"Health & Medical News"

From:
Treatment Research Institute
600 Public Ledger Building, 150 S. Independence Mall West
Philadelphia, PA 19106
Tel: (215) 399-0980
http://www.tresearch.org

Paying substance abuse treatment providers for results, not services, may lead to improved quality of care, according to the first published study of a novel performance-based contracting system implemented by the State of Delaware in 2002.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The NAACP, National Urban League and other groups called on Congress to end the federal ban on funding needle-exchange programs, saying that the harm-reduction strategy has been proven to prevent HIV/AIDS, the Associated Press reported Feb. 6.

The plea was made in coordination with the Harm Reduction Coalition and in conjunction with National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Federal funding for needle exchanges have been banned for 20 years, although most states fund the programs.

Popularity: unranked [?]

A commercial space flight industry is working to make the adventure and romance of space travel available to the general public — or at least to those with $200,000 or more to spare.

Space tourism, still in its embryonic stages, has some experts estimating that 10,000 to 15,000 people a year will fly in orbital and suborbital space in the next decade.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

A Facebook group that features photos and videos of women getting drunk has attracted more than 172,000 members and about 5,000 photos, CNN reported Dec. 10.

The group, dubbed “Thirty Reasons Girls Should Call it a Night,” shows young women passing out, vomiting, urinating in public, and drunkenly carousing. The group is part discussion forum, part bulletin board.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Washington — The Dept. of Health and Human Services is appealing a court order that it release Medicare physician claims data to a consumer group.

The HHS appeal in late October blocks for now a plan by Consumers’ Checkbook/Center for the Study of Services to use the claims data to provide patients with more detailed information about the quality of physician care. The nonprofit organization had planned, as a first step, to create a free online public resource listing how many times in one year individual physicians had performed certain Medicare procedures in the District of Columbia and the four states covered by the order: Illinois, Maryland, Virginia and Washington.

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Popularity: unranked [?]

The group Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) said that a recent decision to ease federal penalties for crack cocaine offenses should be retroactively applied to offenders already in prison, the Austin American-Statesman reported Nov. 3.

Congress went along with the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recommendation that crack penalties should be reduced by about 10 percent to bring them into closer alignment with penalties for powder-cocaine offenses. But FAMM President Julie Stewart said that the policy shift doesn’t go far enough because it was not retroactively applied.

Popularity: unranked [?]

From:
The Walsh Group
6701 Democracy Blvd., Suite 300
Bethesda, MD 20817
Tel: 301-571-9494 | Fax: 301-571-2417 | Email
www.walshgroup.org

Mutual-aid support groups play a vital role in substance abuse treatment in the United States.

In 2005, The Walsh Group conducted a national survey of participants in mutual-aid support groups for addiction to identify key differences between participants in various recovery groups. Extensive data was collected from survey respondents on many aspects of recovery.

Popularity: unranked [?]

From:
The Walsh Group
6701 Democracy Blvd., Suite 300
Bethesda, MD 20817
Tel: 301-571-9494 | Fax: 301-571-2417 | Email
www.walshgroup.org

Mutual-aid support groups play a vital role in substance abuse treatment in the United States.

In 2005, The Walsh Group conducted a national survey of participants in mutual-aid support groups for addiction to identify key differences between participants in various recovery groups. Extensive data was collected from survey respondents on many aspects of recovery.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Catholic League is blasting Miller Brewing Co. for sponsoring what the group calls “an incredibly outrageous and palpably anti-Christian event” — a San Francisco street fair — Fox News reported Sept. 27.

The 2007 Folsom Street Fair was billed as having “fairgrounds filled with people in their most outrageous leather/rubber/fetish attire.” It benefits a number of local charities.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is working with a task force of high-school students and parents to place stickers on packages of beer, wine coolers and other alcoholic beverages warning against buying alcohol for minors, the Washington Post reported Sept. 13.

Stop-sign shaped stickers will be placed on products at 50 participating retailers in the Alexandria area. The “sticker shock” campaign is intended to prevent underage drinking.

Popularity: 7% [?]