Half of the nation’s 40 million family caregivers are performing complicated medical/nursing tasks for their family members and friends, including giving injections, preparing special diets, managing tube feedings, and handling medical equipment, according to a recent report from AARP. Additionally, 70% of these caregivers are dealing with the stress of managing pain relief amid a national opioid crisis. Continue reading
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided AHCJ with the email addresses and phone numbers of three key media officers, a move that a top official said she hoped would foster “a better working relationship” with reporters.
Michelle E. Bonds, director of the Division of Public Affairs at the CDC, provided the contact information after AHCJ’s Right to Know Committee described members’ difficulties getting answers from the CDC. Continue reading
The Federal Communications Commission will vote on July 10 to advance a $100 million telehealth initiative to boost funding for care programs that serve rural low-income Americans at home, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said this week at an event in rural Virginia.
The Connected Care Pilot Program would fund eligible health providers so they can obtain the broadband needed to provide remote patient monitoring and connected technologies to patients, Carr said. The three-year pilot will track costs, savings and outcomes, he said. Continue reading
Photo: Ken Lund via Flickr
People do what they must to survive, says the subject of a story by Lisa Gillespie, health reporter at NPR affiliate WFPL in Louisville, Kentucky. Even if it means traveling three hours back and forth to a food pantry, then lifting heavy bags that likely will exacerbate chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Continue reading
Photo Adam Jones via Flickr
An increasing number of uninsured, older immigrants are going to emergency rooms with strokes, heart attacks and other serious but preventable complications of cardiovascular disease, according to a recent study. Lack of health insurance may be to blame.
Older immigrants’ risk for cardiovascular disease may be higher among those who recently arrived in the United States, according to researchers contributing to the study published in the Journal of Nursing Scholarship. Continue reading
In April 1984, then-U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced the National Cancer Institute had discovered the virus that caused acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), and scientists hoped to soon have a cure.
Since the epidemic began, around 35 million people have died around the world from AIDS-related illnesses, and there is still no widely available cure. There have, however, been huge advances in treatment, with new drugs to prevent the disease and drugs that enable those diagnosed with the virus -human immunodeficiency virus or HIV – that causes AIDS, to live into their 70s. Continue reading