Health and Disability

New and emerging research links the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), the nation’s most important anti-hunger program, with improved health outcomes and lower health care costs. This research adds to previous work showing SNAP’s powerful capacity to help families buy adequate food, reduce poverty, and help stabilize the economy during recessions.

SNAP is the primary source of nutrition assistance for many low-income people. In a typical month of 2017, SNAP helped about 42 million low-income Americans afford a nutritious diet. It provides important nutritional support for low-wage working families, low-income seniors, and people with disabilities living on fixed incomes: close to 70 percent of SNAP participants are in families with children, and more than one-quarter are in households with seniors or people with disabilities. While SNAP provides only a modest benefit — just $1.40 on average per person per meal in 2017 — it forms a critical foundation for the health and well-being of low-income Americans, lifting millions out of poverty and improving food security.

Flu deaths surpassed the epidemic threshold at the end of December, with pediatric flu-related deaths also up, according to data from the CDC.

The researchers found that all of the anti-IL17 drugs and guselkumab (Tremfya) were more effective than the anti-TNF alpha drugs infliximab (Remicade), adalimumab (Humira), and etanercept (Enbrel) for reaching PASI 90 status.

However, recall classifications can sometimes take weeks – or even months when FDA needs to conduct a complex evaluation. Such analysis can involve determining whether any diseases or injuries have already occurred, the likelihood that a hazard might occur, or whether vulnerable segments of the population, such as children, are more at risk.

For years, hospital executives have expressed frustration when essential drugs like heart medicines have become scarce, or when prices have skyrocketed because investors manipulated the market.

Now, some of the country’s largest hospital systems are taking an aggressive step to combat the problem: They plan to go into the drug business themselves, in a move that appears to be the first on this scale.

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http://verifymicare.org/

How can VerifyMICare help me make smart healthcare decisions?

Being informed can help improve your healthcare experiences, and it allows you to focus on what’s most important – your health. When making these decisions, you should use many tools to help you decide – and VerifyMICare is one of those tools. 

VerifyMICare can help you to understand how a hospital is doing on things like infection prevention. But it should not be the only factor in making healthcare decisions. You should always talk to your doctor(s) and your family about the option that is best for you.

What information is available through VerifyMICare?

VerifyMICare provides information about quality and safety measures for Michigan hospitals and allows you to compare them side by side. Future updates to the site will add information about hospital pricing and other topics that are important. 

Every year the flu virus does an annual migration across the world, hitting the Southern Hemisphere during its winter, the Northern Hemisphere right about now, and hanging out in the tropics in between — especially in parts of Asia. That means we look to Australia to know what is coming to us... and Australia is seeing one of its worst flu years on record, with over 2½ times more infections than in the same period last year. Influenza A (H3N2) is the predominant circulating influenza A virus this year, and 81% of the confirmed flu deaths have been due to this strain.

U.S. Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network data for the 2016–2017 influenza season showed this year’s flu vaccine is 48 percent effective in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza A and B viral infection associated with medically attended acute respiratory illness.

The exact effectiveness estimates are 43 percent against the predominant influenza A (H3N2) viruses and 73 percent against influenza B viruses.

The United States appears to be in the midst of an unusually severe flu season, officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The flu season started early, which is never a good sign, and the flu is already widespread throughout the country, the CDC's latest report shows. Half of states are reporting especially intense flu activity.

"We are currently in the midst of a very active flu season with much of the nation experiencing widespread and intense activity," CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald told reporters during a briefing.

Based on the latest available data, the United States could be experiencing one of the most severe flu seasons in years, possibly similar to the severe 2014-2015 flu season, officials say.

Imagine making a spreadsheet of every meal you've ever eaten, every hand you've ever shook, every bit of dust that's ever gotten in your eye - and multiply it by about a million times. Then you begin to get a sense of the size of the data problem that is your body's immune system. Through a new AI project, Microsoft hopes to solve this data problem and make diagnosing nearly any disease as simple as a single blood test.

You see, stored within your immune system is a record of virtually every threat to your health that you've ever encountered. When an invader shows up -- be it the flu, cancer, or something weird you picked up while showering without flip-flops at the gym -- your body identifies it and launches a targeted attack. This works the the help of special cells called T-cells, which each carry a corresponding surface protein called a T-cell receptor with a genetic code designed to target a specific disease, signalled by what's called an antigen.

So if the immune system's T-cells each contain genetic markers of every pathogen the body has encountered, then decrypting those markers could theoretically give you a log of every threat you have ever faced. That's what Microsoft is hoping. In a new research effort with the Seattle biotech firm Adaptive, the company is working to decode the human immune system so that it can diagnose disease.

"Your immune system should know what you have before your doctor does," said Adaptive CEO Chad Robins at the annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

The idea is, in essence, to make a map of the human body's immune responses -- of its T-cell receptors sequences and the codes of the antigens they have fought against. And using that map, eventually, the idea is to be able to diagnose practically any disease from a sample of blood.

Remember the massive spreadsheet we imagined earlier? That spreadsheet is the reason this problem calls for artificial intelligence.

"We're searching for patterns in a giant space," Peter Lee, vice president of AI Research for Microsoft, told Gizmodo. "In machine-learning, a problem this big is exotic."

Here's a story that bucks the idea that the tech industry is selfish and myopic: A technology start-up raised more than $20 million this week to help low-income Americans, including the elderly and the homeless, access basic health services.

It aims to treat low-income patients who qualify for Medicaid, which accounts for about 1 in 5 Americans, including many with complex and costly needs.

Its team includes a mix of technologists from companies such as Google, as well as nonprofit and community health experts. The company named to its board some big names in health and technology, including former CMS administrator Andy Slavitt, Rock Health co-founder Halle Tecco and Cloudera co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher.

Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs is moving ahead with its own plansto redevelop Toronto's waterfront, an effort that will include sensors and other technologies.

Cityblock was initially based at Sidewalk's offices, but will now operate as an independent company.