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The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute Funds 9 Organizations to Improve Awareness of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

 

Nine state and local organizations will receive a total of $383,000 for chronic obstruction pulmonary disease (COPD) education initiatives from The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health. The awards are part of the NHLBI's COPD Learn More Breathe Better campaign and will be granted under the campaign's communications contract with Porter Novelli. The contract supports community-based public health effects to improve awareness and understanding of COPD, the nation's third leading cause of death.

 

The NHLBI is funding 2 types of activities over the 1-year project period. Four organizations will receive funding to coordinate COPD regional centers dedicated to increasing awareness of COPD among at-risk populations, convening stateholders, and enhancing leadership for the prevention and treatment of COPD. Five additional organizations will receive funds supporting public education and outreach and provider education.

 

The agencies include the following:

 

1. Breath LA, Los Angeles, serving Hawaii, Arizona, Nevada, and Northern and Southern California

 

2. The Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago, serving Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio

 

3. The COPD Foundation, District of Columbia, serving the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania

 

4. The NC COPD Coalition, Raleigh, serving North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina

 

5. Breath New Hampshire, Bedford

 

6. American Lung Association in New Mexico, Albuquerque

 

7. American Lung Association National Office, Washington, DC

 

8. American Lung Association of West Virginia, Charleston

 

9. St. Mary's Hospital, Decatur, Illinois

 

 

This is the second year that the NHLBI has funded community awards to extend and broaden the rich of the national campaign effort. For further information, contact the NHLBI Communications Office.

 

New Strategic Pain Relief for National Institutes for Health Obesity Research Seeks to Curb Epidemic

To combat the obesity epidemic, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is encouraging diverse scientific investigations through a new Strategic Plan for NIH Obesity Research. More than one-third of adults in the United States and nearly 17% of the nation's children are now obese, which increases a person's chance of developing many health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, and some cancers. In 2008, obesity-related medical costs were an estimated $147 billion. Government, nonprofit and community groups, businesses, health care professionals, schools, families, and individuals are taking action to address this public health problem-and research can provide the foundation for these efforts. The NIH funds research to reduce the prevalence of obesity and its health consequences, an investment of $842 million in fiscal year 2010 plus awards totaling $147 million made in the same year through the Recovery Act. This NIH strategic plan, developed by the NIH Obesity Research Task Force, recognizes that eating less and exercising more are easier said than done. Highlighting the crucial role of research in efforts to reduce obesity, the plan emphasizes moving science from laboratory to clinical trials to practical solutions and is designed to help target efforts and resources in areas most likely to help.

 

The research recommendations include the following: (1) discover key processes that regulate body weight and influence behavior; (2) understand the actions that contribute to obesity and its consequences; (3) design and test new approaches for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight; (4) evaluate promising strategies to prevent and treat obesity in real-world settings and diverse populations; and (5) use technology to advance obesity research and improve healthcare delivery. For more information, contact http://www.obesityresearch.nih.gov.

 

Face Masks Could Prevent Spread of Tuberculosis

Patients with tuberculosis (TB) who wear a simple facemask may be able to greatly cut transmission rates to noninfected patients, according to a study conducted on guinea pigs. In the same study, using human subjects, 50% of TB was reduced in those wearing facemasks. The mask may represent a simple way to reduce TB transmission in half. These findings may lead to further research in an effort to prevent the spread of TB. For more information, visit http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=26995.

 

Beating a Debilitating Disorder

A simple blood test may help prevent a serious complication associated with a contrast agent commonly used in magnetic resonance imaging. Within the past 5 years, use of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) has been linked to the development of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF), a rare disorder affecting mainly patients with severe kidney disease. But since 2008, restrictive GBCA administration guidelines implemented by the Massachusetts General Hospital have proven effective in preventing NSF. Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis is characterized by widespread tissue fibrosis. Patients with NSF experience an increase in collagen in the tissues, causing thickening and hardening of the skin and of the extremities and often resulting in immobility and tightening or deformity of the joints. Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis can develop rapidly and may result in patients becoming wheelchair bound within just a few weeks. In some cases, there is involvement of other tissues, including the lungs, heart, diaphragm, esophagus, and skeletal muscle.

 

Massachusetts General Hospital began implementing restrictive GBCA guidelines in May 2007 to protect patients from possibly developing NSF. The guidelines require that a blood test be done on patients older than 60 years or at risk for kidney disease. The blood test measures how well the kidneys are doing. That number is then converted via a formula to estimate the glomerular filtration rate (GFR), which measures the rate of fluid flow through the kidneys. The guidelines stipulate a maximum GBCA dose of 20 mL for patients with a low GFR (<60 mL/min/m2). Gadolinium-based contrast agents should not be administered at all to patients currently undergoing dialysis treatment or with a low GFR (<30 mL/min/m2). For more information, contact http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=27003.

 

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is awarding $10 million for new research to 5 academic medical centers as part of its Prevention Epicenter grant program, which supports efforts to develop and test innovative approaches to reducing infections in health care settings. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 of 20 hospitalized patients will acquire an infection while receiving health care treatment for other conditions. Hospital-acquired infections are infections developed during the course of medical care. With the emergence of drug-resistant infections and new pathogens in health care settings, new strategies to detect and reduce health care-associated infection prevention have been rooted in research of the Prevention Epicenter Program, and we look forward to future advances.

 

The institutions receiving grants are the following: (1) Chicago Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Prevention Epicenter, (2) Duke University Prevention Epicenter, (3) Translation Prevention Research Epicenter, (4) Southeastern Pennsylvania Adult and Pediatric Prevention Epicenter Network, and (5) Washington University and BJC Epi-Center for Prevention of Healthcare Association Infections. For more information, contact http://www.cdc.gov/HAI/epiCenters/Index.html.

 

Glasgow Coma Scale Must Go, at Least in the Emergency Department

The undisputed universal measurement tool for mental status assessment, the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), is unreliable, hard to remember, and too nonspecific to be useful for emergency patients, according to an editorial published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine. The editorial accompanies a study comparing the GCS to the Simplified Motor Score for predicting outcomes for traumatic bring injury patients in the out-of-hospital setting. The authors claim that there are other, better ways to assess trauma patients, such as Simplified Motor Score or TROLL, which stands for test responsiveness, obeys, localizes, or less. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability among children and young adults in the United States. Approximately 1.7 million people sustain a TBI each year in the United States, which costs an estimated $60 billion a year. The GCS was developed in 1974 to assess and manage TBI but has morphed into a screening tool for patients with and without TBI. For more information, contact [email protected].