Earlier this year the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality released its latest National Healthcare Quality and National Healthcare Disparities reports. But hold the cake and champagne. The opening paragraphs summarize the 457 pages of this annual, congressionally mandated pulse-taking of our U.S. health services with, "We find that health care quality in America is suboptimal," that "disparities related to race, ethnicity and socioeconomic status still pervade the American health care system," and "Americans too often do not receive care that they need or they receive care that causes ... Read More
Under the Glass Ceiling? Throw Stones!
February 26, 2009 • By • 1 Comment
As Barack Obama began celebrating his election as president last fall, the Executive Leadership Council started polling senior executives nationwide on their perceptions about minorities in senior business executive roles. ELC spokesperson Damon Williams said the survey's timing — between Nov.2 and Dec. 2 — was perfect "to gauge the effect of Obama's presidency upon the business climate for minorities to successfully reach the prestigious CEO office — the C-suite." One of the signal discoveries from the Harris Interactive phone survey of 150 executives from Fortune 100 companies ... Read More
New Species Jump in Ebola-Reston Outbreak
February 3, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment
In December, we reported that a first-ever outbreak of Ebola-Reston in swine was identified on farms 25 miles north of Philippines capital of Manila. While the virus has been reported in Philippine monkeys and has been previously transmitted to human handlers, Ebola-Reston is of far less concern than the other incurable, and high-fatality Ebola strains. But on Jan. 23, Philippine Health Secretary Francisco Duque reported that one of the swine workers from infected farms has now tested positive to the disease. This is another first, and is raising an alarming note of concern to the outbreak. ... Read More
Ebola — Yes, Ebola — Found in Livestock
December 26, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
World health community invited to observe handling of outbreak of a dreaded disease. Scientific and health experts have been invited to the Philippines to investigate its government's first-ever findings of the dreaded Ebola virus in swine, discovered in four hog farms in Luzon two weeks ago. Pigs showing signs of illness were tested, and samples were sent to New York's USDA Plum Island facility where tests for the Ebola-Reston strain came back positive. This is the first time that this strain of Ebola — one that is not harmful to humans — has been in discovered in swine in the ... Read More
Beware of Falling Oil Prices
December 11, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
The Bureau of Indian Affairs announced last week that its sale of gas and oil mining leases in the Southern Plains region of Oklahoma netted land owners $6.1 million. The 916 winning bids brought in a total of $6,114,443.59 — a figure significantly lower than the last sale in 2006, which raised nearly $37 million and with fewer tracts. The reduced take reflects is believed to reflect the current collapse in oil prices, and demonstrates why lessors had been in a hurry to get the sale off the ground. In a modern version of the Oklahoma land rush, tribes and mining companies had been pushing ... Read More
Indian Oil: A Very Different After-Thanksgiving Sale
November 27, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
This year, the rush for the after-Thanksgiving sale takes on new meaning for more than a thousand American Indians in southwestern Oklahoma. After two years, the Anadarko Agency, a regional office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, in conjunction with the Department of the Interior, will hold the long-awaited and largest-ever sale of oil and gas mining leases of tribal land. Anadarko Agency spokesperson Leander Eckiwaudah said the auction this Dec. 2 through 4 will see activity on a record number of tracts — “at least 1,536, and some are still being added at the last minute.” Some ... Read More
Health Care After You Leave the Doctor’s Office
October 30, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Federal officials were concerned after the 2006 National Healthcare Disparities Report confirmed growing disparities in health care among older Hispanics nationwide, in particular for diabetes. It's no secret that diabetes — a chronic condition that without proper care, particularly in older people, can result in blindness, amputation and death — disproportionately affects Hispanic populations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined in 2005 that 10.2 percent of U.S. Hispanics would be diagnosed with diabetes, compared with 6.9 percent for (non-Hispanic) whites. ... Read More
CSI: IHOP
October 24, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
The best police work usually involves the liberal application of shoe leather, whether the perps are thugs or bugs. That turned out to be the case for one eatery, where "textbook epidemiological process" discovered that recurring food poisoning didn't arise from the food. Since June of this year, an International House of Pancakes restaurant in Amarillo, Texas, has been closed down no fewer than three times with recurrent salmonella infections. Between Father's Day and early July, the restaurant was responsible for 90 reported salmonella infections. Health authorities shut it down the ... Read More
Pushback on Obesity: An African-American View
October 15, 2008 • By • 1 Comment
Children who now spend more time in front of a screen (usually snacking) than on the playground can’t help but pack on the pounds, and reports of childhood obesity have reached epidemic proportions. The statistics are especially dismal for African-American teen girls; studies show they start out life at the same weight as their white counterparts but see their body mass index blossom in adolescence. African-American women between the ages of 12 and 19 are nearly 60 percent more likely to be overweight; less likely to eat fruits, vegetables and whole grains; and less likely to be ... Read More
‘Read It Today and Use It Today’ News for Doctors
September 24, 2008 • By • Leave a Comment
The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality this month launched its inaugural issue of Comparative Effectiveness News, an online newsletter summarizing the agency's Effective Health Care Program research findings. The EHC Program "is the federal government's groundbreaking initiative to make head-to-head comparisons of health care interventions," Director Jean R. Slutsky said, adding that it will bring practical and reliable research findings — published and unpublished — to doctors, nurses and other clinical decision makers, as well as policymakers. Slutsky says the ... Read More
