Culture

Community pharmacies could play a vital role in tackling major public health concerns such as obesity and smoking because the vast majority of people in England live within easy walking distance, say researchers.

The Durham University study, published in BMJ Open, is the first to show that most people can get to a community pharmacy easily with the greatest access in deprived areas.

The findings show that the often-quoted inverse care law, where good medical care is most available to those who need it least, does not apply to pharmacies.

WASHINGTON – More than half of older adults who visit emergency departments are either malnourished or at risk for malnutrition, but not because of lack of access to health care, critical illness or dementia. Despite clear signs of malnutrition or risk of malnutrition, more than three-quarters had never previously been diagnosed with malnutrition, according to the results of a study to be published online tomorrow in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Malnutrition Among Cognitively Intact, Non-Critically Ill Older Adults in the Emergency Department").

Treatments that involve neck manipulation may be associated with strokes, although this association is not proven, according to an American Heart Association Scientific Statement written by lead author Dr. Jose Biller of Loyola University Medical Center and other stroke experts.

The statement, published in the heart association's journal Stroke, said it cannot be stated with certainty that neck manipulation causes strokes.

Heart failure is a major public health burden in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with substantial variation in the presentation, causes, management, and outcomes of heart failure across different LMICs, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The study, led by Kazem Rahimi and colleagues from the George Institute for Global Health, also finds that a large proportion of patients are not receiving pharmacological treatments for heart failure.

A federal program that provides billions in drug discounts to safety net hospitals and other health care providers is expanding under health care reform, but divergent views on the purpose and future scope of the program creates uncertainty for safety net providers and drug manufacturers, according to new report from the RAND Corporation.

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- In the past half-century, fear of crime in the United States has fueled "white flight" from big cities, become known as a quality of life issue and prompted scholars and law enforcement experts to address ways of reducing this fear.

But a study by a Michigan State University criminologist challenges this longstanding theory by arguing that a healthy fear of crime is, in fact, a good thing.

With effective rehabilitation, stroke patients can partially regain their motor control and continue their activities of daily living. Motor function changes in the unaffected hand of stroke patients with hemiplegia. However, these changes are often ignored by clinicians owing to the extent of motor disability of the affected hand. Research group at Shanghai University of Sport, China led by Prof.