Health Care

Benefit and Update On Cole Haakana

Filed under: Health Care

After writing about Cole Haakana, a young boy being treated for Central Nervous System Tuberculosis and his problem securing a diagnosis, we were flooded with e-mails from people wanting to help.

For three years the Halvorson-Haakana family say Cole has been victimized by risk management and physician's fear of litigation. They say they still can't secure a neurologist for their son, despite the fact he is being treated for a disease in his brain.

This Sunday from 1-5 p.m., the Narrows Saloon in Navarre, just west of Minneapolis, is hosting a fundraising event for the family. The program will feature a silent auction, door prizes, raffle drawings, and live music performed by Shalo Lee and the Guitar Daddies.

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Posted by Beth Walton at July 11, 2008 5:07 AM | Comments (1)

 

Syphilis on the Rise, Again

Filed under: Health Care

The Minnesota Department of Health released some bad news last month; syphilis is once again making a comeback in Minnesota.

For the last six years, the rate of syphilis has been increasing in the state, especially among gay and bisexual men. There were 114 new cases of the disease reported to MDH in 2007, a 30 percent increase from the previous year.

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Posted by Beth Walton at June 24, 2008 5:00 AM | Comments (1)

 

Reporter's Notebook: Surrogacy

Filed under: Health Care

The controversy surrounding surrogacy, the topic of this week's feature, is hardly new. Besides being regulated in the Code of Hammurabi, dating from 1800 B.C., a disagreement over a surrogate situation is linked to the great division between Christianity and Islam.

The Torah, the Bible and the Koran all recount the story of Avraham Avinu, Father Abraham, or Ibrahim, depending on the translation. As the tale goes, Abraham’s wife Sarah was infertile. Faced with the shame of being barren, she gave her husband her Egyptian handmaid, Hagar, to help him procreate.

Once the baby was born, however, Sarah was plagued by jealousy and forced Hagar and her new son, Ishmael, to flee. The two escaped to the Arabian Peninsula, and Ishmael and his descendants are often credited with the spread of the Muslim faith.

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Posted by Beth Walton at June 17, 2008 5:00 PM | Comments (1)

 

Parents: If your kid is fat, don't tell them

Filed under: Health Care

A new University of Minnesota study released this month has some stern advice for parents of obese kids: Shut the hell up. While sayings like, 'Wouldn’t it be nice if you dropped a few pounds?' or 'That would look great on you if you were one size smaller', may be uttered with the best of intentions, they don’t work, reports Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a public health nutritionist at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health who authored the report.

Her research found that sixty-percent of the overweight girls whose parents encouraged them to diet were still overweight five years later, compared to 44 percent of those who weren’t told to diet.

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Posted by Beth Walton at June 6, 2008 11:32 AM | Comments (1)

 

Anti-Abortion Group, Planned Parenthood Agree: Leave Abortion Images at Home

Filed under: Health Care

In 2006, anti-abortion group Vote Yes For Life attempted to essentially ban abortion in South Dakota. They put the ban to the voters, who rejected the measure 55 percent to 44 percent. Vote Yes remained undeterred and has accrued enough signatures to return the issue to the voting booth again this year. And in a strange political and ideological marriage, Vote Yes and Planned Parenthood agree on one thing for this year's showdown: Activists should leave their dead baby pictures at home.

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Posted by Ben Palosaari at April 28, 2008 4:08 PM | Comments (5)

 

Pork plant tied to mysterious illness wins top tier award

Filed under: Health Care

It seems like mysterious worker illness and butchered pig brains would be any PR flack’s nightmare. But, despite Quality Pork Processors's bad press as of late, the Austin, Minn. plant was recently given a top tier workplace safety award.

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Posted by Beth Walton at April 17, 2008 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

 

U of M: Your kids are fat because they don't eat breakfast

Filed under: Health Care

NBC Nightly News yesterday featured a report on a new University of Minnesota study that finds a link between obesity and skipping the bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

Consumer Affairs has a good summary of the findings:

Your mother always told you to eat a good breakfast. Maybe there's something to that.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health have found further evidence to support the importance of encouraging young people to eat breakfast regularly. They found that kids who ate breakfast on a regular basis were less likely than their peers to be overweight.

The study examined the association between breakfast frequency and five-year body weight change in more than 2,200 adolescents, and the results indicate that daily breakfast eaters consumed a healthier diet and were more physically active than breakfast skippers during adolescence.

Five years later, the daily breakfast eaters also tended to gain less weight and have lower body mass index levels – an indicator of obesity risk – compared with those who had skipped breakfast as adolescents.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at March 4, 2008 9:32 AM | Comments (3)

 

Suspecting Fraud, NY Attorney General Investigates United Health Care

Filed under: Health Care

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced today that he has opened an investigation into whether Minneapolis-based United Health Care, the nation's largest health insurer, has been fleecing patients on out-of-network charges for the last decade.

Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at February 13, 2008 4:47 PM | Comments (1)

 

Disgraced Healthcare Tycoon Pays Up

Filed under: Health Care

As you've probably heard, Dr. Bill "Your copay going up to $40 for an office visit is the sound of the market working" McGuire agreed yesterday to pony up $420 million he raked in from likely illegal (and unquestionably shameful) backdated stock options and other perks of running UnitedHealth Group, the largest private "health care provider" in the country.

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Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at December 7, 2007 1:02 PM | Comments (5)

 

Nine-Year-Old Chooses to Amputate Own Leg

Filed under: Health Care

NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams today picked up the amazing story--from local affiliate KARE-11--of Nick Nelson, a nine-year-old boy who requested that his leg be amputated.

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Posted by Kevin Hoffman at November 20, 2007 10:58 PM | Comments (1)

 

Boy, Interrupted: One Man's Struggle With An Eating Disorder (Web Extras)

Filed under: City Pages , City Pages , City Pages

Eating disorders destroy lives, and new research suggests that men are affected in greater numbers than was previously assumed. This week, Kevin Hoffman tells the story of Jeremy, a 36-year-old man who has struggled with the illness for most of his life.

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Posted by Jeff Shaw at November 3, 2007 1:44 PM | Comments (29)

 

From the Department of Things Better Left Unsaid

Filed under: Health Care

According to a New York Times investigation published last week, Minnesota psychiatrists who receive payments from pharmaceutical companies to study or lecture about their drugs are three or more times as likely to prescribe powerful—and controversial—anti-psychotic drugs to children.

After introducing readers to a Minnesota teen suffering from a painful, disfiguring side effect of one of the drugs, the Times asked the doctor who oversaw the team treating her to defend his relationship to the drug's maker. University of Minnesota Psychiatry Professor George Realmuto didn't remember the girl, but he did allow that he wanted "to be seen as a leader in my specialty."

The good doctor didn't stop there, though. "Academics don't get paid very much," he told the paper. "If I was an entertainer, I think I would certainly do a lot better." According to the Times, Realmuto's UM salary is $196,310.

By press time, Realmuto had not returned City Pages' call—which might be a wise move on his part.

Posted by Beth Hawkins at May 14, 2007 11:15 AM | Comments (1)

 

House passes $10 billion health care bill, includes money for 70,000 uninsured kids

Filed under: Health Care

For three years, Children's Defense Fund Minnesota has fought for funding to provide health care for all the state's children. Each year, the organization watched its proposal die in the Republican-controlled house.

Until last week, that is.

In an 86-45 vote, the (now Democratic) house passed a $10 billion health care bill that included funding for Minnesota's 70,000 uninsured kids. The senate passed a less generous health care package of its own, and the differences will have to be ironed out in a conference committee.

The real test, though, will likely come when the bill arrives at desk of the governor, who is not a fan of taxpayer-funded largesse.

"It's good news," said Marc Kimball, spokesman for Children's Defense Fund Minnesota, of the house bill's passage. "Hopefully as they move along in negotiations, we can hold most of it there."

Stay tuned.

Posted by Jonathan Kaminsky at April 23, 2007 3:53 PM | Comments (0)

 

Department of Health concerned about rising HIV cases in MN women

Filed under: Health Care

In 1990, women represented only 11 percent of the AIDS cases in the U.S. In 2005, that number rose to 26 percent. This increase is partially represented in the 1,289 HIV cases that have been reported among women and an estimated 1,168 that are currently living with HIV in Minnesota. Peter Carr, director of the STD and HIV Section of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), quoted on the MDH's website: "The proportion of HIV cases among women has been a growing concern over the past couple of decades in Minnesota. Women represented just two percent of our HIV infections in 1985, 19 percent in 1995, and now 29 percent in 2005." The STD and HIV Section of the MDH currently funds 22 programs through 19 agencies aimed at preventing the spread of HIV in adults and young people. National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day will be held this Saturday, March 10, to draw attention to the growing cases of HIV/AIDS in American women.

Posted by Corey Anderson at March 7, 2007 9:55 AM | Comments (0)

 

A Pandemic of Disinterest

Filed under: Health Care

Most of the time, public health officials complain that news media handling of medical news is shallow, sensationalistic, and otherwise long on distortions and short on science. But the headlines sparked by the flu deaths of a Minneapolis firefighter and four children in the last couple of weeks may actually be underkill, suggests Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. Osterholm has long cautioned that we're dangerously unprepared for a flu pandemic, and sooner or later we're guaranteed to have one.

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Posted by Beth Hawkins at February 16, 2007 12:54 PM | Comments (8)