring out how the East coast medical policy elite tries to change the world. While the rest of DC is buzzing about Obama’s speech and budget, The Institute of Medicine is having a...
February 26, 2009 in Conferences, Matthew Holt, public health | Permalink | Comments (3)

Dr. George Lundberg for Surgeon General

By Brian Klepper The report that Mr. Obama's Surgeon General choice might be neurosurgeon and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta produced an upwelling of strong opinion, particularly in the medical community. Some argued that Dr. Gupta has clearly demonstrated...
January 25, 2009 in Brian Klepper, Current Affairs, JAMA, Physicians, Policy/Politics, public health, The Industry, Transparency | Permalink | Comments (17)

Nomination for U.S. Surgeon General

By Richard A. Lippin, MD This is a reprint of the letter originally posted to Facebook. Dear President Obama and Former Senator Tom Daschle: As a physician leader in the medical specialty Preventive Medicine for 30 plus years, I am...
January 23, 2009 in Obama administration, public health | Permalink | Comments (1)

Transforming medicine and saving lives

By Sarah Arnquist This week, Don Berwick will announce the results of the 5 Million Lives Campaign before thousands of people in Nashville attending the National Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care. Twenty years ago, it was almost heretical...
December 9, 2008 in Electronic Medical Records, Hospitals, Patient Safety, Physicians, public health, Quality | Permalink | Comments (5)

Gates Foundation to fund global informatics training

By Neil Versel The American Medical Informatics Association will announce today that it has received a $1.2 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to promote health informatics and biomedical education and training worldwide, particularly in developing countries....
December 8, 2008 in public health, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1)

Fighting AIDS for decades

By Sarah Arnquist Every 9.5 minutes, someone in the United States is infected with HIV. Every 33 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies from AIDS. While great gains have been made in the fight against HIV, still more than 53,000...
December 1, 2008 in public health | Permalink | Comments (0)

Up in smoke

By Sarah Arnquist Taxing cigarettes is the single-most effective way to lower smoking rates, particularly among youth. And if we could lower smoking rates, we'd save hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year. Good Magazine demonstrates...
November 25, 2008 in public health, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fighting Alzheimer's one ribbon at a time

By THCB Staff Caring.com and the Alzheimer’s Association have teamed up to spread awareness about the disease through an online Purple Ribbon campaign. The official campaign ended earlier this year with 1,000 blogs and websites displaying the purple ribbon, but...
November 21, 2008 in public health | Permalink | Comments (2)

A Great American Smokeout, but where's the coverage to help people quit?

By Mitchell Katz Today is the Great American Smokeout, and while San Franciscans are doing their part to help people battle nicotine addiction, I became aware recently that not all the health insurance plans for our county workers in San...
November 20, 2008 in public health | Permalink | Comments (1)

Battling MRSA with transparency

By Sarah Arnquist Two weeks ago, I made an emergency trip home to Minnesota because my grandmother fell ill. She went to the emergency room on a Sunday night, complaining of fatigue and shortness of breath. The emergency physician diagnosed...
November 17, 2008 in Hospitals, Patient Safety, public health, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (3)

Pumped up findings: Do publishing practices distort science?

By Sarah Arnquist The credibility of scientific journals and the findings has come under attack multiple times this month via accusations of unethical editing and artificially pumped up findings. PloS Medicine -- an open-access journal -- published an essay suggesting...
October 23, 2008 in Health 2.0, Online Communities, public health | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sick neighborhoods raise sick people

By Sarah Arnquist I live and study public health in Baltimore, a city in which one-third of its children live in poverty, another two-thirds live in single-parent families, and more than a third of students drop out of high school....
October 14, 2008 in public health, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (9)

Judging states by the health of their children

By Maggie Mahar Maggie Mahar is an award winning journalist and author. A frequent contributor to THCB, she is fellow at the Century Foundation and the author of the increasingly influential HealthBeat blog, one of our favorite health care reads,...
October 14, 2008 in Maggie Mahar, public health | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Politics of Pet Food

By Sarah Arnquist In a new book "Pet Food Politics," Marion Nestle uses last year's pet food safety scare to highlight the importance of a sound food safety regulation system. As she puts it, “Advocacy for policies good enough to...
September 9, 2008 in public health, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (0)

Healthy Howard coverage expansion could inform future reforms

By Sarah Arnquist Howard County, Maryland is set to launch an ambitious universal health coverage, and the county's top health officials says the effort will provide valuable lessons for future reformers. Starting next month, 2,200 of Howard County's 20,000 uninsured...
August 11, 2008 in Policy, Policy/Politics, primary care, public health, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (3)

Herd immunity -- vaccinations protect us all

By Sarah Arnquist I'm currently in the masters in public health program at Johns Hopkins University and am taking my first course in epidemiology. I have my first midterm tomorrow and among the many concepts the professors want me to...
July 29, 2008 in prevention, public health, Sarah Arnquist | Permalink | Comments (3)