August is National Immunization Awareness Month

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August 18 Webinar: Protecting Your Child’s Health Through Safe and Effective Vaccines

Do you know how vaccines are developed and approved? Or how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ensures that vaccines are safe and effective in preventing disease?

Learn about the vital role that FDA plays in protecting the health of our nation’s children through regulation of vaccines in this 30-minute webinar. An FDA expert will discuss the importance of vaccines to a child’s health, the development process for vaccines, how FDA makes sure vaccines that are granted licensure (approval) are safe and effective, and how the agency oversees their continued safety and effectiveness.

An opportunity to ask questions will follow the presentation.

When:  Thursday, Aug. 18, 2:00 p.m. ET

Length: 30 minutes

Where:  To join the webinar, see the instructions here. Webinar slides will be posted here also.

Host: Office of Vaccines Research and Review within FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

Featured speaker: Norman Baylor, Ph.D., director of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review within FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

This webinar is part of a series of online sessions hosted by different FDA centers and offices. The series is part of FDA Basics, a Web-based resource aimed at helping the public better understand what the agency does.

Great places to start

• Vaccines and Immunizations (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Immunization (Medlineplus)
• School Starts Soon—Is Your Child Fully Vaccinated? (US Centers for Disease Control)As you help your kids get ready for school, make sure they’re fully vaccinated. Web tools from CDC can help parents and doctors keep children up-to-date with the vaccines they need and protected from serious diseases.

• Patient information: Why does my child need vaccines? (UpToDate)

Immunization Reference Information Links

• What is the History of Vaccines? from the College Physicians of Philadelphia
• What Diseases Can Be Prevented by Vaccines? from the Immunization Action Coalition
• NIAM – Community Immunity (iChoose Blog, August 17, 2011)
  Great graphics about community immunity(herd community)
• Where Can I Find Immunization Records? information from the CDC
• What Does Whooping Cough sound like?
• Ask the Experts at the CDC
• Parents Guide to Childhood Immunizations from the CDC
• Plain Talk About Childhood Immunizations from the Washington State Department of Health. Links to both English and Spanish PDFs

Easy Immunization Recordkeeping and Other Printables for Adults:

• Vaccination Administration Record for Children and Teens from the CDC (updated March 2011)
• Vaccination Administration Record for Adults from Immunization Action Coalition (updated March 2011)
• 2011 Recommended Vaccinations for Children from Birth through Six Years, from the CDC, parent version (updated March 2011)
• When Do Children and Teens Need Vaccinations? from the CDC (updated March 2011)
• When Do Children and Teens Need Vaccinations? from the CDC in in Spanish (updated January 2010)
• What Vaccinations do Adults Need? from the Immunization Action Coalition (updated December 2010)

Especially for children

(More at http://blog.gale.com/thepulse/library-programming/librarians-plan-ahead-for-august-national-immunization-awareness-month-2/, scroll down)

Coloring Pages:

• Getting a Shot: You Can Do It!coloring page from PBS Kids
• It Might Hurt a Little Bit, But It’s Going to Help a Whole Lot! coloring page from PBS Kids
• Salk Polio Vaccine coloring page
• Prevention Connection coloring page from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control

Puzzles and Activities for Children:

• Be Wise – Immunize! activity book – includes “connect the chicken pox”! from the North Dakota Department of Health
• Freddie Fox Gets His Chicken Pox Shots activity book

Bookmarks and Other Printables for Children:

• Getting a Shot: You Did It! certificate from PBS Kids
• Your Zoo Friends All Chime, Get Immunized on Time! full color – from Vaccinate Your Baby
• Flu Myths and Facts bookmark – full color

Pass it on

Share a video

• A World Without Vaccines
• Consequences
• Supermovie

            Send an e-card

• August is National Immunization Month
• • CDC:  Flu Prevention-Active Seniors 
• • CDC:  Flu Prevention-Families 

Additional Resources

• Social Media Healthcare (blog), especially their postings – Taking a Shot at Immunizations (currently parts 1-4)
• Librarians Plan Ahead for August: National Immunizaion Awareness Month
• August – National Immunization Awareness Month (healthfinder.org)

Related articles

• Childhood Immunizations and Vaccinations | Special Edition | Education.com (education.com)
• August: National Immunization Awareness Month (librarianbrain.wordpress.com)
• Frequently Asked Questions: Immunizing Your Child (education.com)
• Librarians Plan Ahead for August: National Immunization Awareness Month (virtualnotes.wordpress.com)
• Should Pediatricians ‘Fire’ Patients Whose Parents Don’t Vaccinate? (healthland.time.com)
• Chickenpox: Vaccination vs. Natural Immunity (Public Health Hub)
• Vaccines lower immunity (mamavega.wordpress.com)
• Department of Health Urges Parents to Use Summer Break to Make Sure Students’ Vaccinations are Up-to-Date (prnewswire.com)
• Immunizations found to cause few health problems (sfgate.com)

Webicina – free access to curated online medical resources in social media for patients and medical professionals in over 15 languages.

Webicina provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics in over 17 languages.
It is now also available through a free iPhone application and also a free Android application 

Webicina is a free resource, with entry points at the home page for medical professionals and empowered patients

The topics for medical professionals are constantly being added. At this time they include oncology, bioinformatics, dermatology, emergency medicine, genetics, nutrition, public health, and surgery.
The topics or empowered patients are also constantly being added. At this time they include allergy, sleep, diabetes, fitness, stem cells, weight loss, and transplantation.

Each topic includes Web sites in the following areas, from carefully chosen reputable sites

• News and Information
• Blogs (websites with regular entries commonly organized in a reverse chronological order)
• Podcasts (Audio files which one can download for immediate or future listening)
• Community sites (including related Facebook groups and other forums)
• Twitter and Friendfeed
• Videos
• Mobile phones (apps and software for smartphones)
• search engines (more focused than Google, Yahoo, Bing…)
• Slideshows
• Clinical resources (medical professional section only — includes clinical cases and imaging)

Wish to keep up to date with just portions of Webicina?

Check out and sign up at the PeRSSonalized Medicine page (you may have to select a language)

Food May Act Physiologically Like A ‘Drug Of Choice’ For Some

From a 19 July 2011 Medical News Today article

Authorities in the field of foodaddiction at the University of Florida say new research indicates that overeating andobesity problems might be effectively tackled if people would limit their food choices.

Editorializing in the August edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Nicole M. Avena, Ph.D., a research assistant professor, and Mark S. Gold, M.D., chairman of the UF College of Medicine’s department of psychiatry, suggest modern living presents many delicious possibilities for people at mealtime – too many for people who respond to food as if it were an addictive drug…

Read the article

Related articles

• Food Boredom May Lead to Weight Loss (webmd.com)
• Understanding addiction (bbc.co.uk)

Environmental Pollutants Lurk Long After They ‘Disappear’

From a 20 July 2011 Science Daily article

The health implications of polluting the environment weigh increasingly on our public consciousness, and pharmaceutical wastes continue to be a main culprit. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that current testing for these dangerous contaminants isn’t going far enough.

Dr. Dror Avisar, head of the Hydro-Chemistry Laboratory at TAU’s Department of Geography and the Human Environment, says that, when our environment doesn’t test positive for the presence of a specific drug, we assume it’s not there. But through biological or chemical processes such as sun exposure or oxidization, drugs break down, or degrade, into different forms — and could still be lurking in our water or soil….

Read the article

Related articles

• Environmental Danger Lurks in Joplin, Mo. Debris (abcnews.go.com)
• Green Cleaning Spruces Up Environment (webmd.com)
• New study outlines economic and environmental benefits to reducing nitrogen pollution (physorg.com)

MedlinePlus RSS and Content Sharing Enhancements

From the US National Library of Medicine Announcement

In June 2011, the National Library of Medicine® (NLM ®) released several enhancements that improve users’ ability to share and consume MedlinePlus® content. MedlinePlus now offers RSS feeds for every health topic page on the site — nearly 1,800 feeds for MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus en español combined. Whenever MedlinePlus adds a new link to a health topic page, the item appears as an entry on the corresponding health topic RSS feed. Users can subscribe to a customized selection of RSS feeds based on their specific interests using the RSS reader/aggregator of their choice. Links to the health topic feeds are available on all health topic pages, the MedlinePlus RSS Feeds page, and via any Web browser’s RSS auto-detect feature.

In addition to the health topic feeds, MedlinePlus now offers two new English RSS feeds allowing users to subscribe to all new links added to MedlinePlus and all new NIH links added to MedlinePlus. These feeds are available on theRSS Feeds page under the heading “General Interest RSS Feeds.” For Spanish-language users, MedlinePlus provides one new RSS feed that contains all new links added to MedlinePlus en español. This feed is available from the Spanish RSS Feeds page.

NLM also unveiled enhancements to the print, email, and AddThis® icons on MedlinePlus and MedlinePlus en español health topic pages. These icons now appear above the topic summary, and the Facebook® and Twitter®sharing options are more prominent, making it easier for users to share content in these very popular social networks (see Figure 1).

Related articles

• MedlinePlus the Magazine – Online Health Information Journal for the Public (aa47.wordpress.com)
• New MedlinePlus Tour Now Available (aa47.wordpress.com)

How Healthy People Eat Cheap

From a March 2009 posting at Experience Li!fe

http://www.experiencelifemag.com/issues/march-2009/healthy-eating/how-healthy-people-eat-cheap.php

Eating well doesn’t have to break your budget. Our experts offer 15 tips on cutting your tab at the grocery store, without scrimping on the good stuff.

By Alyssa Ford / March 2009

Spendy vs. Savvy 

If there was one sound that rose above all others at the grocery checkout line last year, it was this: Ouch! When your grocery budget is under assault, it’s easy to succumb to panic (“Nine dollars a pound for organic chicken?!”) and become tempted to fill your cart with less healthy, but ostensibly cheaper, fare. Trouble is, downgrading the quality of your food is never a bargain. First, your health is just too valuable, and courting an avoidable health condition or lowered immunity by eating poorly is just way too expensive. Second, even in the toughest economic times, you don’t have to scrimp on the good stuff. You just have to know how to shop smarter.

In this, the second in our series on “How Healthy People Eat,” we’ve assembled another team of health-conscious experts to dish on their personal shopping habits:

• Lisa Farino, a freelance health and environmental writer in Seattle.
• Rose Prince, a London-based food columnist and author of The Savvy Shopper (HarperCollins, 2006) and The New English Kitchen (HarperCollins, 2006).
• Kristen Swensson, New York City–based author of the popular “Cheap, Healthy, Good” blog and a columnist for www.seriouseats.com.
• Seth Braun, an independent health counselor in Boulder, Colo., and author of Healthy, Fast and Cheap: The Ultimate College Cookbook (Storey Publishing, 2006).

Here, they share their top tips for creating wholesome, delicious meals on the cheap.

1. Make a strategic shopping list. Buying food on a whim, shopping haphazardly and going shopping when hungry all tend to drive your expenditures steeply upward. By planning your meals before shopping, you can save a bundle. Swensson and her boyfriend eat a nutrient-rich, whole-foods diet for no more than $55 a week. Swensson searches online circulars to find deals near her Brooklyn home, combines that information with what she knows about the food she already has on hand, then searches online for recipes that make the most of both. Then she creates a detailed shopping list from which she never strays.

2. Know the cost of your staples. Even though Farino lives in one of the most expensive food markets in the country, she’s able to eat well by keeping track of what things cost. “I know the price of Wildwood organic tofu at four different stores to the penny,” she says. By knowing what things cost, she can quickly identify a deal.

3. When you spot a sale, strike. Occasionally, olive oil, tamari and frozen peas will go on sale at Farino’s co-op, and she’ll stock up for several weeks. Plus, she doesn’t hesitate to buy in bulk when the opportunity arises. “I drink unsweetened almond milk, so when my favorite brand went on sale, I bought a whole case,” she says. The trick here is to buy only what you actually will use. (You may be able to get a truckload of olive oil for a song, but it won’t keep forever.)…

Read article

Related articles

• Buy Seasonal Fruits and Veggies for Healthy, Affordable Eats [Shopping] (lifehacker.com)
• Healthy Grocery Shopping (MedlinePlus)
• Eating Healthy on the Road For Less (mint.com)
• Think healthy, eat healthy: Scientists show link between attention and self-control (sciencedaily.com)

Doctors: Colon cleansing has no benefit but many side effects including vomiting and death

From the 1 August 2011 Eureka news alert

Washington, D.C. – Colon cleansing – it’s been described as a natural way to enhance well-being, but Georgetown University doctors say there’s no evidence to back that claim. In fact, their review of scientific literature, published today in the August issue of The Journal of Family Practice, demonstrates that colon cleansing can cause side effects ranging from cramping to renal failure and death.

The procedure, sometimes called colonic irrigation or colonic hydrotherapy, often involves use of chemicals followed by flushing the colon with water through a tube inserted in the rectum. It has ancient roots, but was discredited by the American Medical Association in the early 1900s, yet colon cleansing has staged a comeback.

“There can be serious consequences for those who engage in colon cleansing whether they have the procedure done at a spa or perform it at home,” says the paper’s lead author, Ranit Mishori, M.D., a family medicine physician at Georgetown University School of Medicine. “Colon cleansing products in the form of laxatives, teas, powders and capsules with names such as Nature’s Bounty Colon Cleaner tout benefits that don’t exist.” She also says it’s important to remember the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has no authority to monitor these products.

Mishori and her colleagues examined 20 studies published in the medical literature published in the last decade. She says that while these reports show little evidence of benefit, there is an abundance of studies noting side effects following the use of cleansing products including cramping, bloating, nausea, vomiting, electrolyte imbalance and renal failure.

“Some herbal preparations have also been associated with aplastic anemia and liver toxicity,” she says.

And Mishori points out that colon cleansing services are increasingly being offered at spas or clinics by practitioners who call themselves ‘colon hygienists’ but they have no significant medical training. In fact, organizations such as the National Board for Colon Hydrotherapy and others who promote colon cleansing require hygienists to have little more than a high school diploma.

Mishori says there are much better ways to enhance well-being: “Eat a balanced diet, exercise regularly, get six to eight hours of sleep and see a doctor regularly.”

Related articles

• Colon cleansing has no benefit but many side effects including vomiting and death (medicalxpress.com)
• The truth about colonic irrigation: It doesn’t work (independent.co.uk)

How prevalent are false diagnoses of disease?

From the 7 July KevinMd article by GEORGE LUNDBERG, MD AND CLIFTON MEADOR, MD

Recently, we expressed concern about the effects on the accuracy of the diagnostic process of the increasing numbers of well and worried well entering the medical care system.

One of the consequences of this influx of well people (and the concomitant reduction in disease prevalence) is the generation of more false positive test results and false diagnoses of nonexistent diseases.

The medical literature is filled with studies on the accuracy of specific disease diagnoses but the focus has been exclusively on missed diagnoses. These studies have often used autopsy data to discover how many patients died with specific diseases overlooked in life.

While missed diagnoses certainly deserve our attention, the opposite error has been almost completely ignored: How many patients with specific diagnoses of disease do not have the named disease? How prevalent are false diagnoses of disease? And which ones?

We are puzzled that these questions are not only unanswered but seem ignored in the literature.

Read the article

Related articles

• The Wrong Results (everydayhealth.com)