David Stuckler PhD a b, Sanjay Basu PhD c d, Marc Suhrcke PhD e f, Adam Coutts PhD g, Martin McKee MD b h
a Department of Sociology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
b Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
c Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, CA, USA
d Division of General Internal Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, CA, USA
e School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
f Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), Cambridge, UK

Email|Link|Comments (0)Posted by Elizabeth Cooney July 20, 2009 08:53 PM As they prepare for a fall flu season that could bring two nasty strains, Boston health officials are studying whether school closings helped to stop the spread of swine flu during the spring. Dr. Anita Barry, director of the infectious disease bureau at the Boston Public Health Commission, said the agency is still analyzing case reports from private and public schools that closed after abseentism rates soared. They expect to have answers in a month that will tell them if closing schools broke the chain of transmission of swine flu, known by its scientific name H1N1. The Boston review continues even as an article appearing today in a special issue of the British medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases concludes that closing schools early in a pandemic can reduce the number of cases at its peak, but cases might rise later when they reopened, leading to the same totals had schools not been shuttered. This flattening in the number of cases was observed in epidemics dating from 1918 through 2008.

Michael Marmot* and Mika Kivimäki
Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, UK
European Heart Journal Advance Access published online on July 14, 2009
European Heart Journal, doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehp264

Available online at : http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/ehp264v1

Swine flu death toll reaches 29, with 11,194 confirmed cases

FIVE more deaths in Sydney - including a nine-year-old boy and a 78-year-old man - have raised the national death toll of victims with swine flu to 29.
The other three were two women aged 55 and 71, and a 29-year-old man.

New South Wales chief health officer Kerry Chant said four of the latest victims had underlying medical conditions. What caused the death of the fifth, the man in his 20s, had yet to be determined.

WASHINGTON — When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped back to center stage here on Wednesday to present an ambitious blueprint for America’s role in the world, the State Department billed it as a major foreign policy address.

But with its muscular tone and sweeping scope, it was also an effort to recapture the limelight after a period in which Mrs. Clinton has nursed both a broken elbow and the perception that the State Department has lost influence to an assertive White House.

By Nicholas Thompson 06.18.09

Vivek Kundra knows the public can create better data-driven apps than the Feds.
Photo: Ryan Pfluger
HOW-TO WIKI
How To Open Up Government Data

Luiz Augusto C. Galvão, Sally Edwards, Carlos Corvalan, Kira Fortune and Marco Akerman
Pan American Health Organization PAHO/WHO – Area of Sustainable Development and Environment
Global Health Promotion 1757-9759; Supp (1): 81–84; 103761 SAGE Publications 2009, DOI: 10.1177/1757975909103761

Available online PDF [5p.] at: http://ped.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/16/1_suppl/81

Unconfirmed reports say that President Obama has tapped Dr. Regina Benjamin as his U.S. Surgeon General candidate.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_surgeon_general

The public health effect of economic crises and alternative policy responses in Europe:
an empirical analysis
David Stuckler PhD a b, Sanjay Basu PhD c d, Marc Suhrcke PhD e f, Adam Coutts PhD g, Martin McKee MD b h
a Department of Sociology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
b Department of Public Health and Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK
c Department of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, CA, USA
d Division of General Internal Medicine, San Francisco General Hospital, CA, USA