House Health Subcommittee Acts to Protect
Kids and Save Lives by Approving Bill to Regulate Tobacco Products
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health
acted to protect children and the nation's health by approving legislation
granting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate
tobacco products. In 2007, both the Institute
of Medicine
of the National Academies of Sciences and the President's Cancer Panel issued
landmark reports endorsing FDA regulation of tobacco products. The report
reveals how tobacco manufacturers have responded to declines in smoking by
introducing a new generation of deadly and addictive products, including candy
and fruit-flavored products that appeal to kids and products that try to deter
smokers from quitting by making unproven and misleading claims that they are
less harmful than traditional cigarettes.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/house-health-su.php
**Economic Security
Distance Learning Can Help Low-Income
Parents Attend School: TANF Agencies Should Adopt Supportive Policies
Distance learning programs are particularly attractive
to many nontraditional students, including low-income parents, who often must
fit their classes around work and family responsibilities. However, in the
wake of the interim rules implementing the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA),
several states expressed concerns about whether it was possible for distance
learning programs to meet the work verification requirements established by
the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF) program. This paper from the Center for Law and Social Policy identifies language from HHS-approved
work verification plans that other states can adopt in order to maximize access
to distance learning and raise work participation rates. It also highlights
some restrictive and burdensome language that should be dropped from work
verification plans.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/distance-learni.php
Overcoming Obstacles, Optimizing Opportunities:
State Policies to Increase Postsecondary Attainment for Low-Skilled Adults
This paper from the Center for Law and Social Policy, introduces a series of state policy
reports developed as part of Breaking Through, a national project that is
helping community colleges identify and develop institutional strategies that
can enable low-skilled adult students to enter into and succeed in occupational
and technical degree programs at community colleges.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/overcoming-obst.php
**Education
A Good Start
Freshmen in a "learning community" at Kingsborough
Community College
in Brooklyn,
NY,
moved more quickly through developmental English requirements, took and passed
more courses, and earned more credits in their first semester than students
in a control group. Two years later, they were also somewhat more likely to
be enrolled in college. Using a rigorous research design, MDRC assigned
1,534 freshmen, at random, either to a program group that was eligible for
the learning community or to a control group that received the college's standard
courses and services. Students in the program group felt more integrated
and more engaged than students in the control group. The program also improved
some educational outcomes while students were in the learning community program,
but the effects diminished in subsequent semesters.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/a-good-start.php
The Teaching Penalty
At a time of national debate over ways to improve the
performance of America's
schools, a new report reveals a trend that undermines chances of reaching
that goal: a large and growing pay penalty for those who choose to become
public school teachers. Over the last decade, the teacher pay gap increased
10.8 percentage points---from a 4.3 percent shortfall for teachers in 1996
to 15.1 percent in 2006. The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground,
published today by the Economic Policy Institute, provides a detailed analysis
of trends in teacher pay.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/the-teaching-pe.php
Life Expectancy Rises for the Educated;
The Less-Educated Reap No Benefit
"We like to think that as we as a country get healthier,
everyone benefits," says the dean for social sciences at the Faculty
of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and
study co-author. "Here we've found that you can have a rising tide that
only lifts half the boats---and the ones lifted are the ones doing better
to begin with. Over the years, much attention has been paid to mortality
rates based on socio-economic status, but less attention has been paid to
recent trends in life expectancy, mortality, and education level.” For 1990-2000,
life expectancy rose an additional 1.6 years for better educated, while remaining
fixed for the less educated.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/life-expectancy.php
**Health
Improving the Delivery of Health Care
that Supports Young Children's Healthy Mental Development
This report from the National Academy for State
Health Policy discusses the experiences of the five states that participated
in the second Assuring Better Child Health and Development (ABCD) II. ABCD
is Commonwealth Fund-sponsored program designed to strengthen primary health
care services and systems that support the healthy mental development of young
children, ages birth to three. 
The states sought, by different means, to improve the
identification of children in need of developmental services and improve the
likelihood that those identified with a potential need received appropriate
follow-up services, including intensified surveillance, assessment, and treatment.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/improving-the-d.php
Do Hospitals Provide Lower-Quality
Care to Minorities Than to Whites?
Research has shown that minority
patients tend to have primary care physicians with less clinical training,
see specialists with poorer clinical outcomes, and seek care at lower-performing
hospitals than do white patients. However, a new Commonwealth Fund supported
study finds that when minority patients and white patients seek care at the
same hospital, they receive the same standard of care. These results highlight
a fundamental rule: minority patients receive the best care when they are
treated in hospitals that deliver high-quality care.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/do-hospitals-pr.php
**Nutrition and Healthy Living
Overweight, Obese Women Improve Quality
of Life with 10 to 30 Minutes of Exercise
Sedentary, overweight or obese women can improve their
quality of life by exercising as little as 10 to 30 minutes a day, researchers
reported at the American Heart Association's Conference on Nutrition, Physical
Activity and Metabolism. These secondary results focus on quality of life
among 430 women divided into four groups: three groups exercising at various
levels and one control group that did not exercise. All participants in the
exercise groups reported a statistically significant improvement in social
functioning compared to those in the control group of women who didn't exercise.
Women who participated in more exercise, from 135 to 150 minutes a week, also
showed significant improvements in general health, vitality and mental health.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/overweight-obes.php
Monthly Personal Counseling Helps Maintain
Weight Loss
In the largest and longest study to date of weight loss
maintenance strategies, researchers at Duke University Medical Center found
that personal contact -- and, to a lesser extent, a computer-based support
system -- were helpful in keeping weight off. "The results of this study
send a strong signal to those who seem to believe that obesity is such an
intractable problem that nothing can be done about it," says the lead
author of the study, a professor of medicine at Duke University.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/monthly-persona.php
Long-Term Weight Control is Achievable
People who shed weight and want to keep it off might
benefit from monthly personal contact interventions, researchers reported
at the American Heart Association's Conference on Nutrition, Physical Activity
and Metabolism. In a test of three ways that might help people maintain weight
loss, those who received monthly personal counseling were best at keeping
off unwanted pounds. Overweight and obesity are the leading cause of high
blood pressure, diabetes and abnormal cholesterol, which are leading causes
of cardiovascular disease, which is, in turn, the leading cause of death in
this country.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/study-shows-lon.php
Personal and Web-Based Support Equal
Weight Loss Success
Findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association
on the largest weight loss maintenance study to date reinforce Kaiser Permanente's
approach to obesity prevention. Kaiser Permanente also helps promote obesity
prevention in the community by supporting 30 farmers markets at Kaiser Permanente
medical centers in six states, a Healthy Picks Vending Machine Initiative
and TV Turnoff Week, as well as a Healthy Eating Active Living program in
27 communities across the US that makes it easier for people to choose healthy
foods and get more active.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/study-finds-per.php
**Seniors
Rate of Escalator Injuries to Older
Adults has Doubled
In the first large scale national study
of escalator-related injuries to older adults, researchers from Indiana University
School of Medicine, report that the rate of these injuries has doubled from
1991 to 2005. Older adults have many
of the same mobility and balance issues as young children," said a developmental
pediatrician at Riley Hospital for
Children.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2008/03/rate-of-escalat.php
