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Washington Update
*The Sugar Association is
threatening to lobby Congress to halt U.S. funds for WHO, in retaliation
for a WHO report recommending that people
limit their sugar intake to no more than 10 percent of their daily calories.
Sens. Larry E. Craig, R-Idaho, and John Breaux, D-La., have also written
letters to HHS and the Department of Agriculture, asking them to curb
WHO’s promotion of the report. To read more about the WHO report,
go to http://www.who.int/mediacentre/releases/2003/pr32/en/. To read
the Sugar Association’s letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson,
go to http://www.sugar.org/newsroom/CoalitionletterHHSWHO.pdf *The Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality needs a raise, rather than a pay cut, to carry out its mandate of improving health care for all Americans in FY 2004, say the Friends of AHRQ, a coalition of more than 130 organizations. The group sent a letter to Congressmen Ralph Regula, R-Ohio, and David Obey, D-Wis., encouraging them to back a $390 million budget for AHRQ. The president's proposed budget would reduce the current AHRQ budget to $279 million, an 8 percent decrease in the current funding. The Center for the Advancement of Health has signed on to the letter. *AHRQ is conducting a three-month pilot study of the ePocrates "Doc Alert" system, which would distribute urgent messages about bioterror attacks to the personal digital assistants of 700,000 clinicians. The test messages will include information on six high-threat bioterror agents like anthrax, plague and smallpox, along with a Web link to get more information. AHRQ wants to find out whether messages sent through a handheld computer network will be timely and useful for clinicians. *The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wants HIV testing to become a routine part of prenatal care, the agency announced this month. The CDC is asking states to begin routine testing of pregnant women or their newborns in exchange for federal funding. The policy is a switch from earlier guidelines that relied on voluntary requests for the test. The new guidelines, along with the CDC's full plan to boost HIV prevention, can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5215a1.htm. *According to articles
in Science and the New York Times, NIH program staff members are informally
warning grant applicants not to use terms
like “transgender” and “needle exchange” in grant
applications, lest they trigger congressional inquiries about the grant
and its peer review. In particular, grants related to sex workers and
sexually transmitted diseases are being scrutinized by the House Subcommittee
on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. To read the New
York Times article, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/national/
18GRAN.html?pagewanted=print&position= (registration
required). To
read the Science article, go to http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/300/5618/403 *Members of the Coalition for Health Funding, including the Center for the Advancement of Health, signed on to a letter supporting the highest possible 302b allocation for the House’s Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriation Subcommittee. 302b allocations are the funding amounts that the House Appropriations Committee distributes to individual appropriations subcommittees to fund programs under their jurisdiction. These Labor-HHS-Education programs “encompass a connected continuum where biomedical, behavioral and health services research guides community-based prevention, health promotion and treatment strategies,” according to the Coalition letter. *NIH's Office of Dietary Supplements is looking for help in revamping its Strategic Plan for 2004 through 2009. Comments on the past activity and future plans of ODS are welcome at ODSplan@od.nih.gov. ODS will also host a public meeting on the topic on May 8-9 in Bethesda, Md. For more information on the plan or meeting, go to http://ods.od.nih.gov/showpage.aspx?pageid=154
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