The
Center for the Advancement of Health translates
to the public the latest research on prevention,
chronic disease management and health care, with
an emphasis on how social, behavioral and economic
factors affect illness and well-being. The Center
is an independent nonprofit corporation that receives
core funding from the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation and The Annenberg Foundation.
D
I S C O N N E C T
Even
though high cholesterol and high blood pressure are
well known to the public as risks for heart disease,
getting people to take their medicine remains a barrier
to better health. In a recent study in the Archives
of Internal Medicine, researchers found that six
months after they were given pills for cholesterol
and blood pressure, one only in three out more than
8,400 patients surveyed were still taking them six
months later. One reason? The patients were taking
too many other drugs. (Arch Intern Med.
2005; 165:1147-1152.)
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O P_M E D I A_H
I T S
A
Health Behavior News Service story from the American
Journal of Preventive Medicine about the frequency
of sexual abuse of boys and its long-term effects was
used by ABC News.com, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
the Washington Times, Science Daily and
dr.koop.com among other media.
Last
month, when Washington was chattering about the identity
of “Deep Throat,” four of the nation’s
top health officials addressed a gathering of scientists
convened to solve the problem of what our children are
stuffing down their own throats – French
fries, doughnuts and sodas.
Health
and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt announced a new
national education program called “We Can! – Ways
to Enhance Children’s Activity & Nutrition,” while
NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni announced that $440 million
will be spent this year on researching how to wean kids
from junk food and get them exercising. The National Institute
on Environmental Health Sciences along with the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention will support additional
research on how the “built environment” can
be altered to promote physical fitness.
These
efforts by the federal government are more than commendable;
they are necessary at a time when kids gets one-third of
their calories from snack foods, only one-third of schools
offer physical education and 9 million American children
are overweight.
But
these efforts are not enough. This campaign against obesity
and in favor of fitness reminds me of the 1960s anti-pollution
campaign starring Suzy Spotless, nagging her father, and
all of America, to stop being litterbugs. As if tossing
your chewing gum wrapper on the highway was going to do
anything about industrial smokestacks raining down acid
on our neighborhoods, our rivers from catching fire or
bulldozers stripping mountaintops for coal.
Suzy
Spotless is back again, this time with a medical degree
and a government title, shaking her pretty finger at us
to eat more fruits and vegetables and reminding us that
the obesity epidemic is our fault. Secretary Leavitt tells
us, “The president has always been a strong advocate
and example of being fit.” As the kids might say, “Whatever.”
What
is this government really doing, beyond talking, about
saving pounds, saving dollars and saving lives lost to
poor physical fitness?
America’s
genetic profile did not change in 40 years to suddenly
make us become a nation of fatties. Even the government’s
top doctors agree that obesity is due entirely to the environment
and culture we live in – mass marketing of fast food;
limited access by the poor to nutritious food; and the
zoning of parks, walkways and stores out of our neighborhoods.
Health
in general and fitness specifically are aspects of life
we can, in fact, control individually. But the environmental
barriers to achieving health and fitness are largely the
result of economic policies and regulations made or unmade
by government. We didn’t get into this food fix all
by ourselves, and we aren’t going to slim down all
by ourselves, either. It will take a combination of personal
responsibility and at least a little legislative leverage.
It
seems to me if you can ban evolution from the classroom,
you certainly can ban Coca-Cola, too.
Translation was the focus
of a recent report by the President’s Cancer Panel http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/ADVISORY/pcp/pcp04-05rpt/ReportTrans.pdf.
Although cancer research is heavily biomedical in nature,
the strong articulation of a mandate for collaborative research
and early public dissemination of results will help biobehavioral
research as well. Among its recommendations are increased
funding for translation-oriented research; new strategies
to increase the adoption rate of new cancer interventions;
increased training of translation researchers; and better
public understanding of cancer research.
Disparities in health outcomes based
on race and class is another area familiar to health
and behavior researchers and only now gaining some traction
with the public. The Center’s Barbara Krimgold
was an advisor to two organizations that will release
a new report identifying the cultural gaps health care
and community-oriented solutions. The report, “Closing
the Gap: Solutions to Race-Based Health Disparities” will
be available July 19 from www.nwfco.org.
Biomedical research on gender differences is
not getting enough support from the National Institutes
of Health, reports the Society for Women’s
Health Research. “We looked at NIH research grants
awarded between 2000 and 2003 and found that, across
all institutes, an average of just 3 percent of grants
focused on sex differences,” said Sherry Marts,
Ph.D., the Society’s vice president for scientific
affairs and an author of the report. “Given the
growing body of body of literature on sex differences,
external reports about NIH practices, and the NIH’s
internal efforts to promote this research, we had hoped
to see higher and increasing levels of funding for this
important area of research.” The report is available
at http://womenshealthresearch.org/press/CRISPreport.pdf.
A supplement to the journal Nicotine and Tobacco
Research highlights systems change research
for tobacco dependence treatment. The supplement includes
articles on patient satisfaction with tobacco intervention
by healthcare providers, strategies to link pharmacotherapy
with telephone counseling in a managed care organization,
improving the delivery of evidence-based treatment in
federally qualified health centers, dentists’ knowledge,
attitudes and behaviors toward tobacco use intervention,
and others. The supplement is available online at www.rwjf.org and www.ntrjournal.org.
