- Senator Baldwin Introduces HSHS Act to Protect Communities from Hospital Closures
- What to Know about Smoke, Heat and Health
- Tribal Partnership With UW-Madison Combines Ag Research With Indigenous Food Knowledge
- The Rewards of Working as Rural Docs
- Request for Information (RFI): Evolving the Network of the National Library of Medicine
- Dental Therapists, Who Can Fill Cavities and Check Teeth, Get the OK in More States
- Colorectal Cancer Is Rising among Younger Adults. Some States Want to Boost Awareness.
- Rural Hospitals Built During Baby Boom Now Face Baby Bust
- Food Stamps Go Further in Rural Areas — Until You Add Transportation Costs
- CMS Announces Resources and Flexibilities to Assist with the Public Health Emergency in the State of Texas
- CMS Proposes New Payments for Digital Health Under CY2025 PFS Draft Rule
- Improving Public Health by Strengthening Community Infrastructure
- Biden Harris Administration Proposes Policies to Reduce Maternal Mortality, Advance Health Equity, and Support Underserved Communities
- Nearly Half of U.S. Counties Don't Have a Single Cardiologist
- Randolph County, Ill. Turns Unused Part of Nursing Home Into State-Of-The-Art Behavioral Health Center
Financial Cost of Smoking in Pennsylvania Calculated
With the economic and societal costs of smoking totaling more than $300 billion a year and rising, the personal-finance website WalletHub released its report on The Real Cost of Smoking by State as well as accompanying videos.
To encourage the estimated 34.2 million tobacco users in the U.S. to kick the dangerous habit, WalletHub calculated the potential monetary losses — including the lifetime and annual costs of a cigarette pack per day, health care expenditures, income losses and other costs — brought on by smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.
The Financial Cost of Smoking in Pennsylvania (1=Lowest, 25=Avg.):
- Out-of-Pocket Cost per Smoker – $149,851 (Rank: 40th)
- Financial-Opportunity Cost per Smoker – $1,313,711 (Rank: 40th)
- Health-Care Cost per Smoker – $181,156 (Rank: 36th)
- Income Loss per Smoker – $248,492 (Rank: 30th)
- Other Costs per Smoker – $10,838 (Rank: 13th)
- Total Cost Over Lifetime per Smoker: $1,904,049
- Total Cost per Year per Smoker: $37,334
For the full report, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/the-financial-cost-of-smoking-by-state/9520/
Pennsylvania Suicide Prevention Task Force Wraps up Findings in Report
The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services’ (DHS) Suicide Prevention Task Force completed the statewide listening sessions held throughout fall 2019 and compiled their finding into an initial report. The work of the task force is a complement to the goals and strategies surrounding the governor’s Reach Out PA: Your Mental Health Matters initiative announced earlier this month and his executive order to protect vulnerable populations signed last year. Informed by the testimonies and suggestions of people affected by suicide, mental health professionals, and other stakeholders from across the commonwealth, the report will be used to develop a comprehensive, long-term strategy for significantly reducing the number of suicides in Pennsylvania.
Feedback from Listening Sessions
In August, the task force announced a series of 10 public listening sessions to be hosted throughout Pennsylvania. Over the next several months, Pennsylvanians gathered to talk about how suicide has affected their lives to help inform the task force’s draft prevention plan and work to reduce stigma around discussing topics such as mental health and suicide. More than 800 people — community members, state and local officials, representatives from county suicide prevention organizations, and stakeholders from other sectors of government — attended the sessions.
As a direct result of these listening sessions, the Suicide Prevention Task Force has identified the following key themes to inform the commonwealth’s four-year suicide prevention strategy:
- The stigma associated with mental health, suicide, and suicide attempts can affect the likelihood of individuals seeking help or continuing treatment, and how policymakers make decisions that affect mental health systems.
- Resources needed to elevate mental health as a public health issue, incentivize the integration of physical and behavioral health, and improve suicide prevention resources at the local level.
- Barriers to treatment, such as cost and insurance gaps.
- Access to more detailed suicide and suicide attempt data to help policymakers make effective, meaningful decisions.
- Issues within the mental health workforce, such as pay and barriers to entry, to improve quality of care.
- With proper resources, Pennsylvania’s schools and educators are uniquely positioned to save lives with suicide prevention strategies and resources.
The Legislature could take direct action to prevent suicides through the passage of a Red Flag Law (to provide a means to remove firearms from someone at risk for suicide) or safe storage requirements for firearms.
Suicide Prevention Plan
The task force anticipates releasing a comprehensive four-year statewide suicide prevention plan in the first quarter of 2020 that will be available for a public comment period. Following updates based on public comment, the task force will publish the final 2020-2024 Pennsylvania statewide suicide prevention plan, which will include:
- The landscape and gap analysis of detailed suicide statistics nationwide and in Pennsylvania.
- Guiding principles for suicide prevention in Pennsylvania.
- Goals and objectives to reduce suicide and suicide attempts in Pennsylvania, including reducing the stigma associated with suicide, suicide attempts, and mental health challenges.
- Recommendations for local and state policymakers, including public and elected officials, as well as cross-sector partners.
- A structure for the implementation and evaluation of Pennsylvania’s statewide suicide prevention plan.
You can read the task force’s initial report online. For more information on the task force visit the Suicide Prevention Task Force DHS web page.
New Toolkit on Farmer Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Released
The National Rural Health Information Hub has released a new toolkit, Rural Response to Farmer Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, which discusses the rising mental health crisis in farming communities and provides information on organizations and model programs that are addressing the challenges and mental health needs of this population.
Pennsylvania Announces New State Cancer Control Plan
The Pennsylvania Department of Health has released the 2019-2023 Pennsylvania Cancer Control Plan, recently adopted by Secretary of Health Rachel Levine. The plan contains 15 cancer control goals Pennsylvania is working to achieve over the next five-year period. The new website, pacancercoalition.org also includes a Cancer Plan Report Card which will be used to monitor progress toward meeting the goals.
Ensuring a More Accurate Rural Count for the 2020 Census
As the effort to count every resident in the United States begins, the Urban Institute provides data on rural populations living in hard-to-count areas and steps for achieving a more accurate count. Population counts from the U.S. Census are used to allocate federal funding, provide data for research and policy-making, and plan economic development, among countless other needs for quality of life. In addition to traditional challenges to counting in rural areas – remote homes, migrant workers, literacy – the 2020 Census will add a digital response option and many rural areas have low rates of internet access at home. More information is available by clicking here.
New Resource Focuses on Children’s Dental Health
Tiny Smiles, an American Dental Association “Give Kids A Smile Program”, is offering free resources along with Scholastic ahead of Children’s Dental Health Month. There are resources for educators, dental professionals, and medical professionals. Resources include kids’ activities and family topics for use in classrooms and office waiting rooms. All materials are available in English and Spanish and aim to promote the importance of oral health for young children.
75th Anniversary of Community Water Fluoridation
January 25, 2020 is the 75th anniversary of community water fluoridation, a practice that helps significantly improve oral health. Join Pennsylvania Coalition for Oral Health and other organizations in celebrating this important public health achievement by spreading the word on Facebook and Twitter. The American Fluoridation Society created free graphics to use to promote the anniversary on social media. There will be a “Twitter Storm” on Friday, January 24 from 10 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. to celebrate the anniversary. During this time, fill Twitter with community water fluoridation anniversary posts. Be sure to use #fluoride4health75 in all posts!
Nonprofits, Medical Profession Tackle Human Trafficking as a Health-care Crisis
Washington Post, Jan. 4, 2020 at 7:30 a.m. EST
Because of a lack of data, it’s difficult to estimate how many victims live in the United States. In 2018, the National Human Trafficking Hotline, which is operated by an anti-trafficking nonprofit group called Polaris, helped identify more than 23,000 survivors. That’s thought to be just a tiny fraction of the real number.
Trafficking doesn’t just jeopardize human freedom — it threatens public health. Victims experience injuries, sexually transmitted diseases and problems with everything from cardiovascular health to teeth. Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions are also common.
Trafficking happens under the table, but its survivors come into contact with health-care workers more than you might think. One study found that nearly 88 percent of victims interacted with a health-care worker while being trafficked.
There’s a growing push among doctors, paramedics and other health-care professionals to help end trafficking. Organizations such as HEAL Trafficking, a group of survivors and professionals in 35 countries, are teaching health-care systems to identify potential victims and respond to their needs.
In 2018, Congress passed legislation that created a federally sponsored trafficking-related continuing education program for health-care workers. The SOAR protocol trains health-care workers to Stop, Observe, Ask and Respond to potential trafficking and teaches them how to connect victims to needed care and relevant services. Data collection also is improving because of recently implemented diagnostic codes that allow health-care providers to identify cases of suspected and confirmed trafficking.
It will take more work to end trafficking, but change could well start in the doctor’s office.
If you are being trafficked or suspect someone else is, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888, or text “HELP” or “INFO” to 233733.
Differences in Preventive Care Among Rural Residents by Race and Ethnicity
Rural areas have long been racially and ethnically diverse. Yet most research on rural health focuses on rural-urban disparities without an explicit focus on within-rural differences in health by race and ethnicity. In that research on rural-urban disparities in health, rural residents tend to fare worse on most measures, including mortality, health status, access to care, and use of preventive services. Less is known about whether there are differences in healthcare use among rural residents by race and ethnicity. In this from the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research center, researchers examine differences in preventive care among rural residents by race and ethnicity. The brief can be accessed here.
Severe Maternal Morbidity and Hospital Transfer Among Rural Residents
Rural residents often travel farther to access medical care, especially obstetric care, and are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured than urban residents, contributing to higher rates of maternal morbidity. To raise awareness and increase understanding of the relationship between transfer, delivery hospital location, and severe maternal morbidity and mortality (SMMM) for rural residents, researchers at the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center compared data for rural and urban residents who gave birth between 2008 and 2014, to describe the relationship between a need to transfer patients for specialized care and increased risk for maternal morbidity and mortality. The report can be accessed here.