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Health Affairs assesses real-world lifestyle interventions to help prevent diabetes

An Emory University study published in the January issue of Health Affairs assesses real-world lifestyle interventions to help delay or prevent the costly chronic disease that affects nearly 26 million Americans.

11 Jan 2012

Melinda Gates, Nicholas Kristof answer readers' questions about development issues

Last week in a Huffington Post "Impact" blog post, Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, asked readers to submit questions about her recent trip to Bangladesh.

11 Jan 2012

Examining GOP presidential candidates' global health positions

In this article in the online journal Global Health Governance, David Fidler, a professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law, writes about the Republican presidential candidates' positions on global health, saying, "I doubt whether many votes in subsequent GOP primaries will be cast because of global health considerations."

11 Jan 2012

India on verge of recording polio-free year

If India does not record a new polio case through January 13, "produc[ing] 12 straight months of polio-free surveillance data, it will be removed from the list of countries where polio is considered endemic, leaving only the other three," Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria, Scientific American reports.

11 Jan 2012

END7 campaign aims to combat seven major NTDs by 2020

Launched today, the END7 campaign is dedicated to eliminating seven major neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) as a public health threat to poor communities by the end of 2020.

10 Jan 2012

Concerns over using ARV therapy as prevention strategy

PSI's "Healthy Lives" blog reviews a recent Science magazine article written by James Shelton of USAID's Bureau of Global Health in which he raises concerns about the use of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) as a prevention strategy.

10 Jan 2012

JHM, Healthways partner for innovative weight-loss program

Building on the success of recent Hopkins research showing obese participants were able to lose significant weight and keep it off for two years using telephone coaching and a specially designed website, Johns Hopkins Medicine is collaborating with Healthways to help bring the innovative weight-loss program to many more who could benefit from it.

9 Jan 2012

More on the PIP breast implant scare

Model Jasmine Lennard underwent an emergency operation to replace her breast implants after discovering they contained banned silicone. The 26-year-old admits that she became ‘hysterical’ after discovering her implants came from French firm PIP, which is at the centre of a global health scare for using industrial-grade materials deemed unfit for medical use. And she believes last week’s procedure could have ‘saved my life’.

9 Jan 2012

MPIIB, QIAGEN partner to develop latent TB diagnostic test

QIAGEN N.V. and the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology (MPIIB), Department of Immunology have announced a new collaboration to develop a molecular diagnostic test to assess the risk of an individual with latent tuberculosis (TB) developing active TB disease during their lifetime.

From QIAGEN Manchester Limited 9 Jan 2012

Governments must rethink policies surrounding biosecurity, not resort to censorship

Author Laurie Garrett, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes in this Foreign Policy opinion piece that the announcement researchers from the Netherlands and the U.S. have developed a supercontagious variety of bird flu "has highlighted a dilemma: How do you balance the universal mandate for scientific openness against the fear that terrorists or rogue states might follow the researchers' work -- using it as catastrophic cookbooks for global influenza contagion?"

7 Jan 2012

HHS Secretary Sebelius discusses agency's global health strategy at KFF/HHS briefing

Speaking at a briefing on Thursday sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to explore the department's role in global health and its Global Health Strategy, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed the agency's "first global health strategy ..., which explains the Obama administration's priorities during an era of budget-cutting," CQ HealthBeat reports.

7 Jan 2012

Examining BBC report on Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

"The BBC has done an extensive (40 minute) report on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation titled 'Fortress Bill,'" which "is available for four more days online and will be rebroadcast on Sunday, Jan. 8," KPLU 88.5's "Humanosphere" blog reports.

7 Jan 2012

UNC HIV researcher Cohen discusses his work, HPTN 052

PSI's "Healthy Lives" blog features a video from the UNC Medical Center News Office in which Myron Cohen, a professor of medicine, microbiology, immunology and public health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the director of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, discusses his research into HIV/AIDS prevention, including his lead role in HPTN 052.

6 Jan 2012

CSIS's Morrison discusses 'end of aids'

SmartGlobalHealth.org features the latest episode of "Small Screen Sessions," in which J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Global Health Policy Center, discusses the policy changes that enabled the International AIDS Conference to return to the U.S. in 2012 after a 22-year hiatus, and the beginning of the "end of aids."

6 Jan 2012

CMS acknowledges clinical improvement linked with use of Alair Bronchial Thermoplasty System

Boston Scientific Corporation announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that administers the Medicare program, has acknowledged the substantial clinical improvement associated with the use of the Alair Bronchial Thermoplasty System to perform bronchial thermoplasty for the management of severe asthma.

5 Jan 2012

Global health issues allow for reporting on broad spectrum of challenges, journalists say at seminar

GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog describes a December seminar, titled "Global Health and Story Telling in the Digital Age" and sponsored by GlobalPost and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, at which "journalists discussed challenges they faced in covering global health during a time of shrinking budgets and within an industry struggling to balance hard-hitting coverage with the need to continually update websites and attract readers."

4 Jan 2012

Speedy drug metabolism more likely to cause multidrug-resistant TB

A UT Southwestern Medical Center study using a sophisticated "glass mouse" research model has found that multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) is more likely caused in patients by speedy drug metabolism rather than inconsistent doses, as is widely believed.

29 Dec 2011

LANL's top 10 science stories of 2011

Los Alamos National Laboratory's top 10 science stories of 2011 illustrate the broad variety of scientific excellence that's the hallmark of the Laboratory. This year's stories include alternative energy research, world record magnetic fields, disease tracking, the study of Mars, climate change, fuel cells, solar wind, and magnetic reconnection.

26 Dec 2011

Center for Global Development blog responds to NPR report on health in Afghanistan

This post in the Center for Global Development's (CGD) "Global Health Policy" blog, Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy and a research fellow at CGD, responds to an NPR Morning Edition report on USAID's work in Afghanistan, recapping the progress the agency has made in improving health care in the country.

23 Dec 2011

AVAC report outlines science-based agenda for ending AIDS epidemic

AVAC's annual report, titled "AVAC Report 2011: The End?," "is intended as a vision and a challenge to the field, and a first step in holding all of us -- civil society, researchers, governments, and funders -- accountable for progress" toward ending AIDS, according to the AVAC website (12/22).

23 Dec 2011