While most children are looking forward to getting gifts during the upcoming holiday season, it is worth noting that one in five children live in poverty. Poverty is a major risk factor for children's development and deep poverty is linked to a range of physical-biological, cognitive-academic, and social-emotional problems. These problems persist into adulthood. Poverty also contributes to a growing health and academic achievement gap, declining college attendance and graduation rates, and an increasing workforce skills gap.
Culture
Political communications researcher Dr Jacob Groshek, together with co-investigators Noortje de Boer and Hannah Sütfeld, analysed 144 online campaign ads produced for more than 11 candidates during the 2012 French and American presidential elections, including the Republican primaries in the US.
The study found slightly more than 60% of American ads possessed a negative tone, compared to just 7% of French ads.
The vast majority of French advertisements (68%) were deemed to be 'neutral' in tone, while just 18% of US ads resided in this category.
Athens, Greece – 5 December 2012: Patients with obstructive sleep apnea have the same early cardiovascular damage as diabetics, according to research presented at EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012. The study1 was presented by Dr Raluca Mincu from Bucharest, Romania.
EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012 is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI)2, a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)3. It takes place 5-8 December in Athens, Greece, at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre.
Athens, Greece – 5 December 2012: Hearts previously rejected due to donors' age or other risk factors can now be declared viable for transplantation using pharmacological stress echo, according to research presented at EUROECHO and other Imaging Modalities 2012. The study1 was presented by Dr Tonino Bombardini from Pisa, Italy.
New York, NY, December 5, 2012—Consumers saw nearly $1.5 billion in insurer rebates and overhead cost savings in 2011, due to the Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio provision requiring health insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on health care or quality improvement activities or pay a rebate to their customers, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. Consumers with individual policies saw substantially reduced premiums when insurers reduced both administrative costs and profits to meet the new standards.
Brian P. Lucas, M.D., M.S., of the Cook County Health and Hospitals System and Rush Medical College, Chicago, and colleagues conducted a study to compare the effects of 2- vs. 4-week inpatient attending physician rotations on unplanned patient revisits (a measure to assess the effect on patients), attending evaluations by trainees, and attending propensity for burnout.
PHOENIX — Researchers have found that using telemedicine to deliver stroke care, also known as telestroke, appears to be cost-effective for rural hospitals that do not have an around-the-clock neurologist, or stroke expert, on staff. The research, published today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, is intended to help hospital administrators evaluate telestroke.
AUSTIN, Texas — With fluctuating gas prices and the increasing call for work-life balance, telecommuting has become an attractive option for busy professionals. Yet according to a new study from The University of Texas at Austin, for most employees who work remotely, telecommuting equates to working more hours.
Boston – Jonathan Welch, MD, a physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, never thought his family would be part of a medical error. But when his mother's battle with cancer took a sudden turn and she was rushed to a community hospital in Wisconsin, Welch watched in helpless horror as a series of mistakes lead to her death. After the funeral, he encouraged the Wisconsin hospital's administrators to make changes to avoid future errors and deaths, but his experience proved frustrating and fruitless.
A Viewpoint article published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the clinical practice of prescribing amphetamines, opioids, and benzodiazepines to treat chronic pain may be contributing to the increase in fatal drug overdoses and the likelihood that those drugs will be diverted to the illegal market. "Rethinking Opioid Prescribing to Protect Patient Safety and Public Health" was authored by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS, and Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, and Stefan P.
Drinking three to four cups of coffee per day may help to prevent type 2 diabetes according to research highlighted in a session report published by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a not-for-profit organisation devoted to the study and disclosure of science related to coffee and health.
A software tool called PredictAD developed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland promises to enable earlier diagnosis of the disease on the basis of patient measurements and large databases. Alzheimer's disease currently takes on average 20 months to diagnose in Europe. VTT has shown that the new method could allow as many as half of patients to get a diagnosis approximately a year earlier.
In the first national survey of enrollment policies at hospices, researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Yale University have found that the vast majority of hospices in the United States have at least one enrollment policy that could restrict access for terminally ill Medicare patients with high-cost medical needs.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The more states spend on home-delivered meals under the Older Americans Act, the more likely they are to help people who don't need nursing home care to stay in their homes, according to a newly published Brown University statistical analysis of a decade of spending and nursing home resident data.
Men in their thirties who had inflamed gums caused by severe periodontal disease were three times more likely to suffer from erection problems, according to a study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Turkish researchers compared 80 men aged 30 to 40 with erectile dysfunction with a control group of 82 men without erection problems.
This showed that 53 per cent of the men with erectile dysfunction had inflamed gums compared with 23 per cent in the control group.