Home / All Post

Tuesday, 7 June 2016

Princess Health and Kentuckians agree regionally on tobacco controls; poll shows wide differences among regions in impact of drug abuse. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Kentuckians agree regionally on tobacco controls; poll shows wide differences among regions in impact of drug abuse. Princessiccia

Add Comment
By Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

In a state that once had more tobacco farms than any other, Kentuckians in all regions of the state support policies that discourage use of the product, according to the Kentucky Health Issues Poll.

"Such policies could greatly improve Kentucky's overall health," says the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, which co-sponsors the poll each fall. It issued a package of reports that broke down a wife range of previously reported poll results on a regional basis.

Kentucky has fewer than 5,000 tobacco farms, down from a high of 60,000 in 1982, but still has one of the nation's highest smoking rates, 26 percent. That leads to an estimated $2 billion in annual health-care costs.

In every region of the state, a majority (ranging from 59 to 70 percent) of people polled said it would be "difficult" or "very difficult" to make the most important change in their personal health behavior, which for most smokers would be to stop smoking.

"Kentucky adults in every region recognize that improving diet, getting more exercise and quitting smoking could help improve personal health, but the changes are difficult," said Susan Zepeda, president and CEO of the foundation. "Policies around these areas could help all Kentuckians improve their personal health."

The policy getting the strongest support in the poll was tobacco-free school campuses, favored by 85 percent statewide. Fewer than a third of Kentucky's school districts have such policies, but enough do to cover almost half the population.

A statewide ban on smoking in workplaces got 66 percent support. Such a ban is unlikely during the administration of Gov. Matt Bevin, who says the issue should be decided locally. About a third of the state's population lives in jurisdictions with comprehensive smoke-free ordinances; another 10 percent or so live in places that have ordinances with varying exceptions.

There was little difference among the five regions in polling on the two issues.

The poll found regional differences in the percentage of Kentucky adults who said they had no insurance, from 18 percent in Western Kentucky to 8 percent in Eastern Kentucky. The statewide uninsured rate reported at the time of the poll was 13 percent. Other surveys have showed the number in the single digits statewide, after expansion of the Medicaid program under federal health reform.

Health reform also provided subsidies for buying insurance, but some consumers have complained about high deductibles and co-payments. In Northern Kentucky, 34 percent of poll respondents said they had difficulties paying their medical bills in the previous 12 months. The figure was 31 percent in Appalachian Kentucky, 30 percent in Greater Louisville, 25 percent in Western Kentucky, and 22 percent in Greater Lexington.

"An increasing number of Kentuckians have health insurance, but many are still delaying or simply can't afford necessary health care," Zepeda said.

Federal health reform was most popular in the Louisville area, at 44 percent support, and least popular in Northern Kentucky, with 33 percent. Generally, the more impact people said reform had on them, the more likely they were to support it. Three of five Northern Kentuckians said they had not been affected by the reforms but only 45 percent in the Louisville area said that.

There are bigger differences in the impact of drug abuse. One-third of Eastern Kentucky residents in the poll reported reported family members or friends struggling with prescription drug abuse, but only 16 percent in Western Kentucky said so.

Heroin use has caused problems for 35 percent of respondents' families and friends in Northern Kentucky, 17 percent in Greater Louisville, 14 percent in Greater Lexington, 10 percent in Eastern Kentucky, and 8 percent in Western Kentucky.

The regional reports for Eastern Kentucky, Greater Lexington, Greater Louisville, Northern Kentucky, and Western Kentucky, and associated news releases, are available at http://healthy-ky.org/news-events/press-releases.

The poll was conducted Sept. 17 through Oct. 7 by the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati. A random sample of 1,608 adults from throughout Kentucky was interviewed by landlines and cell phones. The statewide poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, but the smaller regional samples have higher error margins. The complete data file, codebook and survey instrument will be posted by June 30 at http://www.oasisdataarchive.org/ with other data files from previous polls.
Princess Health and June 7th, 2016 When I Make These Things Important. Princessiccia

Princess Health and June 7th, 2016 When I Make These Things Important. Princessiccia

Add Comment
June 7th, 2016 When I Make These Things Important

My goal of late afternoon posting of this blog is proving difficult in the consistency department. This is simply a busy time in the broadcasting business! I'm identifying ways to find a better balance, I'm confident I can continue making improvements to my daily practices in order to better manage things. It's a work in progress.

I mentioned earlier this week about how a set bedtime is very difficult for me to maintain. It isn't like my calorie budget or my abstinence from refined sugar. My bedtime is affected by many different variables. These variables require me to make adjustments on a day to day basis in order to accommodate the flow. An example will come Thursday through Saturday when I'm scheduled to broadcast from the big PRCA rodeo every night from 6 to 8pm. Can I still drop in bed at a reasonable hour on those days? Yes. But only if I make adjustments earlier.

I'm very grateful each and every day. I'm grateful that my focus is in fine tuning my approach and focusing on improving areas long overdue for attention.

To be in this maintenance groove is such an amazing blessing. It takes an acceptance and embrace of my fundamental elements each and every day--and in this approach, one day at a time, I find so much peace and clarity--balance, that's what it is--a level foundation enabling me to identify other areas in need of tweaking. Like, the sleep! 

Tomorrow morning is my monthly maintenance weigh-in. I'll make my way to the doctor's office shortly after I get off the air. I've missed so many workouts lately, I'm not sure what I'll discover on that scale. But it's okay, regardless. 

And it is okay, because I'm maintaining the integrity of my calorie budget, I'm remaining abstinent from refined sugar, I'm hitting and most days exceeding my water goal, I'm in daily contact with support connections and every morning I do my #morningdeal strength exercise routine before I allow coffee. When I make these things important each day, things seem to go very well.

Continuous Live-Tweet Stream:








































Thank you for reading and your continued support,
Strength,
Sean
Princess Health and CDC boss Tom Frieden, at SOAR, gives examples of how communities can improve health, such as smoking bans. Princessiccia

Princess Health and CDC boss Tom Frieden, at SOAR, gives examples of how communities can improve health, such as smoking bans. Princessiccia

Add Comment
By Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

PIKEVILLE, Ky. -- Speaking to a region with some of the nation's poorest health, the top federal public-health official gave examples of how individual communities and states have made themselves healthier.

"Health is not just about health, it's about society," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told more than 1,000 people at the Shaping Our Applalachian Region Innovation Summit in Pikeville. "Healthy societies are more productive, and productive societies are more healthy."

Referring to Kentucky's high rates of disease and factors that cause them, Frieden said bringing Eastern Kentucky's health statistics up to the national average would save more than 1,000 lives a year.

Frieden cited six communities that have tackled specific health issues, such as obesity, lack of physical activity, heart health, smoking and teen pregnancy.

Obesity is one of SOAR's three main health targets, but it's not an easy one, Frieden said. He said Somerville, Mass., reduced obesity in children under 6 by 21 percent by making it a community issue, with creation of farmers' markets for local produce, construction of walking paths and the mayor leading community walks.

"Physical activity is the closest thing to a wonder drug," Frieden said, because it helps prevent heart disease, strokes, diabetes and cancer, improved mood and lengthens life.

The leading preventable cause of death is smoking, Frieden said, calling for ordinances and laws making workplaces smoke-free. "Nobody should have to risk getting cancer to come to their job," he said.

Heart disease is the most preventable major cause of death, Frieden said, explaining how Minnesota and Grace Community Health Centers in Knox, Clay, Leslie and Bell counties have improved heart health by improving treatment of high blood pressure, or hypertension. "It's the single most important thing" to do for heart health, and it's simple, Frieden said, because the medicine is inexpensive and taken once a day with few if any side effects.

Frieden said the CDC thinks a lot about teen pregnancy because "Teen pregnancy perpetuates a cycle of poverty." He said Spartanburg, S.C., reduced teen pregnancy by 61 percent from 2001 to 2014 partly because South Carolina's Medicaid program paid for long-acting, reversible contraception immediately after delivery, and was the first state to give full reimbursement for post-partum insertion of intrauterine devices for birth control. Kentucky Medicaid doesn't cover such services.


Princess Health and NY Times/Steve Lohr asks "Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive." The answer in medicine is obvious.. Princessiccia

Princess Health and NY Times/Steve Lohr asks "Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive." The answer in medicine is obvious.. Princessiccia

Add Comment
In a June 5, 2016 article, New York Times reporter Steve Lohr (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/steve_lohr/index.html), who reports on technology, business and economics, asked the following question:

Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive
New York Times, Business Day
By STEVE LOHR
JUNE 5, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/business/why-the-economic-payoff-from-technology-is-so-elusive.html

Your smartphone allows you to get almost instantaneous answers to the most obscure questions. It also allows you to waste hours scrolling through Facebook or looking for the latest deals on Amazon.  More powerful computing systems can predict the weather better than any meteorologist or beat human champions in complex board games like chess.

But for several years, economists have asked why all that technical wizardry seems to be having so little impact on the economy. The issue surfaced again recently, when the government reported disappointingly slow growth and continuing stagnation in productivity. The rate of productivity growth from 2011 to 2015 was the slowest since the five-year period ending in 1982.

Healthcare becomes the gravamen of the article:

One place to look at this disconnect is in the doctor�s office. Dr. Peter Sutherland, a family physician in Tennessee, made the shift to computerized patient records from paper in the last few years. There are benefits to using electronic health records, Dr. Sutherland says, but grappling with the software and new reporting requirements has slowed him down. He sees fewer patients, and his income has slipped.

Unfortunately, the advisors who helped him with the article may have provided incomplete information:

... �The government funding has made a huge difference,� said Dr. Ashish Jha, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. �But we�re seeing little evidence so far that all this technology has had much effect on quality and costs.�

In the face of, among many others, a stunning letter from 40 medical societies to HHS in 2015 that the technology is unfit for purpose (http://mb.cision.com/Public/373/9710840/9053557230dbb768.pdf), known and hair-raising defects (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2011/01/maude-and-hit-risk-mother-mary-what-in.html), and many other complaints from physicians and nurses (e.g., http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/11/another-survey-on-ehrs-affinity-medical.html, http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2013/07/rns-say-sutters-new-electronic-system.html, query link http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/search/label/glitch as just a few examples), such a statement is anserine.

Why would anyone expect (good) effects on "quality and costs" of healthcare when the technology is so unfit for purpose in design and implementation that it has alienated most of its users?  

I've written previously about Jha's views in a May 27,  2009 post "Harvard's EMR Justification: We Just Have To Do Something" (http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2009/05/harvards-emr-justification-we-just-have_27.html):

 ... "I'm not suggesting EHR is going to be a panacea, but the one thing that is absolutely true is there is nothing else out there now that has any more political appeal," Jha says. "Everybody agrees, whether you are a conservative, moderate, or liberal, that we have to do something about healthcare. So the one place where we can all come to agreement is we have to do something about electronic records."

I do not think "political appeal" is a good justification for a multi-billion dollar cybernetic experiment in medicine, where the risks of the technology are considerable and where basic healthcare needs are not being well met among the poor and underprivileged.

Former ONC Chair David Brailer is quoted:

�People confuse information automation with creating the kind of work environment where productivity and creativity can flourish,� said Dr. David J. Brailer, who was the national health technology coordinator in the George W. Bush administration. �And so little has gone into changing work so far.�

Brailer was little better than Jha, and moves the goalposts with a type of circular logic.  He appears to be saying that technology that will revolutionize medicine can't work until we change how things are done in medicine so the technology can revolutionize medicine. 

The article then quotes one Tennessee physician, a Dr. Sutherland, who is "happy" to accept bad health IT, a resultant pay cut, and increased work:

... Today, Dr. Sutherland�s personal income and the medical group�s revenue are about 8 percent below where they were four years ago. But in 2015, both his earnings and the revenue of Healthstar, which employs 350 people in 10 clinics, increased slightly, by nearly 3 percent from 2014.

... Dr. Sutherland bemoans the countless data fields he must fill in to comply with government-mandated reporting rules, and he concedes that some of his colleagues hate using digital records. Yet Dr. Sutherland is no hater. Despite the extra work the new technology has created and even though it has not yet had the expected financial payoff, he thinks it has helped him provide better information to patients.

He values being able to tap the screen to look up potentially harmful drug interactions and to teach patients during visits. He can, for example, quickly create charts to show diabetes patients how they are progressing with treatment plans, managing blood glucose levels and weight loss.

He is working harder, Dr. Sutherland says, but he believes he is a better doctor. Blunt measures of productivity, he added, aren�t everything. �My patients are better served,� he said. �And I�m happier.�

While being able to provide fancy charts and check drug-drug interactions (for which a massive and expensive EHR is certainly not needed; a PDA will suffice) is fine.

However, anyone who gladly accepts a pay cut, and inconvenience, and harder work due to bad health IT, and is a happy camper with that state of affairs, either suffers from the Stockholm syndrome or has a lot of discretionary income and free time to spare that many clinicians do not.  

The article fails to mention the hundreds of thousands of other US docs and others in other lands (e.g., http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com/2016/05/hit-mayhem-canadian-style-nanaimo.html) who aren't happy at all with health IT as it is today.  

---------------------------------------

I sent this email to Mr. Lohr.

From: S Silverstein
To:Steve Lohr 
Date: Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 10:02 AM
Subject: Re: Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive

Dear Mr. Lohr,

In medicine, the answer to this question is straightforward.  I don't know if Ashish Jha brought this to your attention, or if he himself is aware of it.

This letter from nearly 40 different medical societies to HHS about bad health IT is specific about how bad the current health IT is:



You should be aware of the letter's contents.  I've also attached it to this email.

In academic Medical Informatics, such matters are often ignored, as they run contrary to the narrative that IT will "revolutionize medicine"; I know, as I was Yale faculty in Medical Informatics myself. 

The assumption in academic circles and in the Administration (unfortunately) is that "all health IT is good health IT." 

Unfortunately, it is not.  From my own site "Contemporary Issues in Medical Informatics: Good Health IT, Bad Health IT, and Common Examples of Healthcare IT Difficulties" at http://cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/cases/ :

Definitions authored by myself and Australian informatics expert Dr. Jon Patrick:


Good Health IT ("GHIT") is defined as IT that provides a good user experience, enhances cognitive function, puts essential information as effortlessly as possible into the physician�s hands, can be easily, substantively and cost-effectively customized to the needs of medical specialists and subspecialists, keeps eHealth information secure, protects patient privacy and facilitates better practice of medicine and better outcomes. 

Bad Health IT ("BHIT") is defined as IT that is ill-suited to purpose, hard to use, unreliable, loses data or provides incorrect data, is difficult and/or prohibitively expensive to customize to the needs of different medical specialists and subspecialists, causes cognitive overload, slows rather than facilitates users, lacks appropriate alerts, creates the need for hypervigilance (i.e., towards avoiding IT-related mishaps) that increases stress, is lacking in security, is lacking in evidentiary soundness, compromises patient privacy or otherwise demonstrates suboptimal design and/or implementation. 

It comes as no surprise not to find productivity gains, but instead hundreds of thousands of angry physicians (and nurses), when health IT is mostly bad IT.

The health IT industry itself needs serious remediation before its products will be a boon to medicine.

Sincerely,
Scot Silverstein, MD
Drexel University, Philadelphia


p.s. I have not even broached the matter of health IT patient harms. 

Patients are being harmed and dying of bad health IT.  See for instance the CRICO insurance report at http://www.cci.drexel.edu/faculty/ssilverstein/PSQH_MalpractClaimsAnalyConfirRisksEHR.pdf
 
---------------------------------------  

I will add an addendum if I receive a reply.

-- SS

Monday, 6 June 2016

Princess Health and June 6th, 2016 Batting .500. Princessiccia

Princess Health and June 6th, 2016 Batting .500. Princessiccia

Add Comment
June 6th, 2016 Batting .500

I arrived at the studio at 6am. It's eleven minutes until 8pm and I'm still here. Long day, oh my. It's important for me to remind myself--this isn't the norm, it's the exception. I have three large projects that have each taken me longer to get done than I expected. Anyway--I'm not complaining, I'm just saying--very long day here.

I did pause for the Monday night support group conference call! I needed the break and the positive energy!

But I mustn't skim over last night. I'm batting .500 with the bedtime deal. I planned on being in bed by 10pm--even mentioned it in the blog--and to some of my support connections--and still, I crashed through that bedtime without touching the brakes. Amber and I enjoyed our visit with mom very much! In hindsight, we should have left a couple hours earlier. That was my thing.

It's a work in progress. Again, I'm batting .500 so far.

I'm headed home shortly where my grandson is waiting patiently for me. I have a friend taking care of him while I work. He's staying with me tonight. He's been playing all day, so I'm sure it'll not be a challenge to get him to go to bed.

The following is an excerpt of a DDWL blog post from more than seven years ago.

March 2009:

Every now and then I write a blog, post it, then the next day I'll think of something I wanted to mention but didn't. Last night after the �Lose To Win� seminar, I was approached by a nice lady who expressed concern for a loved one. She told me that the loved one that had her concerned was where I was when I started. Just in case she convinced that loved one to read this blog, here's what I hope he reads:

I don't know your name, what you look like, or anything about you other than a couple of clues I've been given. I know that you're right around 500 pounds and I know that you have loved ones that care deeply about you. That's all I know for certain about you. But I'll take it a little deeper. I was over 500 pounds for years, so I can safely assume that perhaps you're feeling some of the emotions that became a fixed part of my life for so long. You might feel completely hopeless, I did. You might feel like you're out of control, I did. You probably turn to food when you're stressed, scared, sad, happy, it doesn't matter the occasion or emotion huh?

Yep, me too. It's hard to get around isn't it? A short walk can feel suffocating, I know. Maybe you feel like your weight has started chipping away at your personal relationships, I know I did. Are you scared of dying like I was, every single day? Be honest, when a little twinge of pain crosses your chest do you start praying it's anything but what you fear the most? I sure did. Is your wardrobe severely limited because of your size? Mine was. I once wore the same pair of pants every day for six months straight, washing it every couple of days, just because it was the only pair that fit, and driving to OKC or Tulsa to buy more was too inconvenient.

When you get scared for your life, do you feel like you're in a non-stop self-destructive cycle? Please say you haven't given up. I never did.

Listen, I knew that if I kept going, I would die very soon. Only God knows how soon, but soon for certain. I also knew that I had to be the one to stop the endless cycle. I had to get very honest and very serious with myself. You're not hopeless and you can do this. I'm not special, I don't have any kind of secret potion, I'm not perfect in any way. I'm just a guy who knew that if I really wanted to live, and I mean really live, I had to do something now. I'd argue that I'm no different than you my friend. 192 days ago I reached my limit. My world was becoming unraveled, my weight was doing it's best to crush me and any sliver of hope I may have had for the future.

Can you relate? I bet you can. I'm here to tell you that you can reclaim your life. You have the power within you to do amazing things, and grabbing control of your weight is just the beginning. But how? I'm not going to say that my way is right or wrong, bad or good. It's what I did. I immediately started eating 1,500 calories a day and exercising however I could, and trust me, it wasn't much, but remember, anything is better than nothing. And you'll be amazed at how far you'll progress along the way if you stay consistent.

Read the labels, buy a calorie book, look calories up on the internet. All the information you need is out there. Even before you do that, it's very important to sit down and have a long internal discussion with yourself. Write down what you want out of life. Dream a little! Get it on paper or on a computer screen, whatever, just write. Form your motivating thoughts and hold onto them tight, you're gonna need them to get through this.

Make your motivating thoughts one of the most important things you think about daily. Then DECIDE that you will defend the pursuit of those desires every waking minute. DECIDE to live, DECIDE to change, DECIDE to once and for all take a stand for yourself. Stand up and demand respect from the one that has given you the least, and that's you. DECIDE that it isn't going to end this way, obesity is no longer in charge of your destiny, you are. BELIEVE you have the power to render powerless every hang up that stopped you before, because YOU DO. DECIDE that no matter the struggles in your day to day life, one thing will never be compromised, and that's your commitment to this journey.

Don't do what I did for years, I don't know you , maybe you've done it for years too...Don't lie to yourself. Don't assume you have time to worry about it later. DECIDE to do it NOW and leave the worry behind. I'm right at about half way through my journey, and I've never been happier. That happiness I speak of comes from hope that I never had before. That happiness exist regardless of my current circumstances. Regardless of the stress level from whatever it is that's stressing us out, that happiness and hope remains and carries us through. DECIDE that you're worth it, because YOU ARE. DECIDE to LOVE YOURSELF enough to make the changes that will set you free.

Listen, I've never been one for dramatics, and I know this page is full of dramatics, but please know that it comes from a very sincere place. I wish you could take my place and feel what I'm feeling. Please go back in the archives and read from day 1. Every day is indexed on the left hand side of the page. And if you want, send me an e-mail and we'll communicate directly. Whoever you are, best wishes.
-----------------------------
Well, that was interesting. That was written in early 2009. I still had so much to learn, so much to experience and so much more to consider along the way. And you know what? I'll be able to say the same thing in seven years when I revisit June 2016. The learning/evolving continues every day.

I'm certainly learning all about schedules of late. Work schedules, personal schedules and sleep schedules--and how all three dramatically affect the others.

I'm headed home to see my grandson and prepare dinner.

I'm maintaining the integrity of my calorie budget, I'm remaining abstinent from refined sugar, I'm drinking a minimum 64oz water (some days a bunch more!) and I'm staying in contact with great support connections.

Continuous Live-Tweet Stream:












































Thank you for reading and your continued support,
Strength,
Sean
Princess Health and Youth injuries from e-cigarettes spike; FDA is starting to regulate them, but study authors say not enough to protect children. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Youth injuries from e-cigarettes spike; FDA is starting to regulate them, but study authors say not enough to protect children. Princessiccia

Add Comment
By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

The number of young children swallowing or being exposed to the liquid nicotine used in electronic cigarettes has "skyrocketed," jumping 1,500 percent from 2012 to 2015, one co-author of a recent study says.

"E-cigarettes and liquid nicotine can cause serious poisoning, and even death, among young children," Dr. Gary Smith, co-author of the study, told Randy Dotinga for HealthDay. "Like other dangerous poisons, they should be kept out of sight and reach of children, preferably in a locked location."

The research, published online May 9 in the journal Pediatrics, follows an announcement that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will now regulate e-cigarettes. The rule bans the sale of e-cigarettes to minors, requires health warnings on all packaging and advertisements and requires manufacturers to get federal approval on all products introduced to the market after Feb. 15, 2007. It does not address marketing or advertising. The measure goes into effect Aug. 8, and gives affected industries two years to comply.

E-cigarettes, which are battery-powered devices that heat up fluid that includes nicotine and other ingredients such as flavors and chemicals, have become increasingly popular. They are now the most common form of nicotine use among teenagers. Researchers found that it is the liquid nicotine that poses the greatest danger to children.

The study looked at calls to the National Poison Data System about nicotine and tobacco products from January 2012 to April 2015, and focused on calls about children under the age of 6. The NPDS received 29,141 calls for nicotine and tobacco product exposure during this time, averaging 729 child exposures per month.

It found about 14 percent, or 4,128 of the calls were about exposure to e-cigarettes and involved children aged 2 or younger. Most of the exposures were due to ingestion.

"Children exposed to e-cigarettes had five times higher odds of a health care facility admission and almost 3 times higher odds of having a severe outcome than children exposed to cigarettes," says the report. "One death occurred in association with a nicotine liquid exposure."

"These are not trivial exposures. There were comas, seizures, and even one death in the 40-month period we studied, and these exposures were predictable and preventable," Smith told MedPage Today. "E-cigarettes and vaping liquids are products that should never have entered the market without adequate consideration of the harms they could cause to young children."

Smith, also the director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, told HealthDay that more needs to be done.

"Other prevention steps include prohibiting the use of flavors, as was done for cigarettes since 2009, restricting the use of packaging and labeling attractive to children, ensuring that liquid nicotine compartments on e-cigarettes are child-resistant, and limiting the concentration and/or quantity of nicotine in refill products," he said.

Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, a nonprofit group dedicated to education about e-cigarettes and vapor products, told HealthDay that the concern about e-cigarettes is "overblown."

He told HealthDay that the child who died "consumed a homemade nicotine liquid concoction that's much stronger than retail versions." He also pointed out that the number of cases have declined since this study was conducted, saying that this is likely due to increased publicity about the risk.

Co-author Henry Spiller, director of the Central Ohio Poison Center at Nationwide Children's Hospital, encouraged parents of young children who vape to treat liquid nicotine like a poison, suggesting that they keep refill containers "up, away and out of sight, preferably in a locked location" and to not leave vaping devices laying around.

Study authors encourage parents to call the Poison Help Line immediately, at 1-800-222-1222, if their child has been exposed to e-cigarettes.

Princess Health and WellCare provides twist-on naloxone nasal atomizers for free, encourages those who know addicts to have naloxone on hand. Princessiccia

Add Comment
WellCare of Kentucky and the Kentucky Pharmacists Association have teamed up to provide 1000 twist-on naloxone nasal atomizers for free, in hopes of making it easier for people to administer the drug.

Dr. Paul Kensicki
"We believe this will make it easier, and less intimidating, for people with no medical background to administer it in an emergency situation," Paul Kensicki, medical director of behavioral health at WellCare of Kentucky, said in op-ed released by Wellcare.

WellCare will provide the atomizers to pharmacists, who will then distribute them to Medicaid recipients and individuals with no insurance coverage.

Kentucky's 2015 anti-heroin law allows pharmacists to dispense naloxone (brand name Narcan), a drug that can reverse the effects of a heroin overdose, without a prescription.Traditionally, the drug has been given as an injection, but the atomizer transforms the syringe to allow it to be administered as a nasal spray.

Naloxone immediately reverses the effects of an opioid overdose by physiologically blocking the effects of the drug. It has no side effects and cannot be abused. "It�s nothing short of a miracle drug," Kensicki writes. "It can absolutely save a life."

More than 1,000 Kentuckians die each year from drug overdoses, with more than 200 of these deaths from heroin. It has become a more common cause of death than car accidents in Kentucky.

"People who know someone who is using opioids, such as a spouse, parent or a roommate, should have naloxone readily available in case they discover an overdose in progress," Kensicki writes.

He notes that patients may be at the most risk of an overdose during recovery, because if they relapse their bodies aren't able to process the same amount of the drug they had been accustomed to before trying to quit.

"Making naloxone available does not mean it is �okay� to use heroin, and we are certainly not removing all the risks of addiction," Kensicki writes. "But we are giving friends and families a tool they can use to help save their loved ones in emergency situations � buying people the time they need to fight their addiction."

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)