University of Minnesota Podcasts

For those of you always looking for new podcasts to fill your time, I have two new recommendations from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Both are available via iTunes:

• Public Health Moment: 90-second coverage of public health issues, from national fitness month to asthma awareness. This is a nice, quick look at a public health issue.

• Public Lectures: Every couple weeks a new public lecture is put online. These are much longer, typically 45-80 minutes, with in-depth coverage of a particular topic.

Given how many health-oriented podcasts come the more mainstream media (NPR has some good ones, for example), these two podcasts both provide a nice change of pace with a more academic viewpoint. Good stuff!

Finding Patients for Clinical Trials

I'm a fan of The Wall Street Journal This Morning (in handy podcast form) as part of my daily news intake. This morning they had an interesting story about the need for clinical trials to find and recruit eligible patients. There is a version of the story online here, and one particular stat highlighted the problem facing researchers running clinical trials:

Fear is one factor behind the dearth of participants; clinical trials can result in unexpected side effects, for instance. But studies show that the more likely culprit is ignorance: In one survey by Harris Interactive, 85% of cancer patients were either unaware or unsure at the time of their diagnosis that participation in clinical trials was an option. Of those, 75% said they would have been willing to enroll had they known it was possible.

That's a pretty remarkable statistic. Another aspect of the story was the trouble involved in recruiting teenagers and patients in their early 20s into clinical trials. (Younger children, with activist parents, are easier to find/enroll.) The woman interviewed in the story suggested that researchers are looking to use social networking sites (like MySpace and Facebook) to recruit subjects.

This strikes me as a somewhat dubious strategy... While I can't necessarily argue with the media placement, it seems to reflect the trend I run into in classes and talking to others that MySpace/Facebook are these magical tools that can make anyone ages 15-25 do anything. Wouldn't it be more effective to do a better job informing physicians of clinical trials and helping them provide the proper education/message to all prospective participants?

FDA Asks for $275 Million

The New York Times ran a story today about the FDA asking Congress for $275 million to help it do a better job monitoring imported food, drugs, etc. The article paints a less-than-flattering picture of the FDA and how long it has taken to ask for this money to improve its operations, but it's definitely worth a read.

Rising Food Prices and Supermarket Shortages

RWJ had a couple interesting notes today in their newsletters...

Rising Food Prices Contribute to Obesity Among Low-Income Americans: With all of the economic news in the last few weeks about rising food prices, it's probably not a surprise that lower-income households face increasing challenges in eating healthy.

NYC Supermarket Shortage Poses Barrier to Healthy Eating: In a related article, lower-income and minority neighborhoods in NYC are particularly limited in terms of convenient supermarket access.

Lower-income individuals already face challenges in eating well and avoiding obesity, from more limited financial resources to other time/work/family pressures, and current economic trends aren't likely to improve some of these issues... I think this is one of many reasons that improved health education interventions and campaigns, particularly tailored to help lower-income audiences overcome these challenges, are a real need at the moment.

Obesity and Dementia

This article from WebMD, about the link between weight and dementia, caught my eye tonight. The study discussed was a meta-analysis that showed a link between obesity and dementia. It's an interesting finding, to be sure, and yet another reason to be concerned about the increasing rates of obesity among both adults and children. I have to wonder how many other health issues obesity would need to be linked to before it would affect the behavior of the general public... Or if any number of potential health complications could motivate significant behavior change.

Gene Therapy to Treat Leber Congenital Amaurosis (LCA)

I heard a note about using gene therapy to treat LCA on a Scientific American podcast (their article is here), then it popped up a NEJM newsfeed (full article here), so apparently this is a hot story. I think it's a pretty amazing application of gene therapy, hopefully these tests will lead to effective widespread use of this promising treatment. Definitely neat stuff.

NIH Seeks Ideas for Future Roadmap Trans-NIH Strategic Initiatives

The NIH obviously has a lot of collaboration among its different programs and centers, but it also promotes collaboration outside the NIH. There is a new RFI out asking for input on these trans-NIH initiatives:

The NIH is seeking input from the scientific community, health professionals, patient advocates, and the general public about innovative and cross - cutting initiatives to be funded through the NIH Common Fund. The NIH Common Fund / Roadmap was created by the NIH in 2004 and enacted into law by Congress through the 2006 NIH Reform Act to support cross-cutting, trans-NIH programs.

The deadline for submitting ideas is June 2, 2008, full details on the RFI are available here.