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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 [...]

Lawmakers Seek Insurance Coverage for Infants

Senate Democrats are speaking out against a new rule from the Governor and Insurance Commissioner allowing insurance companies to not cover infants.

Researchers Say 3 Embryos Is Too Many For IVF

Only last week we reported on the explosion in the number of twins in this country, largely a result of women turning to fertility treatments. Now, British researchers say the time has come to buckle down on the number of embryos used during in-vitro fertilization. Three or more is entirely too many, they concluded after [...]

Do Nicotine Patches And Gum Help Smokers Quit?

Nicotine patches and gums have been helping smokers quit for decades. Right? Even President Obama, once the Smoker in Chief, has kicked the habit with the help of nicotine replacement therapy, according to his doctor’s latest report. Well, not so fast. A study out this week from researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health [...]

A Dozen Cases Of Tuberculosis That Resists All Drugs Found In India

Tuberculosis specialists in India have diagnosed infections in a dozen patients in Mumbai that are unfazed by the three first-choice TB drugs and all nine second-line drugs. The doctors are calling them “totally drug-resistant TB,” and the infections are essentially incurable with all available medicines. It’s a sobering development. Infectious disease specialists say there will [...]

How To Eat Out Without Putting On The Pounds

If your love of eating out is hampering your diet resolution, you’re not alone. We’re a culture that loves to eat out. The typical American family spends 40 percent of its total food budget on foods prepared somewhere other than their own kitchen. (Some even prefer to eat out on Thanksgiving.) But every time we [...]

To Understand Health Overhaul, Try A Comic Book

Health care reform is no laughing matter, but MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s new comic book on the subject aims to communicate some pretty complicated policy details in a way that, if not exactly side-splitting, is at least engaging. In Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works, Gruber steps into the [...]