Health Affairs

In the Narrative Matters essay in the April Health Affairs issue, Laura Blinkhorn and Mascha Davis write about how working with an obese woman in a Gabon hospital led them to seek solutions to obesity and its related health problems in the developing world. “Public health campaigns, government regulation, and improved education are necessary to bring about real change,” write Blinkhorn, a fourth-year medical student at the Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, and Davis, a registered dietician and public health professional who lives in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and works for Catholic Relief Services.

In today’s Q and A on Patient Engagenment, we feature Rachael Fleurence, a Senior Scientist at PCORI where she leads the research prioritization initiative to help identify important patient and stakeholder generated questions and establish a rigorous research prioritization process to rank these questions. (Also, check out her recent blog post and follow the link to her February Health Affairs article here.)

Health Affairs readers may have noticed something a little different about the Narrative Matters essay in January’s issue. The essay, “To Fight Bad Suga’, Or Diabetes, My Neighborhood Needs More Health Educators,” by Joseph West of Sinai Urban Health Institute, is the first to include the Policy Checklist, a new feature that will accompany all of our Narrative Matters essays going forward.

The feature points readers to related readings, enacted or proposed legislation, current or planned governmental and private initiatives, and other resources that can help to round out perspectives on a given health policy issue. In the case of the checklist accompanying West’s essay, about the need for more community health workers to serve residents in one poor Chicago community devastated by diabetes, the checklist points to Affordable Care Act grants for outreach to medically underserved populations, community-based diabetes management projects like the CDC’s Project DIRECT, and Health Affairs papers on a national diabetes prevention strategy and on the measured benefits of community health workers.

An extraordinary slowing of growth in the use of health care goods and services contributed to a second year of slow health spending growth in 2010, analysts from the Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported in the most-read Health Affairs article of 2012. To celebrate the New Year,... Read the rest of this entry »

As pundits and politicians ruminate on the impact of the looming Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act, there is one incontrovertible and uncontroversial message for the country. Our commitment to wellness and health, rather than simply treatments for illness is underway. The tide has turned in support of prevention and it is too... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: For more on the state of prevention efforts and the impact of the cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund, see Health Affairs Blog “Contributing Voices” posts by Georges Benjamin and Jeffrey Levi. The latest policy brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the Prevention and Public... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: For more on the state of prevention efforts and the impact of the cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund, see this Health Affairs Blog “Contributing Voices” post by Georges Benjamin and an additional post about a Health Policy Brief on the Fund. The Prevention and Public Health Fund, created by the... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: For more on the state of prevention efforts and the impact of the cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund, see this Health Affairs Blog “Contributing Voices” post by Jeffrey Levi and an additional post about a Health Policy Brief on the Fund. Two years ago with enactment of the Affordable Care... Read the rest of this entry »

How do you get people to eat less? Turns out that, for a significant number of people, the answer may be as simple as asking them. That’s the conclusion of a study in the February issue of Health Affairs, by Janet Schwartz of Tulane’s Freeman School of Business and coauthors, that has been receiving a... Read the rest of this entry »

Video of the release event for the January issue of Health Affairs, “Confronting The Growing Diabetes Crisis,” is now available on the Health Affairs Web site.

Diabetes now affects nearly twenty-six million Americans, and over the next decade, an estimated forty million more US adults could develop the condition. Another 100 million more could suffer from an insidious prediabetic condition, one that often leads to the full-blown disease.  Growing scientific evidence suggests that lifestyle interventions, such as weight loss and fitness... Read the rest of this entry »

Having diabetes can carry  many health consequences, but a new study in the January issue of Health Affairs shows that it also highly influences a young person’s ability to complete high school, be employed, and earn a living wage.  High school dropout rates among young people with diabetes are six percentage points higher than for... Read the rest of this entry »

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin will keynote Health Affairs‘ release event for its January 2012 issue, “Confronting the Growing Diabetes Crisis.” The briefing will take place on Tuesday, January 10, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill. The new Health Affairs issue will explore the challenges that the increase in... Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, January 10, Health Affairs will release its January 2012 issue, “Confronting the Growing Diabetes Crisis.” The volume explores the challenges that the increase in prevalence of prediabetes and diabetes represents for public health and health care systems in the United States and internationally. A particular focus of the issue is opportunities for diabetes... Read the rest of this entry »

With primary care medicine facing ever increasing pressures—fewer doctors to treat more patients and a continual maze of restrictions on reimbursement—primary care practitioners are trying to diagnose and treat obesity with one hand tied behind their backs. The result, unfortunately, is that for what is likely the nation’s costliest disease, strains on coverage have been... Read the rest of this entry »

Prevention is critical to reducing rates of chronic disease, premature death and disability, and controlling health care costs. This point has been made many times over by health care and health policy experts both in the United States and abroad. Unfortunately, our current health care system is not set up to incentivize prevention efforts and... Read the rest of this entry »

Medicare could save up to $15 billion over the lifetimes of a group of baby boomers if the federal government  made community-based weight loss programs available to people age 60 or older who were at risk for diabetes or heart disease, according to a study in the September 2011 issue of Health Affairs. The program—potentially... Read the rest of this entry »

Timothy Jost’s series of posts on proposed new federal rules for state health insurance exchanges leads July’s list of most-read Health Affairs Blog posts. Jon Kingsdale’s article on Massachusetts’ efforts to control health care costs is also featured on the list, as are Jeff Goldsmith’s discussion of the effect of health reform on employer-based health... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part post discussing behavioral economics and how it is being used by British policymakers. Part 1 focused mostly on the development and general principles of behavioral economics. Part 2 below discusses some of the ways British policymakers are seeking to use insights from behavioral economics. Behavioural... Read the rest of this entry »

First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign, launched on February 9, 2010, initially closely fit what obesity research data calls for, with its focus on children and its attention to exercise and better eating (rather than dieting), including its very title, “Let’s Move.”  At the launch, the first lady announced four major areas of focus: providing... Read the rest of this entry »