| A self-help incentive to employee health
For a guy who started a successful health plan and sold it for hundreds of millions to America's biggest health insurer, Kyle Rolfing is surprisingly down on the industry.Patients just don't trust insurers, Rolfing says.That's why he and other co-founders of Definity Health, now part of UnitedHealth Group Inc., started a new kind of health services company altogether called RedBrick Health. The Minneapolis-based company is not an insurer but it does a lot of things insurers do these days. RedBrick runs health-and-wellness as well as disease-management programs for companies, then translates better employee health to lower monthly premiums."When we built Definity, we recognized trust was an issue," Rolfing said. "We have a different solution now." RedBrick has signed up its first clients: Hannaford Brothers Co., which owns more than 150 grocery stores in the Northeast; Welch Allyn Inc., a medical device manufacturer in New York; and Ridgeview Medical Center in Waconia.For CEO Rolfing, it's the next stage in the evolution of so-called consumer-driven health care."It puts more accountability on consumers," he said.RedBrick works with large, self-insured employers and designs incentives for employees to get healthier.
Research Findings on Allergic Asthma Presented at ACAAI Annual Meeting
Researchers are presenting nearly 350 abstracts on the diagnosis and treatment of allergic diseases at the ACAAI Annual Meeting. Key studies on allergic asthma investigate anti-IgE therapy for allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis; obesity; asthma control; and exhaled nitric oxide as a non-invasive biomarker of airway inflammation. .
Poutine's turning 50 - time for some respect, please
If you thought poutine, Quebec's favourite fast food concoction, was made of french fries topped with gravy and salty cheese curds, you're wrong. According to the political scientist who wrote a book on Quebec's signature dish, the real recipe is a generous portion of shame fried gently in an inferiority complex and topped with a hint of denigration from the ROC (Rest of Canada) - and a touch of guilty pleasure. "Love it or hate it, poutine has become a strong symbol of Quebec," said Charles-Alexandre Théorêt, author of Maudite poutine! .
British PM Aims For "World Class" Education For UK
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has set out his vision for education in a speech at the University of Greenwich this morning. The PM said that the UK's ambition should be a "world-class" education system, settling no more for "second best". Gordon Brown's Complete Speech Speech on Education My school motto was 'I will try my utmost'. The motto of the school in the next-door town was 'rise to the light'. .
What's Going On: On-going events
Speak up for a child in foster care. SF's foster children need your help. Be a Court Appointed Special Advocate. Men and people of color are especially needed. Training provided. Call for upcoming orientations dates and locations, 415-398-8001. Info at www.sfcasa.org. Become a volunteer at one of SF's most resourceful youth organizations. SMART, Schools Mentoring and Resource Team, is a scholarship program for highly motivated, low-income middle school students in SF. Everyone welcome, males and people of color strongly encouraged. 1370 Mission St., 2nd Floor, SF. 415-865-5400. www.thesmartprogram.org. Are you experiencing loss, divorce and/or separation, child custody issues? Need someone to talk to? You are not alone. There is support available. BAWELDS (Black African Women Experiencing Loss, Divorce and/ or Separation) offers support and resources that can enable you to get to the other side with ease and grace.
Food v drugs
Out of all the things likely to shorten our lives in the UK, coronary heart disease is the most likely. It is believed that almost 80 per cent of adults have total cholesterol levels above the ideal and that raised cholesterol and fats in the blood are responsible for well over half the deaths caused by the disease. Lowering cholesterol levels has, not surprisingly, become a big focus of the NHS, and to this end, the mass prescription of a group of cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins is under way to those whose cholesterol levels register as "high" in routine GP tests. Statins work by blocking enzymes that play a key role in the production of cholesterol in your liver (most cholesterol in our blood is made in our liver rather than being eaten directly in food). About three million of us are knocking back statins daily, millions more are being offered them and there is a proposal that these drugs should ultimately be offered to all men over 50 and women from the age of 60.
Local briefs
Indiana Regional Medical Center Mobile Medical Unit is offering free blood pressure screenings from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Bi-Lo Foods, Blairsville, and 2 to 4:30 p.m. at Mercek's Bi-Lo, Homer City. Wednesday Indiana Regional Medical Center Mobile Medical Unit is offering free blood pressure screenings from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Rankin's Exxon, Shelocta, and 2 to 4:30 p.m. at Riverhall, Saltsburg. Nov. 27 Indiana Regional Medical Center Mobile Medical Unit is offering free blood pressure screenings from 10 a.m. to noon at the United Methodist Church, Marchand, and 1 to 4:30 p.m. at Valeski's Fourth Street Bi-Lo, Indiana. Nov. 28 Sensory Processing & Play, 6 p.m., Indiana Regional Medical Center. Sponsored by the Western Central Pennsylvania Chapter of the Autism Society of America.
Public never warned about dangerous device
A young mother in Los Angeles was desperate. A rare form of cancer was ravaging her 5-month-old son. Their doctor said chemotherapy offered the best hope for survival, a 1-in-4 chance. Natalia Campos watched as her baby, Antonio, struggled in pain through the first few treatments. Then she learned of an alternative-therapy clinic that promised a cure, without pain, using a machine called a PAP-IMI. Twice a day at the Bio-Energy Services clinic, Campos held Antonio while the 260-pound machine pulsed powerful electromagnetic waves into the tumor bulging from his neck. The treatments failed, and Antonio died — the victim not only of his cancer, but of what one health official later called a "major national health fraud." The man behind that fraud is Panos Pappas, a math professor from Athens, Greece, who invented the PAP-IMI.
|
