Prevention Matters

The signing of a law giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco was named Partnership for Prevention's "Best Prevention Idea of the Week," while the national trend of people waiting too long to be tested for HIV/AIDS was named the "Worst Prevention Idea of the week."The Best/Worst Idea awards are a regular feature of Prevention Matters, the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Each week, Partnership for Prevention's staff will choose the designees based on nominations of items in the previous week's news submitted by members, staff and the public at large. To submit a nomination or for more information, contact Damon Thompson at dthompson@prevent.org.

President Barack Obama , who still struggles with his own addiction to cigarettes, on Monday signed into law the most sweeping federal anti-tobacco legislation to pass Congress in decades.
The law gives the Food and Drug Administration broad authority to regulate the marketing and manufacture of tobacco products. It bans fruit- and spice-flavored cigarettes, slaps expansive new warnings on packages and gets rid of the monikers "light" and "low-tar."

An analysis of data from 34 states suggests that many people still do not undergo HIV testing until late into the course of infection, when treatments may have limited effectiveness. In a study of subjects who were diagnosed with HIV from 1996 to 2005, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 45 percent had a diagnosis of AIDS within 3 years: 38.3 percent within 1 year of their initial HIV diagnosis and another 6.7 percent in the next 2 years.