lborkowski

Since the start of 2013, Texas has excluded clinics affiliated with abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, from receiving payment through the Texas Women's Health Program, which funds reproductive-health services for low-income state residents. The TWHP is the 100% state-…

For some people with employer-sponsored health insurance, a new calendar year means a new healthcare plan. In recent years, many employers have encouraged employees to consider high-deductible health plans – or, in some cases, have made an HDHP the only option. These plans’ premiums tend to be…

A public-health nightmare is unfolding in Brazil, where the mosquito-borne virus Zika has been linked to nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly – infants born with abnormally small brains and heads. Around 20% of adults with Zika don’t develop symptoms, which include fever, rash, and joint pain, so…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Maryn’s McKenna at Germination: Zika Virus: A New Threat and a New Kind of Pandemic Kevin Drum in Mother Jones: My Right to Die: Assisted suicide, my family, and me Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check: Four Facts Nancy Pelosi—and All ‘Pro-Choice’ Democrats—…

USA TODAY’s Laura Ungar highlights an important measure in the omnibus spending bill Congress passed last month: It lifts the ban on the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs. State and local needle-exchange programs still can’t use federal money to purchase needles, Ungar explains, but…

by Jonathan Heller Most public health practitioners, and those who work on health impact assessment specifically, want to improve the health of vulnerable populations. Most efforts to do so are well-intentioned, yet they often don’t lead to significant change. What do we need to do differently?…

Gerald Lyle Thompson’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of Minnesota OSHA (MN-OSHA) in the agency’s citations against his employer, DSM Excavating. The 51 year-old was working in June 2015 at a construction site for Ryland Homes in Lakeville, Minnesota.…

As 2015 drew to a close, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality announced some good news: Fewer US patients are dying from hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) like pressure ulcers and catheter-associated infections. Between 2011 and 2014, patients had 2.1 million fewer HACs than they would…

During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging.  We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on July 27, 2015: by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH The occupational health community, coal miners, their families and…

During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging.  We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on August 12, 2015: by Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH “It’s just like the paper we read in class.” That was the email…

During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on March 16, 2015: by Liz Borkowski, MPH In 2003, the city of London took a dramatic step in the battle against…

During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging.  We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on May 27, 2015: by Kim Krisberg For more than a decade, biologist Mariam Barlow has been working on the theory that…

During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them, originally posted on June 26, 2015: By Kim Krisberg A common hurdle in the field of occupational health and safety is delivering what…

During the holiday season, Kim, Liz and I are taking a short break from blogging. We are posting some of our favorite posts from the past year. Here’s one of them which was originally posted on May 26, 2015: by Kim Krisberg After 18 years as a professional house cleaner in the suburbs of Chicago,…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Alana Semuels in The Atlantic: How Poor Single Moms Survive Nina Martin of ProPublica interviews David Cohen: For Abortion Providers, a Constant Barrage of Personalized Harassment Terry Fulmer at the Health Affairs Blog: Independence -- It's What Older People…

Last month, researchers from China reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases that they had identified a gene (MCR-1) that confers antibiotic resistance to a last-resort antibiotic (colistin) and then found that gene in E. coli isolates from pigs, meat, and hospital patients. This prompted Danish…

As many of us indulged in Thanksgiving meals last week, NPR’s Planet Money podcast and WAMU’s Metro Connection shared stories on ways food banks are using technology to improve food distribution. The Planet Money story focuses on how Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, distributes…

Last week was World Antibiotics Awareness Week, and a new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases showed just how dire the antibiotics situation has gotten. Authors from the South China Agricultural University, the China Agricultural University, and other institutions identified a gene that confers…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Laura Ungar in USA TODAY: Found too late: Cancer preys on rural Americans Priya Batra on the Huffington Post blog: Confidentiality Is Key: To Reduce Teen Pregnancy, the U.S. Must Ban Parental Notification Laws for Contraception Henry Wismayer at Vox: I got…

Last week, the CDC published a report on multistate foodborne illness outbreaks that occurred in the US from 2010 – 2014, and the news is sobering. During that five-year period CDC received reports of 120 multistate foodborne disease outbreaks with an identified pathogen and food or common setting…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long been a key source of funding for medical research, but it wasn’t until 1986 that the agency formally established a policy of including women in clinical research. For decades, women received drugs and therapies that had been tested only on men, even…

The US spends far more on healthcare than other advanced countries, but we have worse health outcomes. Ideally, we could slow the growth of healthcare spending and improve outcomes by investing in prevention, creating incentives for providers to give high-value care, and eliminating care that’s…

A few of the recent pieces I’ve liked: Margot Sanger-Katz at the New York Times’ The Upshot: Yes, Soda Taxes Seem to Cut Soda Drinking Mary McKenna at Germination: MRSA In Sports: Long-Standing, Simple to Prevent, Still Happening Joe Fassler at The Atlantic: How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less…

Last week, District of Columbia Councilmembers David Grosso and Elissa Silverman, along with several colleagues, introduced the Universal Paid Leave Act of 2015, which would establish the most generous system for paid leave within the US. It would allow covered DC workers to take up to 16 weeks of…

The death toll from last week's stampede at the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca has passed 700; on Saturday, Saudi Arabia's health ministry reported 769 deaths and 934 people injured. Basma Attasi reports for Al Jazeera that the stampede occurred when two waves of pilgrims collided -- but that…

by Jonathan Heller The dominant narrative in the United States is that, as individuals, we hold the key to our own success. We are told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and that if we just try hard enough, we’ll succeed. In the world of health, this translates into a focus on personal…

Last week, 203 business-school faculty members from 88 institutions across the US wrote an open letter to members of Congress stating, "It is time to ensure that the entire United States workforce has access to paid family and medical leave." The signatories urge our legislators to consider the…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Sara Rosenbaum at the Health Affairs Blog: Planned Parenthood, Community Health Centers, And Women’s Health: Getting The Facts Right Laura Ungar at USA Today: Study: Needle exchange policy prevented HIV Maryn McKenna at Phenomena: Germination: Tickborne…

The Colorado Family Planning Initiative is a public-health success story. With funds from an anonymous foundation, Title X family planning clinics serving low-income women were able to offer IUDs and other highly effective forms of contraception for free. Rates of teen pregnancy and abortion both…

Last week, an In These Times piece by Sharon Lerner presented an alarming statistics: Nearly one in four employed US mothers return to work within two weeks after giving birth. In "The Real War on Families: Why the U.S. Needs Paid Leave Now," Lerner reports that an Abt Associates analysis of survey…