Health Bites

According to a new brief by the Commonwealth Fund, an estimated 18.7 million U.S. women ages 19 to 64 were uninsured in 2010, up from 12.8 million in 2000. An additional 16.7 million women had health insurance but had such high out-of-pocket costs relative to their income that they were effectively underinsured in 2010.

"[Maryland] Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration is proposing to establish a number of health enterprise zones to address the glaring health disparities along racial and class lines that end lives prematurely and cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year in additional medical costs. This is a promising idea that deserves further exploration; the need is obvious, the disparities are well-documented and a plan to test the program’s effectiveness through a series of pilot projects offers an affordable, relatively low-risk approach to the problem."

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Enterprise zones for health? Sounds interesting.

Maryland Health disparities: Enterprise zones would expand access to care - Baltimore Sun

(via reportingonhealth)

nationalpost:

UN reports ‘extraordinary progress’ in global fight against AIDS
The international community has made extraordinary progress in the past decade in the fight against AIDS, but a funding crisis is putting those gains at risk, the United Nations health agencies said.

A World Health Organization-led report said the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS and now infects about 34 million people around the world has proven a “formidable challenge” for scientists and public health experts.

“But the tide is turning,” it added. “The tools to achieve an AIDS-free generation are in our hands.”