National: Childhood Obesity Rates Hits Plateau
A new analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions shows the growing obesity epidemic among U.S. children and teens has hit plateau after rising for more than two decades. However, a third of U.S. Kids remain obese. It is not clear if the public anti-obesity efforts to limit junk food and increase physical activity cause the change in this trend.

Arizona: State Medicaid Program Will Cover Smoking Cessation Treatments
Recently Arizona Gov. Napolitano signed into law a measure that allows the state's Medicaid program to cover the cost of smoking cessation treatments. Under the bill, the state Medicaid program will be eligible to secure federal matching funds to cover enrollees' use of nicotine replacement therapies and federally approved tobacco use medications. With the legislative change, however, the system is expected to recover nearly 67 percent of those expenses through federal support. The state's Medicaid program spends approximately $316 million on smoking-related illnesses.

New York: Supermarket Shortage is a Barrier to Health Eating
This month, the New York City Department of City Planning released a report indicating that the city is suffering from a severe shortage of grocery stores, particularly in minority and low income neighborhoods. Roughly three million residents live in neighborhoods that are characterized by a dearth of supermarkets and high prevalence of diseases such as diabetes and obesity. The report calls on city officials to work with other agencies to coordinate support for grocers, modify land use regulations affecting supermarkets, consider supermarket need in making rezoning decisions, and offer city-owned property for supermarket space to spur supermarket development in underserved areas.

West Virginia: Policy Expert Will Help to Redesign State Health System
West Virginia legislators are working with a health policy expert to create an effective and efficient health system that promotes chronic disease management and wellness. Emory University health policy professor Kenneth Thorpe will manage four working groups representing providers, consumers, business and labor agencies and focus on four main goals: redesigning care delivery to enhance chronic disease management; promoting wellness and prevention in schools, communities, and workplaces; simplifying health care administration and incorporating new technologies.

Hawaii: New School-Based Wellness Guidelines
The Hawaii Department of Education has announced plans to implement new state wellness guidelines to improve school health. Under the new plan, schools will be required to provide at least 20 minutes of recess for students and meet nutrition requirements for meals and snacks. The guidelines require vending machines to include only water, low or nonfat milk, and 12-ounce juice drinks. The program also bans all products that list sugar as a primary ingredient or contain more than eight grams of fat, two grams of saturated fat, 100 calories or 200 milligrams of sodium per serving.

Arkansas: State Will Require more Bilingual Medical Personnel in Future
A report commissioned by the state Senate in 2005 in an effort to encourage lawmakers to prepare the state's agencies and infrastructure for shifting demographics found that Hispanics will become the largest minority group in Arkansas by 2020, which will require the hiring and training of more bilingual medical personnel. The report found that the number of Hispanics is expected to nearly triple from 86,866 in 2000 to 240,404 in 2002. Sen. Shane Broadway says he might file legislation next year that would require agencies to develop plans to address the demographic changes.

Iowa: Gov. Culver Signs $25 Million Bill to Increase Coverage for Children
Gov. Chet Culver recently signed into law a bill that provides an additional $25 million over the next three years to extend coverage to more than 50,000 uninsured Iowa children. The law also sets the goal of establishing universal health coverage for all state residents within five years, allows children to stay on their parents health plans until age 25, establishes a medical records task force to study expanded use of electronic health records, and establishes standards to reduce the rate of childhood obesity in the state.

Arizona: Hospital Group Launches MRSA Prevention Campaign.
The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association recently launched a statewide campaign to reduce the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The program "Preventing MRSA: It's In Our Hands" aims to help hospitals educate staff and consumers about prevention strategies proven to limit the spread of infections ( contracted while under medical care). The program will provide hospitals with MRSA pamphlets, fact sheets and other informational tools for distribution within their facilities and communities.

New York: Hospitals Join Health Data Exchange
The Bronx Regional Health Information Organization will pilot a new electronic health information system designed to connect physicians at participating hospitals and health care facilities in the Bronx, N.Y. area. The systems, which are funded by participating health organization and a grant from the New York State Department of Health, will initially enable six facilities to view and update patients' electronic health records. An additional 22 health care facilities will have access to records and later will gain the ability to add and update data.

Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster
This report by Task Force Mass Critical Care offers recommendations to help hospitals and public health agencies maximize essential critical care resources in the event of a large-scale emergency. The task force calls for all health facilities to designate a triage team charged with prioritizing patients in the event that providers must ration resources. The task force notes, however, that a formal triage and resource allocation strategy should take effect only after a hospital exceeds its surge capacity and exhausts all attempts to use outside resources. To ensure the consistent allocation, the task force recommends specific legal protections for providers and institutions that follow emergency mass critical care guidelines while delivering care during a designated state of emergency.

Almanac of Chronic Diseases 2008
This report by the Partnership to Fight Chronic Diseases indicates that chronic conditions affect more than 130 million Americans each year, account for 70 percent of deaths and more than 75 cents of each dollar spent on health care and cost the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion in lost productivity annually. The authors of the report call for better coordination in chronic disease care as well as targeted policy changes that promote improved lifestyle habits and chronic disease prevention and management.

Wellness Programs on Rise
According to Human Resource Executive, two recent surveys suggest that workplace wellness programs are gaining popularity. One survey of 1,100 employers nationwide found that the number of U.S. employers adopting wellness programs tripled from 2007 to 2008. Another survey of 453 large U.S. companies found that 83 percent of respondents currently offer health appraisals and other similar programs, compared to 72 percent in 2007 and 65 percent in 2006.

Performance Measures Using Electronic Records
This report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund details five U.S. health care providers' experiences developing, testing, and implementing electronic health record (EHR) systems that incorporate quality and safety metrics. The report examines several initiatives, including a project in which HealthPartners in Minneapolis launched an EHR program to compile blood pressure measurements, as well as an effort by the Billings Clinic in Montana to implement a system that automatically alerts providers to potential drug interactions between antibiotics and the blood thinner warfarin. The report also identifies several common threads linking the various efforts to integrate quality and safety indicators into EHR systems.

States Moving Toward Comprehensive Health Care Reform
The Kaiser Family Foundation provides an update on comprehensive state health reform initiatives in Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont that seek to achieve near universal coverage of state residents. As of May 2008, 12 states have announced comprehensive reform proposals or have established commissions charged with developing recommendations on how to expand coverage.

School Health Profiles: Surveillance for Characteristics of Health Programs Among Secondary Schools
This report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides state and local school-level data from the 2006 School Health Profiles on school health education; physical education; health services; nutrition-related policies and practices; school health policies related to HIV/AIDS prevention, tobacco use prevention, violence prevention, and physical activity; and family and community involvement in school health programs.