A new study, released online July 21 as a Web First by Health Affairs, finds that increased public health investments can produce measureable health improvements.

The study, which will also appear in the journal’s August issue, analyzed changes in spending patterns and mortality rates within the service areas of nearly three thousand local public health agencies between 1993 and 2005. To measure spending data, authors Glen Mays and Sharla Smith of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences used information collected by the National Association of County and City Health Officials and other sources. A

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You can’t slather tablets of calcium plus vitamin D-3 on your bare beach-bound shoulders, but you may want to after reading this. Turns out they could be as powerful at protecting you from deadly melanoma, the worst skin cancer, as the sunscreen in your beach bag. You’re already at higher risk of melanoma if you’re among the skyrocketing number of adults being diagnosed with milder skin cancers (usually basal or squamous cell carcinoma). If that’s you or someone you love, be sure you’re taking 1,000 IU of vitamin D-3 a day and getting 1,000 mg of calcium from food and supplements. The combo could cut your melanoma risk by an impressive 57 percent. Read more…

In early May, John Meyer stayed at a lakeside hotel in Hamburg, Germany. He attended a business conference. He went sailing. And he became one of the few U.S. victims in one of the worst food poisoning outbreaks in recent world history.

Meyer went to the hospital a week later with what turned out to be a rare and deadly strain of E. coli bacteria that caused thousands of illnesses, mostly in Germany. He would spend the next month in a Massachusetts hospital, much of the time a delirium, while doctors worked around the clock to save his life.

Meyer is one of six U.S.

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Other than the egg-laying exercise surrounding the ACO regulations, 2011 was a quiet year among Washington health policy experts until June 6 when McKinsey released the results of a survey of employer plans under the Affordable Care Act. The McKinsey study found that roughly 30 percent of employers were considering dropping their employee insurance coverage and encouraging their employees to receive federally subsidized health insurance through the Exchanges created in the Affordable Care Act. This compared to low- to mid-single digit estimated drop rates based upon economic modeling by the Urban Institute, Lewin and, importantly, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

To judge by the storm of angry political reaction, you would have thought that McKinsey had advocated mass psychedelic drug use.

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Multiple chins, bulging tummies and flabby arms: It’s easy to see where fat accumulates on the body.

When a person starts losing weight, where does the fat go? And what parts of the body can you expect to see results?

Headlines from fitness magazines promise exercises to blast away belly fat and activities to spot-reduce flab. Read more…

Scientists still don’t know how Alzheimer’s wipes out memory, scrambles the ability to think and erodes personality. Nerve cells die and the brain shrivels as the disease advances. Phil Kreitner watched his father’s mind slip away. And now, at age 71, the college teacher, environmentalist and former naval officer faces the likelihood that he too will develop the disease. ”I’m not into denial, but I’m not into total acceptance,” he says. “You fight it like hell, but you do understand it’s a rear-guard action. You retreat from ditch to ditch until you get to the last ditch.” There is no proven way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, or even slow its advance. A Read more…

Scientists have found a new contributor to male infertility, a protein that’s supposed to coat sperm to help them swim to an egg, unless that coating goes missing.

About 20 percent of men may harbor gene mutations that leave their sperm coat-free and thus lower their fertility, an international research team reported Wednesday.

Today’s reproductive tests can’t spot the problem, said study co-author Dr. Theodore Tollner of the University of California, Davis.

“You would have no reason to think many of these men with the genetic mutation would have reduced sperm function,” he said.

Anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent of couples experience infertility, and doctors can’t always find the cause.

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Editors Note: This is the second part of a two-part post discussing behavioral economics and how it is being used by British policymakers. Part 1 focused mostly on the development and general principles of behavioral economics. Part 2 below discusses some of the ways British policymakers are seeking to use insights from behavioral economics.

Behavioural economists thus recognise that people operate according to the heuristics and general observations outlined above; moreover, they have begun to design policy interventions that takes these insights into account, because, they hypothesise, this will yield more effective interventions. For instance, at the end of 2010 the Nudge Unit released a report Applying Behavioural Insight to Health.

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