Health News

"Hospitalizations for heart attacks fell sharply in Pueblo, Colo., after the implementation of a law that banned smoking in public places and work places" according to a Centers for Disease Control report.

If you made plans this year to quit smoking, the American Lung Association has a few tips.

New Jersey became the first state to require flu shots for preschool students. State epidemiologist, Dr. Tina Tan, said "stopping flu transmission among kids will stop flu transmission in the community at large."

Tracking the Flu

The Centers for Disease Control have a variety of surveillance measures to analyze medical data to detect or anticipate disease outbreaks. Well, Google has one, too.

Google Flu Trends is a Google service that tracks the occurrence of flu across the United States based on the number flu-related searches made in areas around the country. It actually has been very accurate at tracking flu cases, with their statistics matching closely to the CDCs resources, and often times, measuring outbreaks one to two weeks quicker.

This year, flu rates have been at low to moderate levels in each state, including Florida which has seen a moderate amount of flu cases since the end of September.

Open for Questions

In addition to the community health care discussions the Obama-Biden transition team is conducting to get more input on community health needs, the campaign has started a feature on their web site called "Open for Questions" which allows anyone to ask questions to be answered by the transition team.

Questions are ranked by users, so questions that people want answers to most will be answered. You can vote or ask questions by going to their Open for Questions web page.

Many of the questions regard health care. Here are some of the most popular health care questions--

"In all other 1st world countries, there's a minimal level of universal healthcare for all citizens. What will your adminstration do to provide truly universal, affordable healthcare for all US citizens, regardless of employment status?"

"We all recognize the insurance industry is the problem, not lack of insurance--what are you going to do about getting single payer (government) health care, as other progressive countries throughout the industrialized world have done?"

"What will you do to encourage education for disease prevention ? I am talking about environmental, nutritional and exercise education. It seems a waste resources to be detecting disease when you can prevent it."

Many questions deal with frustrations over insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Other people simply want to know how and when will we have affordable health care for everyone in our country.

New Year's Resolutions

New Year's is the time of year where people look a little more closely at their personal health and set goals for themselves for the new year. A few of the most popular New Year's resolutions--

Quit smoking
Exercise more
Spend more time with family and friends
Reduce stress
Volunteer to help others
Eat healthier
Take a trip
Maintain a healthy weight

To a healthy and happy New Year,
Your Sarasota Health Blogger

Music Therapy

Brian Johnson, of the band AC/DC, was in Sarasota last week to dedicate a music room at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. You can read the article, here.

Music therapy can help patients relax and has been found to reduce stress and make treatment and recovery easier. Not only that, it's fun.

Drugs, Drugs, Drugs

Another question that was asked by the transition team during the community health discussion was "How can public policy promote healthier lifestyles?"

A lot of the comments to this question dealt with our reliance on prescription drugs. Some people told stories about how attractive drugs have become when they are advertised on TV and magazines. Drug advertisements have made prescription drugs a more appealing solution for medical care. People are able to walk into the doctor's office and immediately tell the doctor, "this is my problem, I'd like to try _____." It is obvious that more people in our society are turning to drugs to resolve many of their health issues, thinking that prescription drugs are an easy solution to their medical problems.

Drug advertisements can exaggerate health problems that are really not that major to begin with. For example, restless leg syndrome was a health issue that few people reported having prior to massive advertisements by drug companies.

The numbers speak clearly: Pharmaceutical sales have risen in the US to over $735 billion a year. Sociological researcher, Simon Williams, wrote an article discussing the major reasons why pharmaceuticals drugs have become so common in our nation. One central factor regards how the role of some drug companies has shifted from treating medical diseases to manufacturing and emphasizing diseases. In collaboration with doctors, medical groups, and the media, drug companies have a strong ability to create attention to certain diseases. Drug companies are not just marketing treatment, but also diseases. Williams refers to this as "pharmaceuticalization" of medicine -- the process in which drug companies are able to turn some things into medical matters. Pharmaceutical companies have gotten to the point where they have gained some medical authority and are viewed as contributors to medical knowledge in our society. They now advise us about what diseases we might have and that we should ask our doctor about possible prescriptions. Furthermore, drug companies are able to target and advertise to specific groups to make in-roads and personalize the medicine for them. Overall, pharmaceutical companies have gained more medical power in our society as well as becoming more effective at selling their product.

Another researcher, Nick Fox, talked about the domestication of pharmaceutical consumption in our society. He notes that drug products are now much more available and easier to purchases because of the internet. Direct-to-consumer marketing has benefited drug companies since they are able to give consumers a one-stop shopping experience for consumers. Consumers are able to get all of their information about diseases and drugs online, while also being able to fills prescriptions, get discounts, and have medicine shipped to their front door. Purchasing prescriptions has become a shipping experience that the drug companies have control over. This is why many drug companies use "lifestyle marketing" to promote their products.

It has now become part of our lifestyle to use drugs for all sorts of health problems--to help our sex lives, control our diet, alleviate daily allergies, and help us sleep. Drugs have become the solution to our annoying lifestyle factors, such as lack of sleep. As drug companies infuse their product into our daily lives, people's attitudes towards drugs have changed as more people are viewing drugs as simple solutions to health and lifestyle issues. Many believe that this is a result of skillful marketing.

Interestingly, historians of medicine are able to show how diseases appear and disappear based on social processes and treatments available in a given society. Drug companies keep lobbying for new disease categories to help sell their treatments. More lifestyle ailments that were once considered non-health related are now in the medical domain as a result of some of the efforts by pharmaceutical companies. Now there are more drugs that are found for a variety of lifestyle issues, which has led to a domestication of pharmaceutical consumption.

Drug companies have been criticized for seeking to market pills towards diseases that will give them the most profit, rather than focusing on developing treatments for major illnesses. Our reliance on prescription drugs can cause people to ignore healthier solutions to some of their health issues.

Our Major Problems

The Newtown CHAT participated in a community health care discussion to give feedback to President-elect Obama's transition team regarding health care issues facing many people in Sarasota. The Obama administration wants a collective effort to reform health care and asked participants to fill out a survey and give discussion feedback on a variety of health concerns. By the beginning of next month, the Health Policy Transition Team will use the feedback they received to prepare a report for the President-elect. Senator Daschle, the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has also been participating in the community discussions occurring across the nation.

All of the participants were eager and excited to talk about health care issues. Everyone provided thoughtful responses to the seven discussion questions the Obama administration wanted to get feedback on. A copy of the discussion guide can be found on the transition project's web site, here.

Over the next week, I'm going to cover the exciting discussion participants had during the meeting. This week's topic comes from the first question asked by the transition team: What do you perceive is the biggest problem in the health system?"

Based on the comments, there are several major problems with our health care system that participants wanted addressed. First, access to quality health care is often difficult, especially since the health care system in our country can be complex. Many of the participants said that it can be very hard to navigate our health care system. They said that insurance companies make it more difficult to get the type of care patients want, oftentimes requiring referrals and limiting access to certain doctors or medical procedures. Insurance companies often limit care by limiting coverage. There was a large amount of frustration over the role insurance companies have in our health care system. It seemed apparent that insurance companies often dictated patient care, which is frustrating for both doctors and patients.

Another major issue is that health care services differ across socioeconomic levels. Due to affordability issues, people in lower socioeconomic levels have many more challenges getting decent health care. Minor health care issues can become major financial issues for people with limited health care coverage and income.

Research on health disparities greatly support the comments participants made on our greatest problems with our health care system. According to policy research by the Obama transition team, "large medical bills have contributed to half of bankruptcies and foreclosures." Additionally, one previous blog post talked about some of the health problems associated with living in a poorer community. Furthermore, "being uninsured leads to delayed care" and expensive treatment. But, "even people with coverage are increasingly finding that it is insufficient or simply not there when needed."