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June 25, 2009
The Vitality Project aims to improve health of entire community
Albert Lea, Minnesota is the center of an innovative, ten-month pilot project designed to improve the health and life expectancy of people who live and work there.
It's called the AARP Blue Zones Vitality Project.
Leslie Lytle, a University of Minnesota epidemiology professor, is co-director of the project.
She says that instead of focusing on diet and exercise, the project encourages the best practices of the world's longest-lived populations with strategies such as making it easier to get around on and encouraging the development of social networks.
Listen to Lytle on Public Health Scene
June 17, 2009
Klobuchar introduces food-safety bill
Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced federal legislation to promote a more rapid and effective national response to outbreaks of foodborne sickness like the recent case of salmonella-tainted peanut butter and last year's outbreak caused by tainted jalapeño peppers.
Last spring, people across the country were getting sick from salmonella. After cases began to show up in Minnesota, public health officials managed to trace the contamination to jalapeno peppers from Mexico. In the fall, people across the country were again getting sick from salmonella, including nine deaths (three of them in Minnesota). Again, the Minnesota team succeeded in tracing the source to peanut butter from a processing facility in Georgia.
Continue reading "Klobuchar introduces food-safety bill" »
June 9, 2009
Smoking bans do not cause economic harm
Smoking bans do not cause economic harm to bars and restaurants. That’s according to a study led by epidemiologist Jean Forster from the University of Minnesota.
Forster and colleagues used state-mandated reporting data from 10 Minnesota cities for the years 2003 to 2006. That was before the introduction of a statewide smoking ban, but at a time when a number of local cities had adopted their own full or partial bans.
Forster says that smoking bans are an effective way to protect people—especially bar and restaurant employees—from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke.
• Listen to Forster on our Public Health Moment podcast
June 5, 2009
The Economic Case for Health Care Reform
The American health care system is growing at an unsustainable rate that threatens to have a devastating impact on the growth in workers’ take-home pay and the government budget deficit.
That's according to a new report from the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Jean M. Abraham, University of Minnesota health policy expert, was a co-author. But the report goes on to articulate the advantages of proceeding now with health care reform.
"Our analysis shows that successful health care reform would have major benefits for the U.S. economy," writes Abraham and the co-authors. "Over time, the slowing of cost growth through increased efficiency would bring about substantial increases in Americans’ standard of living. It will also prevent devastating increases in the budget deficit."
Download the report
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