public health

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Iraq Death Toll Reaches 500,000 Since Start Of U.S.-Led Invasion, New Study Says

Kerry Sheridan | Huffington Post | October 17, 2013

Nearly half a million people have died from war-related causes in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, according to an academic study published in the United States on Tuesday. Read More »

Open Source Solutions for Immunization Tracking and COVID-19

The United States is starting to emerge from a nation-wide shut down imposed to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Most states are starting to reopen, and while higher education will likely stay largely remote this fall, primary and secondary schools are expected to reopen as the economy tries to get back on its feet. As both children and adults begin to spend more time together again, it is important to understand the impact that COVID-19 is having on current immunization practices and services, and how open source software is being leveraged to keep the population safe.

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'Big Chicken': The Medical Mystery That Traced Back To Slaughterhouse Workers

Maryn McKenna | NPR | September 10, 2017

Reimert Ravenholt, a physician at the Seattle Department of Public Health, was puzzled. It was the winter of 1956, and for weeks now, local doctors had been calling him, describing blue-collar men coming into their offices with hot, red rashes and swollen boils running up their arms. The men were feverish and in so much pain they had to stay home from work, sometimes for weeks...

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'Moral Bankruptcy of Capitalism': UK’s Top Public Doctor Shames Western Society Over Ebola

Staff Writer | RT News | August 3, 2014

Western countries should tackle drugs firms’ “scandalous” reluctance to invest in research into the virus which has already killed over 700 people in West Africa, the UK’s top public doctor said, adding, “They’d find a cure if Ebola came to London.” The pharmaceutical industry are reluctant to invest in research to produce treatments and vaccines “because the numbers involved are, in their terms, so small and don't justify the investment,” said Professor John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, an independent body for specialists in public health in the United Kingdom. Read More »

(Continued) FDA Plays Chicken With Antibiotics: Newly Exposed Documents Reveal Agency's "High Risk" Gamble With Human Health

Carmen Cordova | Switchboard | January 27, 2014

Just to offer a little more insight on FDA’s inaction, discussed broadly in a previous blog, I’ve detailed the history of just one of the antibiotic additives in question here. Read More »

1 Month To Stop Ebola Before It's 'Totally Out Of Control' - Global Aid NGO

Staff Writer | RT | October 2, 2014

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), on behalf of 34 NGOs battling Ebola in West Africa, has warned that the number of cases is doubling roughly every three weeks and the globe has only four weeks to stop the crisis from spiraling out of control...

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10 Things To Know About Karen DeSalvo

Frank Irving | Government Health IT | December 27, 2013

In announcing the appointment of Karen DeSalvo, MD, as the new national coordinator for health information technology, Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius focused on DeSalvo's experience as health commissioner of New Orleans. Here are 10 aspects of Karen DeSalvo’s background that may help define how she'll carry on the crucial work of her predecessors. Read More »

2012 Health Datapalooza: Open health data is no longer a government initiative, it's an American initiative

Dylan Scott | Governing Newsletter | June 6, 2012

One hundred applications and websites, all powered by open data, took center stage at the [Health Datapalooza]. In their honor, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park announced a revamped HealthData.gov during his opening keynote address Tuesday. “More and more innovation is happening with more and more data being made available,” Park said. “Health data is no longer a government initiative. It is an American initiative.”

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2015 Resolution: Accept That Diseases Hop Borders, Don’t Dismiss Them, And Don’t Panic

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | January 3, 2015

...There’s no question that the big public health story of 2014 was Ebola. The African epidemic has now racked up more than 20,000 cases, according to the World Health Organization, which has put together a useful map and timeline of developments since March...

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2019 International Conference on Disaster Medicine and Hurricane Resiliency Draws Hundreds

Press Release | American University of the Caribbean | March 20, 2019

More than 280 healthcare professionals, emergency preparedness experts, and government leaders gathered on campus March 8-11 with the goal of uniting their collective experience and expertise to increase their communities’ ability to manage hurricanes and other disasters. Attendees represented 12 countries, including 9 Caribbean islands, and a multitude of backgrounds in disaster preparedness and response, including disaster medicine and veterinary medicine, nursing, hospital administration, mental health, telehealth, EMS and first responders, disaster recovery and humanitarian assistance, medical education, and more.

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45 New Ebola Cases Caused Daily By Patients Being Turned Away By Overwhelmed Volunteers

Jonathan Benson | Natural News | September 12, 2014

The collapse of Liberia's healthcare system due to the Ebola crisis is spurring as many as 45 new cases of the illness daily, according to new data. Researchers from the UK figure that each patient turned away from already full clinics is inadvertently spreading the disease to 1.5 other people, a rate of reproduction that could result in a full-on "nightmare doomsday scenario."...

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5 Health Challenges The World Will Face In 2015

Julia Belluz and Steven Hoffman | Vox | December 23, 2014

What comes next for the future of the world's health?... But these are the issues reason would suggest will set the world's health agenda next year...

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7 Healthcare Big Data Projects Get Knight Foundation Funding To Push For Public Health

Deanna Pogorelc | MedCity News | January 15, 2014

An online portal connecting researchers with people willing to share their health data, a community health dashboard and a text-based counseling program for teens were the big winners of The Knight Foundation’s $2.2 million health data challenge. Read More »

9 Ways Health IT – Beyond EHRs – Helps Patients

Kristine Martin Anderson | Government Health IT | December 12, 2011

Even among very knowledgeable people, the concept of health information technology is often equated with its most familiar element, “electronic health records.” Adoption of electronic health records are a critical first step to realizing the transformational power of Health IT – but getting out of paper enables even greater HIT capabilities. Read More »

A 'Slow Catastrophe' Unfolds as the Golden Age of Antibiotics Comes to an End

Melissa Healy | Los Angeles Times | July 11, 2016

In early April, experts at a military lab outside Washington intensified their search for evidence that a dangerous new biological threat had penetrated the nation’s borders. They didn’t have to hunt long before they found it. On May 18, a team working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research here had its first look at a sample of the bacterium Escherichia coli, taken from a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. She had a urinary tract infection with a disconcerting knack for surviving the assaults of antibiotic medications. Her sample was one of six from across the country delivered to the lab of microbiologist Patrick McGann...

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