Public Health

Public policy views the health-care crisis as basically acute and transitory. Like other contemporary problems, such as pollution and global warming, the crisis in health care is believed to be a technical problem confined to the last decades of the 20th century. For this reason, the health-care debate is rarely intellectualized. Economics, not philosophy, is expected to provide the relevant and practical solutions.I believe, however, that the crisis in health care is in part a product of longstanding intellectual assumptions about health care.

The reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut its threshold for lead poisoning from 10 micrograms per deciliter to 5 micrograms were something of a simplification. What the CDC said, after years of study and discussion, was that no level of lead exposure for children is safe. The 5-microgram level was set somewhat arbitrarily as the point at which doctors and public health officials would recommend parents take action to reduce their children's risk, but there is ample evidence to show that levels of 3 or 4 micrograms - and perhaps even lower - are associated with learning and attention deficit disorders later in life.

As a resident of Howard County and a member of the board of directors of the Horizon Foundation, I give three cheers for Nikki Highsmith Vernick's article on a health issue that will prove to be one of the most challenging of the 21st century ("A healthier way to snack," May 15). Her insightful and provocative article was an excellent complement to recent HBO special "The Weight of the Nation. " Her article is the product of months of research and study by the Horizon Foundation and the board's decision to tackle head on the "largest single source of added sugar in our children's diets and a major source of excess calories.

As a resident of Howard County and a member of the board of directors of the Horizon Foundation, I give three cheers for Nikki Highsmith Vernick's article on a health issue that will prove to be one of the most challenging of the 21st century ("A healthier way to snack," May 15). Her insightful and provocative article was an excellent complement to recent HBO special "The Weight of the Nation. " Her article is the product of months of research and study by the Horizon Foundation and the board's decision to tackle head on the "largest single source of added sugar in our children's diets and a major source of excess calories.

Even as aid trickled in Thursday to earthquake-ravaged Haiti - and estimates emerged of as many as 50,000 dead and countless more gravely injured - experts feared the country was on the brink of a public health disaster that could persist for months. While relief workers hoped to provide food and water and to confront the most pressing of immediate medical needs, from antibiotics to bandages, disaster response experts say what remains ahead could be equally daunting: rebuilding from scratch a public health system that was fragile at best before disaster struck.

Regarding "Pollution bill defeated" (Nov. 11) the defeat of this brazen, immoral, un-Christian, unconscionable attempt by tea party Sen. Rand Paul, M.D., to block EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule of July 2011 deserved greater emphasis than a tiny article on Page 15. This rule attempts to slash coal-fired power plant air pollution that blows downwind to other states and causes aggravated asthma attacks in children and adults, premature deaths, heart...

In his thoughtful commentary "Think nationally, act locally" (Nov. 9), Howard County Health Officer Dr. Peter Beilenson urges people to do all they can at the local level to advance important societal goals. I believe, however, that Dr. Beilenson was too quick to declare Washington a "lost cause. " Under the leadership of President Obama, the federal government has made great strides in recent years to advance important public health goals, including the 2009 law authorizing the FDA to regulate tobacco, which will save many lives, and the landmark Affordable Care Act, which will expand health care to tens of millions of uninsured Americans.

Two hundred years after the city appointed its first public health officers, Baltimore faces a health threat more complex than raw sewage in the streets and periodic outbreaks of cholera, typhoid or yellow fever. The biggest challenges for public health now lie in the political arena, as illustrated in such issues as the city's proposed needle exchange program for intravenous drug abusers.Last session in Annapolis, a bill granting the city permission to establish a pilot program failed in committee.

A conference room with sweeping views of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. An upper-level fitness center and roof terrace. An in-house gallery featuring works by Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine. Is this a description of Baltimore's newest corporate headquarters? An upscale hotel? No, it's the $130 million home of the Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose final phases will be dedicated at 4:30 p.m. Friday. Although the entire project has taken 10 years to complete, school leaders say it has materialized more quickly than they initially thought it would.

Anew penalty is being exacted on America's communities for years of neglected public-health budgets, jam-packed prisons, dank homeless shelters and the housing and work conditions suffered by our poor and immigrant groups. The penalty can be spelled in two letters: TB.Tuberculosis is the world's largest cause of death from a single infectious agent. We Americans thought we'd slain the dragon through a combination of improved hygiene, new drugs, hospital care and better housing. U.S. cases dropped to a modern-day low of 22,201 in 1985.

Michael Bloomberg's first donation to Johns Hopkins was $5, which he gave the year after he graduated in 1964 from the university with an engineering degree. The New York mayor now ranks as Hopkins' largest contributor, and possibly the largest donor to any American university, and his ties and interests in Baltimore have spread throughout the city. On Thursday, the philanthropist and politician attended the dedication for a new Johns Hopkins hospital he helped build. Bloomberg gave $120 million to help build the $1.1 billion state-of-the-art hospital, bringing his lifetime donations to Hopkins institutions to $800 million for buildings, professorships, research and art. In the years since Bloomberg graduated, he made a fortune, became mayor of New York City and established himself as a champion of public health.

Throughout the United States, a potentially lethal war is erupting. It is a war that puts millions of innocent lives in danger and undermines the centuries-long sacred bond between physicians and patients. This is a war between pediatricians and patients and has developed largely because of the anti-vaccination movement. As a public health student at the Johns Hopkins University and a future pediatrician, I am alarmed by the catastrophic consequences this conflict could have on the health of American children.

Few people on the street may be familiar with the World Bank. Yet, it plays a critical role in the U.S. effort to engage the world through its contribution to economic development in poor and post-conflict societies. As current World Bank President Robert Zoellick steps down this summer, the bank will soon have a new leader. In the past, as per an unwritten convention, the U.S. — the largest single majority shareholder of the bank — got to select the president. Although the bank at its core is a development institution, it was, surprisingly, never led by a development professional.

The fate of the Affordable Care Act is in the hands of the Supreme Court justices. But in the court of public opinion, a large percentage of people polled recently want the law scrapped. A CBS/New York Times survey found nearly half of those polled disapprove of the law, while 40 percent want the entire act overturned. Rasmussen Reports says 56 percent of people surveyed want the act repealed. And the Kaiser Family Foundation found that nearly six out of 10 people don't even know how health care reform affects them — though that didn't stop many of them from disliking it. Consumers should be careful what they wish for. Have they forgotten all the stories of people being unable to buy coverage because of a pre-existing condition or dropped by their insurer like a hot coal when they became ill?

It's nearly spring, temperatures in the 70s, yet the flu waited until now to ramp up in Maryland, killing three members of a Calvert County family. Usually, flu season strikes earlier. By this time last year, the flu had been widespread and had already officially killed 34 people. The year before, the H1N1 pandemic disproportionately sickened children and triggered a scramble for vaccine. Public health officials say this is the nature of influenza. "Unlike other respiratory viruses, flu is a little more unpredictable," said Dr. Trish M. Perl, professor of medicine, pathology and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University and the senior epidemiologist for the Hopkins Health System.

Dr. John Leake Pitts, a retired pediatrician who during a long career in public health had been the acting Anne Arundel County health officer, died of cancer Wednesday at his Annapolis Roads home. He was 85. Born in Roanoke, Va., he was the son of John Leake Pitts Sr., a pharmacist, and Mary B. Allen, a homemaker and schoolteacher. As a young man he worked the soda fountain at his father's store. After attending Roanoke College, he graduated from the the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.

The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future has launched a free, online curriculum for high school teachers to use in their classrooms. Teaching the Food System is designed to be inserted into anything from social studies, to environmental science and biology classes. The center which is part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health is offering $2,000 grants to teachers who need money for materials or field trips. 

Lou Ruth Blake was the family's matriarch who sang in the church choir and organized gospel shows. Lowell Frederick Blake liked to make people laugh. Venessa Marie Blake was the ardent churchgoer with a contagious smile. All three family members died within days of each other earlier this month from complications of the flu — a cluster that state officials acknowledged was unusual. Their deaths caused a stir in the community of Lusby in Calvert County, where Blake family roots run deep in the town of nearly 1,600.