The newly released November-December 2009 edition of Health Affairs features a series of articles on the challenges posed by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  The articles focus on steps policymakers can take to change the dynamics of the pandemic so that millions of lives will be saved, infections prevented, and overall costs made more affordable. Publication of the [...]

Editor’s Note: The post below by Merrill Goozner first appeared on The Values and Health Reform Connection, a site run by the Hastings Center and supported by Health Affairs as a media sponsor. Goozner’s post can also be found on his blog GoozNews on Health.
The Values and Health Reform Connection grew out of the Hastings Center Publication “Connecting American [...]

By the fourth sentence of the preface to The Silent World of Doctor and Patient, Jay Katz has quietly issued a startling challenge to a fundamental principle of the doctor-patient relationship. He writes:
It took time before I appreciated fully the oddity of physicians’ insistence that patients follow doctors’ orders. During my socialization as a physician [...]

Editor’s Note: In an interview published this week, Health Affairs Contributing Editor Barbara Culliton asks Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Associate Commissioner For Science, Norris Alderson, about his agency’s regulation of nanomedicine and the potential for health care cost savings. Here’s an excerpt of their conversation:
Barbara Culliton: Nanomedicine is the “next big thing” in medicine, [...]

The latest edition of the Health Wonk Review–the biweekly roundup of posts from the health policy blogosphere–is now up at Roy Poses’ blog, Health Care Renewal. He defines his blog as “the product of brain-storming by some physicians and health care researchers who wondered why as health care costs inexorably rose, access decreased, and quality remained stagnant.” [...]

Editor’s Note: As Health Affairs celebrates its 25th anniversary, we look back at some health policy highlights of the past quarter century—many of which are still highly relevant to today’s debates. Watch this space for regular postings on the “classics.”
On June 12, 1986, the Wall Street Journal stated: “If you read nothing else this year [...]

What happens when a government agency in charge of assessing the effectiveness of medical interventions crunches numbers and tells pharmaceutical companies their drugs are just too expensive? Sometimes, the government gets a better deal.
Twice last week, the much-feared National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in England and Wales was a factor in drug [...]

The human rights theme of this year’s APHA Convention in Boston was, I think, just right. The group I belong to, APHA’s Health law Forum, is now better known as the “Health Law and Human Rights Forum.” This is because public health and human rights seem made for each other, as it is impossible for [...]

Par Atwal does a wonderful job reminding us about the legacy of Jonathan Mann, a dear friend and colleague. But despite Mann’s prodigious contributions, what can we say about his vision today? Certainly, his work and inspiration have virtually created the field. We believed that our course at Harvard on health and human rights was [...]

The APHA is to be congratulated for choosing public health and human rights as the theme for this year’s meeting. Given the shenanigans of the Bush administration, this was a welcome political statement. In addition, even as there is support for human rights in the public health community, there remains insufficient clarity on the part [...]

The American Public Health Association (APHA), the oldest and largest organization of the public health community, chose public health and human rights as the theme of its 13,000 attendee-strong 2006 annual meeting, held earlier this month in Boston. The emphasis this year on human rights, according to APHA executive director Georges Benjamin, was driven in [...]

American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin spoke with Health Affairs deputy editor Parmeeth Atwal at the APHA annual meeting earlier this month in Boston about the meeting’s human rights theme, the association’s “Get Ready” program, and the future direction of public health.
Atwal: I note that in this month’s issue of the American Journal [...]