Did You Know?

In order to highlight the growing need for concern and awareness about autism, the Autism Society has been celebrating National Autism Awareness Month since the 1970s. The United States recognizes April as a special opportunity for everyone to educate the public about autism and issues within the autism community.

With innovative programs, county officials encourage fearful parents to vaccinate

Amanda Tarpening doesn’t want the state telling her to vaccinate her child.

And California public health officials don’t want her 17-month-old daughter, who has not been immunized, to fall ill or help spread a vaccine-preventable disease.

It’s a quandary that has physicians frustrated and parents such as Tarpening citing their First Amendment rights.

As a growing number of Californians exempt their children from required immunizations, public health departments statewide are launching campaigns to try to persuade them to vaccinate, and legislators are trying to make it harder for them to get exemptions.

Statewide, the number of fully vaccinated children has been falling steadily since 2004, when 92.9 percent of students entering kindergarten had all required immunizations, according to the California Department of Public Health. Only 90.7 percent — or 11,470 fewer kids — were fully vaccinated in 2010, the most recent year for which data are available.

“The trend results in a greater number of Californians being vulnerable to preventable illnesses,” said Dr. Gilberto Chavez, the state’s Center for Infectious Disease deputy director. “The risk of outbreaks and widespread illness in our communities increases as the number of families opting not to vaccine their children increases.”

As consumer advocates celebrate the early benefits of the federal healthcare law near its two-year anniversary, they are also warning about the need to crack down on the potential for deceptive marketing related to reform.

State Sen.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 22 (HealthDay News) — U.S. health experts recommended Wednesday that all adults get vaccinated against whooping cough (pertussis), an infectious bacterial disease that triggers uncontrollable coughing and is especially dangerous to infants.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to expand the vaccination recommendation to include all adults, including those aged 65 and older.

As anyone who has been a patient or a visitor at a hospital knows, they’re often confusing, chaotic places. By the time you learn the routines and the rules, with any luck you’re recovered and on your way out the door.

Elizabeth Bailey’s father wasn’t that fortunate. When he started experiencing double vision several years ago at age 81, he had a biopsy performed on an outpatient basis at a New York hospital to determine if he had a rare and dangerous inflammation of an artery near his temple. He didn’t, as it turned out. But things went downhill from there.

Seeking to break managed care’s monopoly on dental care for Sacramento County’s poor children, state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg plans to introduce legislation to allow more choice in dentists, his aide told the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday [March 13, 2012].

More than 110,000 Sacramento County children on Medi-Cal participate in a mandatory dental managed care model, the only one of its kind in the state. But that model also has one of the worst records of care: In fiscal 2010-2011, 30.6 percent of Sacramento County children with Medi-Cal saw a dentist, compared with nearly half of the children on Medi-Cal statewide.

There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher.

That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish. Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive.

People who have trouble sleeping may be at higher risk of developing memory problems, new research shows.

People who woke frequently in the night had a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, according to work to be presented at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in New Orleans in April.

Nearly two years after the passage of the federal health law, more than 40 percent of people say they know little or nothing about how the law will affect them, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest monthly health tracking poll, published in December.  That figure hasn’t budged since April 2010, just after the law was signed.

Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, aims to change that with a book, “Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It’s Necessary, How It Works,” that explains the ins and outs of the law in an innovative way: an adult comic-strip form similar to graphic novels.