WEDNESDAY, Feb. 18 (HealthDay News) — New tobacco company marketing campaigns that target women and girls are the most aggressive in more than a decade, a new report concludes.
That marketing needs to be curbed by giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority over tobacco products, according to the report, released Wednesday by a coalition of major U.S. public health organizations.
Campaigns launched in recent years by the nation’s two Read the rest of this entry »

, according to a new report in the journal
. The child had a rare, deadly brain disease called ataxia telangiectasia, or A-T. The disease can lead to degeneration of a region of the brain; most people with A-T die by their teens or early 20s. The boy had traveled to Russia at age 9, when he was injected with fetal neural stem cells in his brain and spinal cord, the Associated Press reports. He received two additional sets of injections at ages 10 Read the rest of this entry »

has settled on Gov.
of Kansas, a key ally with a record of working across party lines, as his top choice for secretary of health and human services, advisers said Wednesday.
Should she be nominated, Ms. Sebelius would bring eight years of experience as her state’s insurance commissioner as well as six years as a governor running a state
program. But with Mr. Obama about to begin a drive to expand health coverage — an issue on which Read the rest of this entry »

Pain, Suffering, and Early Death
, provisions have been tucked into the Obama s
timulus package that would, in effect, take the ability of making medical decisions away from doctors and grant them to the federal government.
provisions of the Obama stimulus package would create a national database that would track every person’s medical records, including
they are taking and treatments they are receiving. This, so far, is actually a good thing. Read the rest of this entry »

When the UAW and the Detroit Three agreed to create a health-care trust in 2007, the move was heralded as a victory for the automakers, who would get to wipe billions of dollars in liabilities off their money-losing balance sheets at a huge discount.
But now, just two years later, the VEBA, which stands for voluntary employee beneficiary association, has become a major sticking point for the union and automakers as they try to finalize a deal that Read the rest of this entry »

Published: February 21, 2009
The Rockingham County Department of Public Health will offer free flu vaccinations through the end of the month. The vaccinations are being offered in response to the recent widespread flu activity throughout the state.
“Normally, flu does peak during the month of February,“ said Glenn Martin, director of the Rockingham County Department of Public Health. “It’s been relatively mild until we Read the rest of this entry »

February 6, 2009 (Computerworld)
and the Continua Health Alliance this week unveiled jointly developed software designed to stream patient information from a doctor’s mobile device to online data stores.
The two tech giants worked with the Beaverton, Ore.-based health care provider to extend the value of
offerings, and to ensure that stored patient health records are up to date, according to an
press release.
“Our partnership with IBM will Read the rest of this entry »

In televised services from Lakewood Church, Victoria Osteen smiles as if she doesn’t know how to appear any other way. She was raised to have a positive outlook and then married into a family with a similar view: that life as an optimist is a lot better than, well, the opposite. A healthy outlook isn’t just about nutrition and exercise, though, says this native Houstonian and mother of two. She recently talked with Health editor Diane Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Current government rules do too little to protect the privacy of people’s personal health information and also hinder the use of health data in medical research, a panel of experts reported on Wednesday.
A committee of the Institute of Medicine, which provides advice to U.S. policymakers, urged Congress to take an entirely new approach to protecting personal health data in research.
Federal standards for protecting privacy Read the rest of this entry »

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Two of western
’s largest health
insurers are the latest to sign on to a nationwide push to reform
how patient reimbursement rates are set.
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says Independent Health and
HealthNow New York will no longer use a faulty database to
calculate reimbursement rates for patients who see doctors outside
their insurance networks.
,
Conn.-based
and MVP Healthcare of Albany.
Cuomo says the Ingenix database, Read the rest of this entry »