Culture

The analysis shows that in 2007, in Cardiff, where this collaborative approach was pioneered, the scheme lopped off almost £7 million from health, societal, and criminal justice costs caused by violence.

The estimated individual and societal costs of violence recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2003-4 came to £14 billion.

The Cardiff Violence Prevention Programme, which was set up in 2003, entails the capture of anonymised information on violent incidents treated in hospital emergency departments.

Boston, MA — Reducing hospital readmission rates is an important clinical and policy priority but whether those rates really measure the quality of hospital care isn't clear. In a new study, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found strong evidence of a relationship between surgical readmission rates and quality of surgical care.

Providing employees with a bonus to spend on charities or co-workers may increase job satisfaction and team sales, according to results published September 18 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Lalin Anik from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and colleagues from other institutions.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 [Granada, Spain] – New research findings on avocado consumption, presented as two posters at the IUNS 20th International Congress of Nutrition, in Granada, Spain suggest that although calorie consumption at dinner was unchanged, inclusion or addition of fresh Hass Avocado to a meal may help to reduce hunger and the desire to eat in overweight adults. Results also showed that including or adding avocado to a meal resulted in smaller post-meal rises in insulin compared to eating a meal without avocado.

Cardiologists are increasingly accessing coronary arteries by way of the wrist rather than the groin to insert life-saving stents into patients with blocked arteries, according to the first broad report of the American College of Cardiology's clinical data registries published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Individuals often turn to others for advice when making choices. Perhaps, it seems fitting then, that individuals would seek out others when they are faced with important health decisions. Yet, health communicators have debated whether stories should be included in patient decision-aids (which are informational materials designed to help patients make educated choices about their health) because they worry stories are too biased.

A smartphone app can quickly screen for cognitive dysfunction often found in patients with cirrhosis, according to a new Virginia Commonwealth University study. The cognitive dysfunction, known as minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE), has been difficult to diagnose.

Published in the September issue of the journal Hepatology, the study tested the validity of the Stroop smartphone application – called EncephalApp_Stroop – as a method to screen for MHE.

CHICAGO (September 18, 2013) – Patient satisfaction has an increasing impact on hospitals' bottom lines, factoring into Medicare reimbursement of hospital care. A new study finds patients placed in Contact Precautions (Contact Isolation) were twice as likely to report perceived problems with care compared to patients without Contact Precautions, placing the common infection control practice at odds with hospital interests. The study was published in the October issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Schizophrenia is a potentially debilitating mental illness affecting a person's thought processes, perception, language and sense of oneself. Globally, 7 out of every 1000 are affected, accounting for 24 million patients. Significant risk factors for the illness in males is serious problems during birth or fetal hypoxia while increased cerebral ventricular size in both infancy and adulthood due to embryological defects can underlie the condition in other patients.

Philadelphia, PA, September 20, 2013 – A new study reports that countries with lower gun ownership are safer than those with higher gun ownership, debunking the widely quoted hypothesis that guns make a nation safer. Researchers evaluated the possible associations between gun ownership rates, mental illness, and the risk of firearm-related death by studying the data for 27 developed countries. Their findings are published in the current issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

Scientists know that physical and biochemical signals can guide cells to make, for example, muscle, blood vessels or bone. But the exact recipes to produce the desired tissues have proved elusive.

Now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have taken a step toward identifying that mix by developing an easy and versatile way of forming physical and biochemical gradients in three dimensions.

Ultimately, one of their goals is to engineer systems to manipulate stem cells to repair or replace damaged tissues and organs.

New research from Johns Hopkins suggests that it may not be the steroids in spinal shots that provide relief from lower back pain, but the mere introduction of any of a number of fluids, such as anesthetics and saline, to the space around the spinal cord.

Persons with alcohol and other drug dependence who received chronic care management including relapse prevention counseling and medical, addiction and psychiatric treatment were no more abstinent than those who received usual primary care, according to a study in the September 18 issue of JAMA.

"Emergency department (ED) use has been affected by insurance patterns over time and will likely be further affected by expansions of coverage from health care reform." Uninsured patients are often thought of as high and frequently inappropriate ED users, but insured patients, particularly those with Medicaid coverage, may have difficulties accessing primary care and may rely on EDs more frequently than uninsured patients, write Renee Y. Hsia, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues.

WASHINGTON, DC — A preclinical study led by researchers at Children's National Medical Center has found that a new oral drug shows early promise for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The results, published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, show that the drug, VBP15, decreases inflammation and protects and strengthens muscle without the harsh side effects linked to current treatments with glucocorticoids such as prednisone.