Health Research

The Internet's power to make something "go viral" has surpassed the phrase's original meaning. Sneeze once, you might pass a virus to the person next to you. Post something online, the entire world might get infected. Take the H1N1 vaccine: Late last month, the search term "H1N1 vaccine dangers" hit Google's top 10 searches. A video of a cheerleader supposedly crippled after getting the flu vaccine received almost a million hits. It's driving doctors crazy, as they insist the vaccine is safe and anti-vaccine preachers are plain wrong.

Americans are paying a little more for health coverage this year. Premiums rose modestly for single and family employer-sponsored coverage, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust. The average annual premium in 2012 was $5,615 for single coverage, a 3 percent increase from 2011, while family coverage was $15,745, a 4 percent increase.   Companies continued to offer insurance despite the country's sluggish economic environment.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago, when I joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Medicine, I was full of well-founded optimism.Medicine.

Ella Johnson thought she was done raising kids. Then one night her daughter, asleep in bed with her 1-year-old son, died of a heart condition, and Johnson suddenly found herself mothering a grieving grandchild who clung to the picture of his dead mother. The mother of three grown children, Johnson had plenty of experience with patching skinned knees and soothing teenage mood swings, but taking on the family's youngest generation brought a new set of worries about how to make ends meet and how to provide the right environment for her grandson, DaQuan'Ta Harper, who is now 12. So she eagerly signed on to a National Institutes of Health research study started this year that provides grandparents around the country with practical advice and support for raising grandchildren.

Washington. -- A dispiriting nonchalance has so far characterized the Clinton administration's approach to health research and the government organization mainly responsible for its direction and finance, the National Institutes of Health (NIH).Money and people are the measure of interest in these matters. On both counts, the White House has so far been deficient, proposing spending cuts in some crucial fields of health research and only just now naming a replacement for the Bush-appointed director who left NIH at the end of June.

KHANDSARI, Nepal -- On the 16th day of her life, the baby awoke with a choking cry in the pre-dawn darkness of her family's mud hut. Bhikhari Pasman fumbled to light an oil lamp and saw foam on his daughter's lips. His wife, Rampati, clutched the baby to her breast but found her too weak to nurse. So the father ran across the sleeping village to wake the shaman, who listened to his panicky words and chanted some magic over a jar of mustard oil. He rushed home and, as instructed, dripped the oil in the ears of the now-unconscious baby.

Americans are paying a little more for health coverage this year. Premiums rose modestly for single and family employer-sponsored coverage, according to an annual survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust. The average annual premium in 2012 was $5,615 for single coverage, a 3 percent increase from 2011, while family coverage was $15,745, a 4 percent increase.   Companies continued to offer insurance despite the country's sluggish economic environment.

Washington -- While Bill Clinton and his incoming crew are at it, they ought to take a close look at one of the least-scrutinized, taken-on-faith institutions on the federal landscape, the National Institutes of Health, manager and financier of the world's greatest health-research enterprise.With a budget of $10.3 billion this year, the NIH is far bigger than similar agencies in all other countries put together. Revered by Congress, which piles on money while rarely asking questions about results and priorities, the agency nearly tripled its budget during the otherwise lean years of the Reagan era. Under its hard-driving and ambitious director, Bernadine Healy, even greater expansion is planned.

Personal computers -- or VDTs (video display terminals) -- have become so commonplace that it is estimated there are more than 30 million VDTs in use in the United States. The workplace has been transformed by this new technology, and much of the transformation involves women who work in front of terminals for hours each day.Women need to know what this enormous increase in working hours spent in front of VDTs means for their health.Q: Do computers (VDTs) pose a health risk for women?A: According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health's Center for VDT and Health Research, health concerns and VDT use have focused on two issues -- the first is in part a reaction to scientific research into the possible effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs)

Maryland again got a middle-of-the-pack ranking among states for the health of its residents, according to a report issued Tuesday from health research and advocacy groups that looked at a host of government measures and private data. Maryland was unmoved from last year's ranking at 21st by the United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention. To make its ranking, report authors assess behaviors, public and health policies, community and environmental conditions and clinical care data.

Dr. Barbara Starfield, a professor and health services researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health whose work in the field of primary care and health policy brought her international acclaim, died June 10 while swimming at her home in Menlo Park, Calif. The former Mount Washington resident was 78. "She was found floating in the pool and may have died of an apparent heart attack. We are waiting for the autopsy report from the coroner," said her husband of 56 years, Dr. Neil A. Holtzman, a pediatrician and a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Maryland again got a middle-of-the-pack ranking among states for the health of its residents, according to a report issued Tuesday from health research and advocacy groups that looked at a host of government measures and private data. Maryland was unmoved from last year's ranking at 21st by the United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention. To make its ranking, report authors assess behaviors, public and health policies, community and environmental conditions and clinical care data.

The Internet's power to make something "go viral" has surpassed the phrase's original meaning. Sneeze once, you might pass a virus to the person next to you. Post something online, the entire world might get infected. Take the H1N1 vaccine: Late last month, the search term "H1N1 vaccine dangers" hit Google's top 10 searches. A video of a cheerleader supposedly crippled after getting the flu vaccine received almost a million hits. It's driving doctors crazy, as they insist the vaccine is safe and anti-vaccine preachers are plain wrong.

Like many cash-strapped small-business owners burdened by rising costs and fewer customers these days, Mark Derbyshire thinks a lot about health care. Specifically, how to keep paying for employee coverage that continues to skyrocket each year. So, Derbyshire made a tough decision this year to not offer family coverage to newly hired employees, while maintaining the current plan for his 30 employees at Park Moving and Storage in Aberdeen. As Congress works to fix the health care system, controlling the growing tab for medical insurance is an especially important concern for the nation's 6 million small businesses, whose support is crucial to any reform.

Every couple fights, right? But in terms of their health, what they fight about is less important than how they fight, according to a Gaithersburg researcher. Elaine Eaker, an epidemiologist who operates her own consulting firm, looked at how 3,681 men and women sort out marital differences and tracked their mortality rates and cardiac health for 10 years. She found that women who had reported that they didn't vent during arguments were four times more likely to die than women who spoke up in a fight.

Barbara Reed Feeser, a former public health researcher and chorus member, died of cancer Sept. 13 at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. The Ellicott City resident was 47. Born Barbara Anne Reed in Washington and raised on Old Orchard Road in Baltimore's Ten Hills, she was a 1976 graduate of McDonogh School and remained active on its alumni executive council and on lower school committees. She earned a bachelor's degree in biology at Bucknell University and had a master's degree in public health and business administration from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Once every couple of years some prominent woman or other goes public about her breast cancer or cervical cancer, and there is a national surge of interest in women's health issues. But when such stories fade from the news, so does public attention.The neglect of women's health-care issues is a widespread and critical problem. A June report from the General Accounting Office pointed out that the National Institutes of Health has all but ignored a 1986 mandate to include women in health research.