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Porn Industry Faces Condom Requirement In Los Angeles

Advocates for the mandatory use of condoms in the production of porn films moved a step closer to victory in Los Angeles. The city council there voted 9-1 in favor of an ordinance that would require use of condoms to protect performers from sexually transmitted diseases. Under the new rule, filmmakers wouldn’t get a permit [...]

Listen Up, Walkers: Watch Out For Traffic When Wearing Headphones

By now we all know that distracted driving can kill you. But a new study suggests that distracted walking can be pretty deadly, too. The study, published online by the journal Injury Prevention, is from researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine who looked at pedestrian accident data from a variety of sources [...]

Obesity Epidemic May Have Peaked In U.S.

The nation’s obesity epidemic appears to have hit a plateau, according to the latest federal data released Tuesday. Obesity soared in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s, doubling among adults and tripling among children. That raised widespread alarm and debate about the causes and possible solutions. Obesity can increase the risk for diabetes, heart [...]

Helping Oklahomans with Dental Needs

Oklahoma ranks last in the US for the percentage of adults visiting a dentist last year, so dental professionals are stepping up to help.

Seeing Doctors’ Notes Could Help Patients Change Ways

If patients and doctors both have easy access to the notes the doctor takes during their office visits, will it change their behavior? That’s a question that an experiment called OpenNotes aims to answer by letting patients of more than 100 primary care doctors in three states see the notes online. In December, researchers reported [...]

India Marks A Year Free Of Polio

A year ago today, India saw its last recorded case of polio in an 18-month-old girl in West Bengal named Rukhsar Khatoon. She recovered without lasting paralysis. One year without another case is an impressive milestone in the decades-long effort to wipe the poliovirus from the face of the planet. Only a few years ago, [...]

StateImpact: An Oklahoma County Deals With Stifling Youth Poverty

Choctaw County’s poverty rate among children is nearly 40%.

Could A Soda Tax Prevent 26,000 Deaths Per Year?

A new study in the journal Health Affairs estimates that a penny-per-ounce tax on soft drinks and other sugary beverages could prevent about 240,000 cases of diabetes, 8,000 strokes, and 26,000 premature deaths per year. Yes, death by soda. So the analysis got me thinking: Our behavior is hard to predict, right? I know mine [...]

Biggest Bucks In Health Care Are Spent On A Very Few

So you know how on Monday the federal government reported that the $2.6 trillion the nation spent on health care in 2010 translated into just over $8,400 per person? Well, a different study just released by a separate federal agency shows that second number doesn’t actually mean very much. Researchers from the Agency for Healthcare [...]