Nearly one in five North Carolinians under the age of 65 did not have health insurance in 2010, according to estimates released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
At 19.1 percent, the rate of uninsured residents in the state was at the highest point in five years and was higher than in all but 16 states. Massachusetts had the lowest rate of uninsured at 5.2 percent; Texas was highest at 26.3 percent.
Minorities and the poor were more likely to be uninsured in the state, according to the Census Bureau estimates.
Nearly a third of residents under 65 in families that made less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level lacked health insurance. The uninsured rate among whites was 14.8 percent, compared to 21.2 percent for blacks and 42.2 percent for Hispanics.
Wake County had the lowest percentage of uninsured residents, at 15.5 percent, followed by Camden and Onslow counties at 16 percent and Orange County at 16.4 percent.
The highest estimated uninsured rate was in Alleghany County, at 30.1 percent.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]A class-action lawsuit takes aim at five bourbon distilleries in and around Louisville, where a tenacious black mold that feeds on ethanol blankets properties nearby.
Concern for making a consumer friendly experience has bled from Huawei's devices into its user interfaces.
The company announced the impending launch of a revamped UI for Android Thursday at IFA 2012 and offered a taste of what's to come.
The Emotion UI, as it's dubbed, aims to please, building on the company's "Design with Empathy" philosophy, according to a media release.
"Emotion UI is a reflection of Huawei's empathic design philosophy - built by consumers for consumers," said Dennis Poon, Huawei Device's global UI design director, in the release.
"The team was very conscious about placing people before technology," Poon said, adding the design team asked consumers what their ideal interactive experience would be like before undertaking the UI.
Putting the 'you' in UI
To that end, Huawei hosted a number of consumer forums and salons to read what was and wasn't working with its devices.
One of the biggest improvements to come out of those powwows and into the UI is a "Smart Tutorial" function, designed to bring first time users up to snuff on how to operate their phone.
In other areas, Huawei's pushing for customization and simplification, as seen in the "Me Widget" property that lets users condense their most go-to information and functions into a single, customized folder.
The homepage is also customizable as are folders for specific apps, though users be warned deleting an app folder takes all contents with it.
Huawei's reportedly come with with 20 Emotion themes available online, accessible to users who don't want one of six pre-loaded Android skins, including an Android 4.0 stock theme.
Poon also told TechRadar during the conference that the company plans to roll out Emotion UI updates monthly, tweaking it as consumers see fit.
Consumers can download the Chinese-only UI Friday, when the company will also ask for feedback on the experience and development process.
Emotion's public release shouldn't be too far off, though the company will announce a date closer to the launch.
TechRadar has more Huawei at IFA news, including the lowdown on some able-bodied Androids.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Head of the hospital bed raised? Check. Patient's teeth brushed? Check.
Those simple but often overlooked steps can help protect some of the most critically ill patients ? those on ventilators ? from developing deadly pneumonia. And if they knew about them, family members could ensure the steps weren't forgotten.
Hospitals are rife with infections and opportunities for medical mistakes. Now, a nearly $9 million project at Johns Hopkins University aims to combine engineering with the power of patients and their families to prevent some of the most common threats.
The idea: Design patient safety to be more like a car's dashboard, which automatically signals drivers when the oil needs changing or if a passenger forgot to buckle up, or like the countdown systems that make sure no step is missed when a satellite is launched.
Today, safe, quality care largely depends on individual health workers remembering hundreds of steps without good ways to tell if they forget one, said Hopkins' patient safety expert Dr. Peter Pronovost. Getting it right takes what he calls "almost heroic efforts."
And too often, the people best able to spot early warning signs ? patients and their families ? are treated as passive bystanders rather than encouraged to participate in their care, he said.
"Who knows better than the family?" asked Dr. George Bo-Linn of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation's new Patient Care Program.
The foundation, created by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, announced Tuesday that it is funding the Hopkins work as the first step in a planned 10-year, $500 million effort to improve patient safety and family engagement in hospitals around the country. Separately, the Institute of Medicine has signed on to help, partnering with the National Academy of Engineering, to bring together top experts on how to design safety systems.
Sometimes the failure to merely discuss treatment with patients or their families causes the harm. Consider Nicole D. James, a commercial property manager in Elkridge, Md., who undergoes frequent overnight hospital stays to treat the intense pain of sickle cell anemia. One such visit turned into a miserable two-week stay when the ER doctor added a powerful antibiotic to James' usual pain treatment without telling her first ? a drug that worsened her sickle cell crisis.
It turned out the doctor had spotted a shadow on James' lung X-ray that he thought was pneumonia but that she could have told him, and her regular physician confirmed, really was old scar tissue.
"I know what's normal for me," said James, 37, who now insists that relatives drive past closer hospitals for Hopkins, where her doctor practices, no matter how late at night or intense her pain. Because the doctors know her, "I am not just somebody lying on the table. I am part of the team."
Tens of thousands of preventable deaths occur in U.S. hospitals every year. Numerous programs are under way to improve patient safety. Among them is the government's Partnership for Patients, funded by $1 billion from the new health care law, that is helping hospitals adopt proven safety strategies.
Hopkins' Pronovost led the creation of one of the most well-known ? a simple checklist that ensures hospital workers follow steps that lower the risk of deadly bloodstream infections from common IV catheters. That checklist now is being used in ICUs nationwide, and the government reported last year that those infections have plummeted by 60 percent as a result.
But catheter infections are just one of a dozen serious hospital-caused harms that threaten ICU patients, Pronovost said. Rather than fighting them one at a time, his new project will target multiple ICU threats simultaneously ? from ventilator-associated pneumonia to deadly blood clots ? without relying on old-fashioned paper checklists and with more family involvement.
It will require linking medical devices that today don't talk to each other, he said. For instance, pumps that deliver narcotic painkillers aren't linked to other devices that monitor breathing. If connected, the painkillers could be stopped automatically at the first sign of respiratory problems, a known side effect.
Other protections are far less complex. Keeping the head of the bed elevated at least 30 degrees and good oral hygiene are among the steps that help fend off the pneumonia that kills 36,000 people a year while they're on ventilators. That's something family members can watch for ? or they even can be trained to brush a loved one's teeth around the breathing tube.
Already, Hopkins has introduced a "family involvement menu" of care items. "We believe that you know the person that we are caring for far better than we do," the menu reads.
Ultimately, Pronovost envisions an iPad-like device that allows both health workers and family members to see at a glance which of dozens of required daily care steps have been performed and which still need to be.
"The beauty of checklists is it gives you that constant visual reminder," and an electronic, automated version is the next logical evolution, said Ann Marie Pettis, director of infection prevention at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who called the project intriguing.
Engaging the patient and family in some ways is tougher. Hospitals have had a hard time encouraging people to ask doctors and nurses if they've washed their hands, said Gina Pugliese of the Premier Safety Institute, a hospital improvement alliance.
"So many patients and families are hesitant to ever question the doctor," she said. "It's so important they get involved."
___
EDITOR'S NOTE ? Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Genetic inheritance can not be changed. If you are at risk for high cholesterol due to the genetic makeup inherited from your ancestors, then that is a fact that must be accepted.
This is of concern because high cholesterol puts you at risk for heart disease and heart attacks. Often, cholesterol must be controlled with medications, However, whether you are already at a high cholesterol level or not, on medication or not, you can often lower cholesterol levels by several points simply by making some uncomplicated lifestyle changes.
1. Get Regular Exercise: Participating in regular and non-structured physical activity such as gardening, walking, or swimming, or in a formal exercise program, has several well-documented health benefits. Some of these benefits affect your cholesterol levels indirectly, but exercise can even reduce cholesterol levels directly. Even something as simple as squeezing in a few short exercise sessions daily can help produce results.
2. Lose Weight: Several studies have shown that losing as little as 10 lbs can help reduce cholesterol levels, and exercise is also one of the more effective strategies for healthy weight loss. Losing weight can contribute to reduced cholesterol. That's one of the indirect aspects of exercise mentioned earlier.
3. Eat Right: Hey! Here we go again. Healthy eating helps promote weight loss. Healthy weight loss can help encourage interest in exercise, as can getting the proper nutrition. A general rule of thumb for healthy eating is that the closer to the source the food is, usually the better for you it is. Get rid of trans fats generally found in fried foods and bakery products. Select lean cuts of meat, low fat dairy products, and exercise portion control. Eat a wide range of fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. By all means, read the labels! Pick foods with lower cholesterol levels. For example, I was buying one brand of a product I used daily until I read the label and found that it had a much higher cholesterol level than another brand which provided the same nutrients.
One other tip about eating: get rid of sugar and simple carbs. This is another discussion, but too much sugar and simple carbs can create blood sugar spikes with lead to insulin resistance. Long story made short: this can kick off a series of complications which can increase cholesterol
4. Keep Alcohol Consumption at Low Levels: It has been found that a low level of alcohol consumption, generally no more than one or two drinks a day, can be of some health benefit and can help increase "good" cholesterol. Red wine has an ingredient, resveratrol, which apparently helps protect cells against the effects of aging. However, high levels of alcohol consumption can lead to serious health problems, including high blood pressure, heart failure and stroke.
By the way, here's a tip: Drink your wine with cheese. This can slow down the effects on blood sugar.
5. Don't Smoke: As an ex-smoker, I cannot beat on this drum enough! If you already smoke, stopping smoking can improve your HDL cholesterol level. The health benefits don't end there, either. Only 20 minutes after your last cigarette, your blood pressure decreases. Then within 24 hours, your risk of a heart attack begins to decrease. Within just one year, your risk of heart disease is already down to half that of a smoker. It gets even better. Within 15 years, your risk of heart disease is similar to someone who never smoked.
Generally, lifestyle changes won't cause a huge decrease in cholesterol levels, but, given time, they will, in most cases, produce results.
However, as mentioned earlier, some people may need medication to actually reduce cholesterol levels effectively. Even in those instances, it is still in the individual's best interest to include the lifestyle choices as a part of their plan for good health overall and cholesterol control in particular.
=================== NATURAL CHOLESTEROL GUIDE
HYPERCET CHOLESTEROL CONTROL PRODUCT
CHOLESTEROL REDUCTION COMPLEX FROM SHAKLEE
Labels: how to lower cholesterol, lifestyle for lower cholesterol, lower cholesterol
A Syrian man searches for belongings through the rubble of his house which was destroyed from a Syrian government forces shelling, in Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
A Syrian man searches for belongings through the rubble of his house which was destroyed from a Syrian government forces shelling, in Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Syria, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
Syrian girls, who fled their home with their family in Aleppo, due to fighting between the Syrian army and the rebels, sleep on teh ground, as their family take refuge at the Bab Al-Salameh border crossing, in hopes of entering one of the refugee camps in Turkey, near the Syrian town of Azaz, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
A Syrian family, who fled their home, due to fighting between the Syrian army and the rebels, take refuge at the Bab Al-Salameh border crossing, in hopes of entering one of the refugee camps in Turkey, near the Syrian town of Azaz, Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
BEIRUT (AP) ? Syrian President Bashar Assad said in a broadcast Wednesday that his regime needs more time to win the civil war, acknowledging that his forces are struggling to contain the rebel challenge.
He also addressed the growing stream of defections from the military and the government, but tried to play down the flight by saying it was healthy.
"We are fighting a regional and global war, so time is needed to win it," Assad said in an interview with the pro-regime private TV station Dunya. "We are moving forward. The situation is practically better but it has not been decided yet. That takes time," he told the station, which is majority owned by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Assad and one of Syria's wealthiest men.
He appeared to make light of the significant number of defections, some of them senior military and political officials ? including the prime minister ? and diplomats.
"Defections are a mechanism of self-cleansing of the nation," said Assad. "If there is a Syrian citizen who knows of someone who wishes to flee but is hesitant to do so he should encourage him," he said with a smile.
He tried to blame his difficulties in defeating the rebels on what he claimed to be outside forces fueling the rebellion.
Over the past few months, the military has increasingly been stretched thin fighting on multiple fronts against rebels seeking to oust Assad's authoritarian regime. His forces have been unable to quell the rebellion as it spread to the capital Damascus with significant clashes that began in July and to Syria's largest city, Aleppo, a few weeks later. At the same time, the military is fighting in a string of other cities and towns around the country.
The comments were released in an advance excerpt of the interview to be aired by Dunya in full later in the day.
Taken together with his comments to a visiting Iranian official over the weekend, Assad shows willingness for an even more prolonged conflict, even with more than 20,000 estimated dead in more than 17 months of fighting. He told the Iranian official his regime would continue the fight against the rebels "whatever the price."
Rights groups monitoring the violence now report the deaths of 100 to 250 or more Syrians on daily basis, though the figures are impossible to independently verify. The fighting has been intense enough to force hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, seeking refuge elsewhere in the country or in neighboring nations.
Assad responded with a hearty laugh when told by the interviewer that rumors about his whereabouts often made the rounds among Syrians.
"I am here with you in the studio in Damascus," he said.
Assad has rarely appeared in public since four of his top security officials were assassinated in a July 18 rebel bombing in Damascus.
Appearing confident and relaxed, Assad paid tribute to the Syrian people, saying they stood steadfastly behind him and his armed forces.
But he criticized the leaders of onetime ally Turkey, saying some of them were "ignorant."
Syrian officials routinely cite neighboring Turkey, along with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as among the rebels' main supporters, providing them with money and weapons.
"The fate of Syria, I tell the Syrian people, is in your hands," Assad said. "This broad base of the Syrian people protects the country."
He also paid tribute to government forces.
"If we ask ourselves which segment (of Syrian society) did more than all others in enabling this country to stand fast, it is undoubtedly the armed forces."
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he would press the U.N. Security Council to set up a safe haven inside Syria to protect thousands of people fleeing the violence.
Turkey has long been floating the idea of a no-fly zone, or buffer zone, to protect displaced Syrians from attacks by Assad's forces, but the issue has become more pressing now the number of refugees in Turkey has exceeded 80,000 ? a number it says approaches its limits.
"We expect the U.N. to step in and protect the refugees inside Syria, and if possible, to shelter them in camps there," Davutoglu told reporters before leaving for New York to attend Thursday's high-level U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria.
The rebels are fighting to overthrow Assad, who came to office in 2000 after succeeding his father, the late Hafez Assad, who ruled Syria with an iron fist for some 30 years. The conflict began as peaceful protests last year but has since morphed into a civil war.
Assad's description of the civil war as a regional and global battle is consistent with the regime's line that the rebels are members of terrorist bands. He speaks often of a Western conspiracy to break Syria, which he sees as the last bastion of Arab resistance against Israel.
State news agency SANA said government forces repulsed a major rebel attack on the military base of Taftanaz in the northern Idlib province. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the regime used fighter-jets and helicopter gunships in clashes with rebels near the base. The observatory monitors violence and abuses in Syria.
The Observatory also reported clashes in Aleppo, the central cities of Homs and Hama as well as the suburbs of Damascus.
Adverse effects of mining industry provoke hard questions for medical humanitarian organizationsPublic release date: 28-Aug-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sumrina Yousufzai syousufzai@plos.org 415-568-3164 Public Library of Science
Increasingly humanitarian organizations will find themselves responding to health emergencies provoked by the adverse effects of mining and other extractive industries, setting up a potential clash to do with the core principles and values at the heart of humanitarian medicine, writes Philippe Calain from the humanitarian medical organization, Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF), in this week's PLOS Medicine.
"A pragmatic approach of engagement with the corporate sector for the delivery of aid, or an implicit support to mainstream development agendas could compromise the legitimacy of humanitarian medicine," argues Calain. He continues, "A principled understanding of humanitarian medicine entails selfless moral commitments that are incompatible with the for-profit objectives of corporate industries."
Drawing on MSF's experience responding to the "worst lead poisoning epidemic in modern history" resulting from artisanal gold mining in Nigeria's Zamfara state, Calain explores the pitfalls, difficult alliances, and challenges medical humanitarian organizations must navigate in confronting the dire health consequences resulting from extractive industries, whether informal, illegal, or sanctioned.
He argues that, in developing countries, extractive industries (including ore mineral mining and oil extraction) have far reaching consequences on health through environmental pollution, communicable diseases, violence, destitution, and compromised food security. While humanitarian organisations might be called to intervene in areas occupied by the extractive sector, Calain argues that oil and mineral exploitation reveals a fundamental clash of values between humanitarianism, the for-profit sector, and privatised global philanthropy.
Operating in this relatively new terrain for medical humanitarian organizations outside the traditional humanitarian response to armed conflict, epidemics, and natural disasters requires a deeper examination of which types of compromises and alliances are acceptable. Responding to these kinds of emergencies, warns Calain, cannot be reduced to the development of medical and technical expertise alone.
"While advocacy and expansion of their operational expertise are obvious paths for non-governmental organizations, a more complex and ideologically loaded question to solve is about what type of relationships humanitarian organisations should entertain with the corporate sector," writes Calain. "Specific medical humanitarian organisations can respond to these challenges in different ways, based on their position between pragmatic or principled approaches, and their willingness to develop new technical capacities."
According to Calain, many mainstream medical humanitarian organisations would rather opt for no engagement with the natural resource extraction sector due to questions of values and conflicts of interest.
He concludes: "the Zamfara outbreak has called attention to a novel agenda for medical humanitarian organisations, including technical preparedness for environmental disasters, dialogue with international environmental organisations, and a better understanding of the exact role of resources extraction in perpetuating humanitarian crises."
###
Funding: No specific funding was received for writing this article.
Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Calain P (2012) What Is the Relationship of Medical Humanitarian Organisations with Mining and Other Extractive Industries? PLoS Med 9(8): e1001302. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001302
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER (THIS LINK WILL BECOME LIVE WHEN THE EMBARGO LIFTS):
CONTACT:
Philippe Calain
Unit de Recherche sur les Enjeux et Pratiques Humanitaires (UREPH)
Mdecins Sans Frontires, Genve, Switzerland
philippe.calain@geneva.msf.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Adverse effects of mining industry provoke hard questions for medical humanitarian organizationsPublic release date: 28-Aug-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sumrina Yousufzai syousufzai@plos.org 415-568-3164 Public Library of Science
Increasingly humanitarian organizations will find themselves responding to health emergencies provoked by the adverse effects of mining and other extractive industries, setting up a potential clash to do with the core principles and values at the heart of humanitarian medicine, writes Philippe Calain from the humanitarian medical organization, Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF), in this week's PLOS Medicine.
"A pragmatic approach of engagement with the corporate sector for the delivery of aid, or an implicit support to mainstream development agendas could compromise the legitimacy of humanitarian medicine," argues Calain. He continues, "A principled understanding of humanitarian medicine entails selfless moral commitments that are incompatible with the for-profit objectives of corporate industries."
Drawing on MSF's experience responding to the "worst lead poisoning epidemic in modern history" resulting from artisanal gold mining in Nigeria's Zamfara state, Calain explores the pitfalls, difficult alliances, and challenges medical humanitarian organizations must navigate in confronting the dire health consequences resulting from extractive industries, whether informal, illegal, or sanctioned.
He argues that, in developing countries, extractive industries (including ore mineral mining and oil extraction) have far reaching consequences on health through environmental pollution, communicable diseases, violence, destitution, and compromised food security. While humanitarian organisations might be called to intervene in areas occupied by the extractive sector, Calain argues that oil and mineral exploitation reveals a fundamental clash of values between humanitarianism, the for-profit sector, and privatised global philanthropy.
Operating in this relatively new terrain for medical humanitarian organizations outside the traditional humanitarian response to armed conflict, epidemics, and natural disasters requires a deeper examination of which types of compromises and alliances are acceptable. Responding to these kinds of emergencies, warns Calain, cannot be reduced to the development of medical and technical expertise alone.
"While advocacy and expansion of their operational expertise are obvious paths for non-governmental organizations, a more complex and ideologically loaded question to solve is about what type of relationships humanitarian organisations should entertain with the corporate sector," writes Calain. "Specific medical humanitarian organisations can respond to these challenges in different ways, based on their position between pragmatic or principled approaches, and their willingness to develop new technical capacities."
According to Calain, many mainstream medical humanitarian organisations would rather opt for no engagement with the natural resource extraction sector due to questions of values and conflicts of interest.
He concludes: "the Zamfara outbreak has called attention to a novel agenda for medical humanitarian organisations, including technical preparedness for environmental disasters, dialogue with international environmental organisations, and a better understanding of the exact role of resources extraction in perpetuating humanitarian crises."
###
Funding: No specific funding was received for writing this article.
Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.
Citation: Calain P (2012) What Is the Relationship of Medical Humanitarian Organisations with Mining and Other Extractive Industries? PLoS Med 9(8): e1001302. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001302
IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER (THIS LINK WILL BECOME LIVE WHEN THE EMBARGO LIFTS):
CONTACT:
Philippe Calain
Unit de Recherche sur les Enjeux et Pratiques Humanitaires (UREPH)
Mdecins Sans Frontires, Genve, Switzerland
philippe.calain@geneva.msf.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 28-Aug-2012
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