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Kindergarten Vaccination Rates Hold Steady

Kindergarten vaccination coverage rates for measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP); and varicella vaccine each approached 95% in the United States, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC report included 2016 to 2017 MMR, DTaP, and varicella vaccination coverage submitted by immunization programs in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Oklahoma and Wyoming did not report data. The median vaccination coverage across the nation for two doses of MMR was 94.0%. The median vaccination rate for the state-required number of doses of DTaP was 94.5%. The median vaccination coverage rate for two doses of varicella vaccine was 93.8%. Ranee Seither, MPH, an epidemiologist at the CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, and colleagues report that four states (California, New York, North Dakota, and Tennessee) all experienced increases in coverage of at least 1.5 percentage points for a

Insulin Glargine/Breast Cancer Link Seen Again in Type 2 Diabetes

In a large observational study, women with type 2 diabetes who received long-acting insulin glargine ( Lantus , Sanofi) had a 1.4-fold increased risk of breast cancer compared with women who were given intermediate-acting neutral protamine Hagedorn (NPH) insulin during roughly 4 years and up to 12 years of follow-up. In contrast, those who received insulin detemir ( Levemir , Novo Nordisk) did not have any increased risk of breast cancer. Of note, the breast-cancer signal with insulin glargine was only significant among prior insulin users and not new users. And this signal does not mean clinicians should change clinical practice without a review by regulatory agencies, caution the investigators, led by Jennifer W Wu, MD, of McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, who published their paper in the  Journal of Clinical Oncology . "Despite these findings, the benefits and risk of insulin glargine must be considered by drug regulatory agencies before any changes in clinical p

FDA Urges Clinicians to Help Limit Opioid Prescriptions

WASHINGTON ― US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, said the agency wants to find ways to limit both the number of opioid prescriptions and the duration of those prescriptions and is asking healthcare providers to step up and support this effort. "Some limits on duration of use are an inevitability," said Dr Gottlieb, who spoke at a special session of the  annual meeting  of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) here. He fleshed out more details on the agency's stated intentions to address the opioid epidemic. The pharmaceutical industry is supporting limits to duration of use, the supply chain has imposed restrictions, and about 20 states have put limits on first-time opioid prescriptions, noted Dr Gottlieb. "In an optimal world, we would see the provider community decide to work with these bodies," he said. But, he said, "We do see pushback from the provider community to a point about what this represents for intru

Burnout May Be Costing Your Institution Millions Each Year

SAN FRANCISCO — Burned out physicians are more likely to leave their job, and replacing them could be costing your institution millions of dollars each year, researchers reported October 13 at the 2017 American Conference on Physician Health. Burnout is widespread among physicians in the United States, with numerous surveys showing rates above 50%. However, the effect of burnout on physician turnover in hospitals and academic medical centers is less well understood. To learn more about its effects, Maryam S. Hamidi, PhD, associate director of scholarship and health promotion at Stanford Medicine WellMD Center in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues conducted a longitudinal study of physicians at Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. Of 831 physicians invited, 473 completed the Stanford Physician Wellness Survey in 2013 and consented to have their unique identifier numbers included for data linkage. The survey included questions on burnout, work hours, and su

Cardiac Motion: The Next Log-In Biometric?

BUFFALO, NY — The latest in state-of-the-art innovations using distinct biometric measures for security identification goes straight to the heart—literally. The Cardiac Scan, described as a "noncontact and continuous heart-based user authentication system," utilizes low-level Doppler radar to identify not just each individual's unique heart dimensions but its function and motion as the security code allowing entry to a system such as a laptop and then continues to monitor the heart to make sure the security hasn't been breached by an unauthorized user [ 1 ] . "Cardiac motion is an automatic heart deformation caused by self-excitement of the cardiac muscle, which is unique to each user and is difficult, if not impossible, to counterfeit," explained the authors of a pilot study on the system, to be presented this month at  MobiCom 2017 , the  Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking, a conference sponsored by the Association for

AMA Launches Common Data Model Initiative

The American Medical Association (AMA) has  launched  a collaborative of healthcare industry stakeholders to create a "common data model." Called the Integrated Health Model Initiative (IHMI), the program is intended to make it easier to pull together a wide variety of patient data in a structured format and exchange it among electronic health records (EHRs) from different companies. Participation in IHMI is open to all healthcare and technology stakeholders. Early collaborators include IBM, Cerner, Intermountain Healthcare, the American Heart Association, and the American Medical Informatics Association, among others. The participants will interact in an online platform hosted by the AMA. "We spend more than three trillion dollars a year on health care in America and generate more health data than ever before. Yet some of the most meaningful data — data to unlock potential improvements in patient outcomes — is fragmented, inaccessible or incomplete," said AMA

Should Physicians Treat Gun Violence as a Public Health Threat?

The recent mass shooting in Las Vegas was the largest in modern US history, with 58 people dead and more than 500 injured. This horrific event has once again highlighted gun violence and ignited a debate about whether physicians should wade into the national discussion on gun control. On the one hand, a group of editors, publishing in the  Annals of Internal Medicine ,  JAMA , the  New England Journal of Medicine , and  PLOS Medicine ,  shared a list of ways  in which healthcare professionals can use their skills and voices to address gun violence as a public health threat.    On the other hand, a suggestion in a  recent Medscape essay  suggesting that physicians should not own guns drew more than 300 hostile comments from Medscape readers, many of them angrily stressing that gun ownership is a Second Amendment right. Question 1 of 5 Do you believe gun violence is a public health threat? Yes No Unsure Question 2 of 5 Have you ever discussed gun sa