Archives for October 2010

Highlight HEALTH 2.0 Interview: Phil Baumann

October 31, 2010 | by

Phil Baumann is an anomaly; he began his professional career as an accountant, a treasury analyst and an enterprise process designer. After years in the enterprise, he decided to make a difference in healthcare and trained as a registered nurse. Following two years in the ICU, Phil transitioned into the pharmaceutical industry via a clinical research organization (CRO). In his free time, Phil Baumann blogs about how technologies influence us, focusing on healthcare applications of social media. He expounds regularly on his blog (PhilBaumann.com) and on Twitter (@PhilBaumann), discussing how healthcare and other related industries should approach emerging media technologies. Indeed, over the past two years, Phil has averaged over 500 tweets per month on Twitter (top five words: rt, twitter, #hcsm, good, social).

Phil Tweet Cloud
Phil Baumann

Last year, Phil Baumann started CareVocate Strategies, offering organizations personalized, professional and focused strategic guidance on how to understand their relationship with social technologies and communities, and how to best interact with their customers.

In July 2010, Phil started Health Is Social, a website where the healthcare and life sciences learn how to integrate digital and social media into their strategies. I had the opportunity to talk one-on-one with Phil Baumann about CareVocate Strategies, Health Is Social and the future of social media in healthcare. Last month, Phil was also recently invited to be on the Board of Advisors for Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media.

A Vaccine for Breast Cancer – Deadline 2020

October 29, 2010 | by

Since 1991, the National Breast Cancer Coalition — an influential disease lobbying organization — has promoted evidence-based medicine and focused its public policy advocacy on legislative priorities that encompass three primary goals: increased funding for breast cancer research, improved access to quality breast cancer care and clinical trials, and expanded influence of breast cancer advocates wherever and whenever breast cancer decisions are made.

Last month, the National Breast Cancer Coalition (NBCC) launched the Breast Cancer Deadline 2020 — a call to action for policymakers, researchers, breast cancer advocates and other stakeholders to end the disease by January 1st, 2020.

Improving Mothers’ Literacy Skills May Be Best Way to Boost Children’s Achievement

October 25, 2010 | by

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health concluded that programs to boost the academic achievement of children from low income neighborhoods might be more successful if they also provided adult literacy education to parents.

The researchers based this conclusion on their finding that a mother’s reading skill is the greatest determinant of her children’s future academic success, outweighing other factors, such as neighborhood and family income.

The analysis, performed by Narayan Sastry, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan, and Anne R. Pebley, Ph.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles, examined data on more than 3,000 families.

The study, appearing in Demography, was supported by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Oxidative Stress in Children with Celiac Disease

October 21, 2010 | by
ResearchBlogging.org

Celiac disease is a genetic digestive disorder triggered by consumption of the protein gluten, which is found in bread, pasta, cookies, pizza crust and many other foods containing wheat, barley or rye. Researchers now report that there is a factor independent of diet that contributes to oxidative stress in celiac disease patients; children with celiac disease have higher than normal levels of two oxidative DNA damage biomarkers, regardless of what they eat [1].

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease in which the consumption of gluten — a protein found in all forms of wheat, including spelt, kamut, semolina and triticale, as well as in barley and rye — induces an inflammatory reaction that destroys the gut. It occurs in almost 1% of the population, although in the United States as many as 97% of cases remain undiagnosed. Most autoimmune diseases are thought to be caused by an interaction between a genetic predisposition and an environmental trigger, but celiac disease is the only one for which the environmental trigger is known: gluten.

Early-stage Breast Cancer: Choosing Your Surgery

October 12, 2010 | by

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Health Dialog, a leading provider of care management, healthcare analytics and decision support, has made its industry-leading breast cancer decision aid Early Stage Breast Cancer: Choosing Your Surgery available to the general public. As a public service throughout the month of October, Health Dialog is providing access to a series of tools, information and resources about potential treatment options for breast cancer (see below).