Erie Family Health Center

Beats this week:

1) Did you know that this week is National Infant Immunization Week? Well, it is! Illinois public health officials took this week to remind everyone to get their infants vaccinated. In Illinois, approximately 80% of children receive the recommended vaccinations by age two.

2) Reports and sex education experts have drawn one conclusion about the sexual health of Illinois residents: sexual transmitted infections remain high (and have increased) while sexual health knowledge continues to decrease. For example, Illinois currently ranks 8th out of 50 states for highest rate of gonorrhea infections. A 2009 survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy seeks to explain these alarming rates of STIs and points to a variety of misconceptions people have about sex, pregnancy and preventing STIs.

3) A  free clinic in Los Angeles treated 1,200 people on the opening day of the clinic. The clinic, which is a temporary clinic set up for one week in the Memorial Sports Arena, utilized around 300 medical volunteers to provide health, dental and eye care.

4) A study released this week reported that parental involvement is key in maintaining the health status of adolescents with Type I diabetes. The study found that when parents did not closely follow their child’s condition, the child often experienced complications related to their disease.

5) Governor Quinn and other Illinois legislators are working to move thousands of people with mental illnesses out of nursing homes and into community settings in order to provide them with better quality of care. This move would provide these individuals with the intensive counseling and other treatment they need in order to lead more independent lives.

Beats this week:

1) UnitedHealthcare is teaming up with the YMCA to create a program that will work to prevent at-risk individuals from developing diabetes. The program will focus on prevention and the improvement of health status in order to delay or completely prevent the onset of diabetes. UnitedHealthcare hopes that this program will help reduce many of the costs associated with diabetes.

2) The doctor shortage crisis continues to create discussion across the country. Here is the newest solution to the shortage: expand the role of nurse practitioners. Some are calling for fewer restrictions on nurse practitioners, such as barring them from prescribing controlled substances in order to make up for the shortage of doctors.

3) For the very first time Illinois has published hospital mortality rates for all Illinois hospitals. The data includes death rates for stroke, pneumonia, hip fractures and congestive heart failure.

4) Do you have allergies? If so, you are probably already feeling the pain of the pollen season. Experts are claiming that this year is going to be a ‘monster of an allergy season.’ This will be especially true for the Southeast, where an unusually cold winter delayed plants from blooming as early as they normally do.

5) A British medical journal – The Lancet – released a paper on Sunday stating that the number of women dying in childbirth across the globe has dropped by 35% in the last 28 years. These findings are in contention with a recent United Nations study that found the maternal death rate worldwide to still be alarmingly high.

Beats this week:

1) Months ago, Beats Per Minute wrote about how health care reform would strain the already existing primary care shortage in the United States. This week, the Associated Press also discussed the issue.

2) Modern Healthcare featured the Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals, which included Erie’s long-standing partner, Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Other Chicago hospitals recognized include Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and Rush University Medical Center.

3) While Republicans vowed that they would repeal health care reform, it seems that most have backed off from that sentiment over concerns that it might negatively impact the GOP in the November elections.

4) What’s better than eating chocolate for fun? Eating chocolate because it might reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke! German researchers concluded this week that individuals who consumed around six grams of chocolate a day had a 39 percent lower risk of either a heart attack or stroke. The researchers stated, though, that it was too early to start making recommendations for individuals to consume daily amounts of chocolate.

5) H1N1 is still going strong in some parts of the country. This week, the CDC and Surgeon General reported that the Southeast, mainly Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina, are experiencing an uptick in cases of H1N1.

Beats this week:

1) A study published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that a $1 increase in the cost of soda (one liter) translated into significant health benefits, including 2.34 pounds in decreased weight and improvement in the risk of heart disease. This study was released just as New York begins a final push for a soda tax.

2) Did you know that today is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. It is a day to recognize the special risks HIV/AIDS poses for women and girls, and to raise awareness of the disease’s increasing impact on them. In 2007, more than a quarter of HIV those diagnosed with HIV were women.

3) President Obama has continued his push to pass health care reform in the upcoming weeks, keeping to his commitment of March 18. Congress, however, seems to be on a different page than the President, with many contentious issues, such as abortion, still left unresolved.

4) Today in Springfield, Governor Pat Quinn gave a speech on the current state budget crisis and his proposed FY11 budget. In sum, Quinn plans to use five strategies to ease the fiscal crisis: cutting spending, strategic borrowing, maximizing federal assistance, new jobs and increasing revenues. His speech included a plea for a 1% increase in income taxes in order to fund education at the current levels. 

5) Researchers have discovered that the HIV virus can hide in bone marrow cells and eventually turn into blood cells. This research explains why patients need to follow strict medication adherence, even if the virus is absent from their blood cells. Eventually, researchers believe that this finding will allow them to develop better medications to treat the disease in the blood and other parts of the body, including bone marrow.

Beats this week:

1) This week President Obama released the final details on the health care reform bill and urged Congress to give an up or down vote on the legislation. In remarks to a group of medical professionals, President Obama asked Congress to put aside politics and take action on behalf of the American people.

2) Politico confirmed from Senator Tom Harkin that Senate Dems have decided to use reconciliation as a means to pass health care reform.

3) Meanwhile, at the local level, big Chicago hospitals saw huge profit gains in 2009 while smaller hospitals continued to struggle.

4) Recent research published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that certain segments of the U.S. population have a higher prevalence of HIV than exists in parts of Africa. For example: “More than 1 in 30 adults in Washington, D.C., are HIV-infected—a prevalence higher than that reported in Ethiopia, Nigeria, or Rwanda.”

5) Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released a report this month that provides a breakdown by state of the federal dollars spent on public health. The report found that spending for public health has been flat and steady for the last five years and that the Midwest received the least amount of funding for disease prevention.

Would you pay $1.94 per day in health insurance for the privilege of unlimited access to comprehensive preventive and primary care services at the level of quality provided by Erie Family Health Center?  It sounds like a pretty good deal.

They way I look at it, the health care “pie” is divided into three slices.  The first slice is primary and preventive care like Erie provides, a good deal as you’ll read about below.  The second is both basic and sophisticated outpatient testing such as x-rays, mammograms, CT scans and MRIs, to which Erie arranges affordable and deeply discounted linkages with partners.  The third is the most expensive—hospitalization, surgery, rehabilitation—and Erie provides linkages as well.  And I’m not even going to touch the issue of long term care (a whole other pie).

Health care reform pie is on a lifeline in Washington, DC, and cost is of high concern.  Meanwhile, around the country, at over 1,200 health centers like Erie, data staffers hit the send button this week and uploaded information for 2009 on the 20 million medically disadvantaged people cared for at community health centers.  The fix is in, and the data show that health centers provide very cost effective primary care and preventive services. 

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Beats this week:

1) Over the weekend, patients began lining up before dawn at a dentist office in the Logan Square community of Chicago to receive free dental care. The annual event, which is hosted by Dentists With Heart, drew a line of several hundred people.

2) This week, the New York Times reported that after an extended quiet period, the U.S. is finally seeing a surge in medical schools. Could this be a response to the need for primary care providers? Beats Per Minute discussed this very issue last month.

3) Wondering why no one is talking about H1N1 anymore? The Centers for Disease Control is! The CDC says that H1N1 cases are down but reported that from April 2009 through January 2010, the U.S. saw 57 million possible cases, 257,000 hospitalizations and 11,690 deaths.

4) A study released this week found that over the last three decades chronic conditions have significantly increased in children. In fact, from 1994 to 2006 the percentage of children with chronic conditions, such as asthma, obesity and behavioral health issues, nearly doubled. The highest rates of chronic conditions were found in Latino and African American children.

5) It was announced this week that two Illinois universities will receive federal stimulus money to invest in electronic medical records technology. Last month, Erie Family Health Center completed the implementation of electronic health records at all of our nine sites. Read about it here!

Beats this week:

1) President Obama is planning a bipartisan summit on health care on February 25. Making the announcement during a pre-Super Bowl interview, Obama pledged that he wanted to work with Republicans to pass health care reform but would not agree to throw out the entire health care reform bill and start over.

2) As reported by Beats Per Minute last week, the First Lady Michelle Obama is leading an initiative to fight childhood obesity. The campaign, called “Let’s Move,” was kicked off this week.

3) Meanwhile, at the state level, the Illinois General Assembly allowed Governor Pat Quinn to delay sharing the details of his budget plan until March 10.  Many social service organizations across the state are bracing for another tough Spring and Summer of budget delays.

4) With health care reform stalled, hospitals nationwide continue to struggle as billions of dollars in medical bills go unpaid.

5) A study recently released by International Communications Research found that up to $9 billion could be raised for states with a $1 per pack tax on cigarettes. This report concluded that most Americans would support this increase over other tax increases or budget cuts.

When we think of the United States of America, there might be a few key pictures that enter our minds:  baseball, apple pie and…fast food?  Over the years, fast food has become associated with American culture.  Children especially have come to associate fast food with rewards, special days and celebrations.  Whether it is the fun toys, the play places or the mesmerizing advertisements, there is a certain spark about fast food that draws children in – and continues drawing them in through adulthood.

Courtesy of Huffington Post

Fast food, as well as the large variety of sugary and fattening junk food that adorns grocery store shelves, has played a large part in the child obesity epidemic witnessed over the years within the U.S.  It might come as a surprise, then, that a study recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found that child obesity rates have actually slowed in growth over the past several years. Despite these results, there is little reason to celebrate.  We still live in a nation where a third of our children are obese and in African American and Latino communities, the number reaches nearly 50%.

In the State of the Union Address given by President Obama last Wednesday, he mentioned a national movement to address the issue of childhood obesity, which will be led by the First Lady, Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama recently announced her initiative to combat childhood obesity at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington D.C., where she was discussing the issue.

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Beats this week:

1) A new study finds that community health centers fill the gaps in the health care crisis. This study coincides with the President’s 2011 budget plan, which calls for $290 million to expand a network of federally funded health centers.

2) Illinois had the first primary elections in the country on February 2. Read about the results of yesterday’s primary here.

3) “It is my greatest hope that we can get this done not just a year from now but soon. We came extremely close,” said President Obama about health care reform. So the question still exists, is health care reform still possible?

4) With the state of health care reform still unknown, legislators are taking steps at the state level to change health care coverage. In total, 11 states have health care bills aimed at improving coverage.

5) New mental health insurance coverage rules recently unveiled could improve access to critical behavioral health services. The new rules, known as The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, would decrease many barriers to care faced by patients in need of mental health services.