Mental Health & Tobacco
Folks that face challenges with mental & behavioral health tend to smoke at a higher rate than others. That makes this group a high priority for interventions to reduce their smoking rates. Throughout 2010, we’ll be focusing on various intervention strategies for important health topics along these lines- and March is the final month of this year’s first Quarterly Health [...]
Healthier US Schools Challenge Program
The federal Healthier US Schools Challenge Program establishes rigorous standards for schools’ food quality, participation in meal programs, physical activity, and nutrition education – key components that make for healthy and active kids – and provides recognition for schools that meet these standards. In the next school year, the USDA’s goal is to double the number of schools that [...]
Child Obesity Research
The latest issue of Health Affairs http://www.healthaffairs.org/ has some important resources and research related to the increasing problem of childhood obesity. Kids are eating more snacks -- salty chips, sweetened sodas, candy bars -- than ever before. Trend data show that children are averaging nearly three snacks per day, with 27% of their daily calories coming from snacks. This greater [...]
School Nutrition Overhaul
The USDA’s Child Nutrition Act is up for re-authorization this year. The program provides food to more than 31M school children through the National School Lunch Program as well as 11M that qualify for the School Breakfast Program. Many children get ½ of their daily calories at schools- making this program a great leverage point to improve nutrition for kids [...]
Arizona Serves
The Governor established a 20-member ArizonaSERVES Task Force www.arizonaserves.gov by Executive Order on Tuesday to help connect faith-based and non-profit organizations with opportunities to assist folks in Arizona who’ve been impacted by economic hardship. The goal of the Task Force is to better coordinate volunteer efforts statewide, and find new strategies to promote outreach and maximize existing resources to serve [...]
Infections
Post-surgery infections cost a fortune. Health care–associated infections cause 1.7 million extended hospitalizations each year. A study published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at the clinical and economic costs from these infections which are poorly understood. The researchers looked at national hospital discharge records to find sepsis (blood borne infections) and pneumonia cases- specifically excluding community-acquired [...]