"Health & Medical News"

A $10-million grant to the Canadian Center on Substance Abuse will support a national campaign to discourage illicit-drug use among 10- to 24-year-olds, the Canwest News Service? reported Jan. 31.

Canada’s new Drug Prevention Strategy for Youth (PDF) aims to reduce youth drug-use rates, delay the onset of use, reduce drug-use frequency, and cut the use of multiple substances among those who do take drugs. It is part of the conservative government’s National Anti-Drug Strategy released in the fall and will include a two-year media campaign.

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With a Congressional funding ban finally lifted, the District of Columbia government announced that it will spend $650,000 of local taxpayers’ money to establish needle-exchange programs aimed at cutting HIV/AIDS transmission among drug users, the Washington Post reported Jan. 3.

In its FY2008 budget plan, Congress ended a ban on D.C. using public funds to fund needle exchanges, although a ban on federal funding for the harm-reduction programs remains in place. D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty said the clean-needle programs are needed to help reduce the HIV/AIDS rate in the city, which is among the highest in the nation.

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Which single intervention would do the most to improve health of those living on less than $1 a day?

The public library open access journal Medicine asked this question to leading experts across a wide variety of domains. There certainly is no consensus answer:

“PLoS Medicine is participating in a global theme issue on poverty and human development on October 22, 2007 (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/globalthemeissue.cfm). Over 200 scientific and medical journals are taking part. For our theme issue, we asked a wide variety of commentators worldwide??”including clinicians, medical researchers, health reporters, policy makers, health activists, and development experts??”to name the single intervention that they think would improve the health of those living in poverty. We also asked four individuals living in poor, rural agricultural communities in the Santillana district, province of Huanta, Ayacucho, Peru to give us their response to the question, ???What do you think would do the most to improve your health and the health of your family????

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Utah’s new anti-methampetamine public-awareness campaign calls on the friends and family members of users to help them overcome their addiction, the Deseret Morning News reported Sept. 24.

That’s a departure from typical campaigns against the drug, which often focus on “meth mouth” and other gruesome effects that the drug can have on users.

Popularity: 5% [?]