C M G Buttery

An aid to assessing individual risks of 5 common chronic conditions is now available on the internet from Washington University in St. Louis. A few clicks of the mouse tell visitors to the “Your Disease Risk” Web site their risk for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke and osteoporosis. The Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University [...]

Two addictions are worse than the sum of their parts. After six to nine months of abstinence from alcohol, recovering alcoholics who were also chronic smokers showed a significantly lower rate of improvement in tests of memory, reasoning, judgment, and visual/spatial coordination than non-smoking recovering alcoholics in a study conducted by researchers at the San [...]

In the lead editorial today, in the BMJ, we find that influenza H5N1 is proving particularly resistant to undergoing the killer mutation that would allow efficient human to human transmission of the virus. Ten years after the strain first appeared in humans, it has killed just 191 people. For AIDS, however, it really is apocalypse [...]

The June Kaiser security update found the following worries among those surveyed.

• Yesterday, the AMA at its annual meeting resolved to encourage additional funding for public health training for more physicians. The AMA, in conjunction with other appropriate organizations, will support the work of relevant groups to initiate the development of specific physician competencies for physicians engaged in public health practice. The AMA will also inform [...]

A study reported yesterday from,the Commmonwealth Fund repeats again, what primary care physicians have know for more than 50 years. Disparities in terms of access to and quality of care largely disappear when adults have a medical home, insurance coverage, and access to high-quality services and systems of care. A medical home is defined as [...]

Most Massachusetts residents support a new state law to provide health coverage to almost all residents, including the individual mandate that requires residents to obtain coverage or pay a penalty, according to a new June poll of 1,003 Massachusetts residents. The public sees the law as benefiting many key groups in the state, with large [...]

From the 2006 NHIS. Insurance coverage differs sharply by age group.

From the NHIS, 2006 showing the changes in insurance coverage

On its front page, the New York Times (6/27) reports that according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll, “Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system.” The problem is that young people rarely carry medical insurance unless they are still on their parents’ policies, [...]