Prevention Matters

As Congress tackles health reform, a new public education campaign by Partnership for Prevention notes that more than 100,000 lives could be saved every year by investing in five basic preventive services. That includes 45,000 deaths that would be prevented each year if people who could benefit were advised by their doctors to take a daily dose of aspirin to prevent heart disease and 42,000 lives that could be saved a year if doctors offered tobacco cessation counseling.

A print ad in Roll Call, a popular Capitol Hill newspaper, this week asks members of Congress - “If You Could Save 100,000 Lives, Would You Do It?” It spells out how increasing the widespread use of just five services available through a doctor’s office – aspirin counseling, tobacco cessation counseling, adult influenza immunization, colorectal screening, and breast cancer screening - would save an estimated 117,600 additional lives a year.

More information is available online at www.prevent.org/healthreform . Partnership has also launched a "How to Save 100,000 Lives" interactive quiz for Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/100kquiz.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School have led the development of a prototype "return on investment calculator" that can measure the value of prevention services. Using a Boston-based mobile health program called the "Family Van" to test the tool, the team found that for the services provided in 2008, this program, in the long run, will return $36 for every dollar invested.

The researchers used published data from Partnership for Prevention's National Commission on Prevention Priorities (NCPP), which assigns values to a broad array of preventative practices, as well as published data on the cost-savings of preventing avoidable emergency room visits, the team developed an algorithm that "calculates" a return on investment ratio, thereby quantifying the value of mobile health care to the overall health care system.

Trust for America’s Health (TFAH), has released a report detailing 10 early lessons from the recent H1N1 outbreak, as well as 10 core areas that must be addressed to strengthen U.S. preparedness for future potential flu outbreaks and other national health emergencies.

The World Health Organization recommended on Friday that oral rotavirus vaccines be included in all national immunization programs to avert half a million diarrhoeal deaths and 2 million hospitalizations a year.

CNN reports that Blockbuster movies are less likely to portray smokers than they have in the past, according to a new study. What's more, this decline in on-screen smoking may have occurred in tandem with a drop in the number of adolescents who have lit up in real life.

Of 244.5 million prenatal visits made between 1995 and 2004, the percentage made to family physicians decreased from 11.6 percent in 1995-96 to 6.1 percent in 2003-04, says a recent study published in the Annals of Family Medicine. The percentage of visits made to FPs in rural areas fell even more drastically during that period, from 38.6 percent to 12.9 percent.