Liz Borkowski
lborkowski
Posts by this author
January 4, 2012
by Kim Krisberg
Many of us probably look into cyberspace and are overwhelmed with its unwieldy amounts of never-ending information. John Brownstein, on the other hand, sees points on a map.
Brownstein is the co-founder of HealthMap, a team of researchers, epidemiologists and software developers…
January 3, 2012
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 26, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
The White House's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein announced today agency roadmaps for a 21-century regulatory system, and the results of the Obama…
January 2, 2012
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on January 27, 2011.
By Liz Borkowski
Atul Gawande's latest New Yorker article, "The Hot Spotters," is a must-read for anyone concerned about the out-of-control growth of US healthcare…
December 30, 2011
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on February 28, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
Roxanne Moyer wondered why managers at her husband's worksite would allow an obvious dangerous condition to exist. Workers could be so "close to…
December 29, 2011
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on May 12, 2011.
By Liz Borkowski
For many years, the public health and environmental communities have been calling for reform of the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which…
December 28, 2011
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on March 9, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
"Death takes no holidays in industry and commerce," is how Labor Secretary Willard Wirtz described the toll of on-the-job death and disability for U.…
December 27, 2011
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on April 27, 2011.
By Liz Borkowski
Last week, Andrew Sullivan noted that a large proportion of healthcare costs are for the last days and hours of patients' lives and made the following…
December 26, 2011
While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on June 23, 2011.
By Celeste Monforton
Rhetoric has been flying this year, especially in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, about the "burdens" of federal regulations.…
December 23, 2011
In iWatch News, Sasha Chavkin and Ronnie Greene report on a rash of kidney-disease deaths among sugarcane workers in Nicaragua. The workers generally don't suffer from hypertension or diabetes, so attention has turned to workplace factors, Chavkin and Greene write:
Some scientists suspect that…
December 22, 2011
Yesterday, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced the agency's new Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which will reduce emissions of heavy metals and acid gases from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The approximately 1,400 units that EPA expects to be affected by the rule (because they aren't…
December 20, 2011
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Vanessa Veselka at The Atlantic: In the Wake of Protest: One Woman's Attempt to Unionize Amazon
Marshall Allen at ProPublica: Without Autopsies, Hospitals Bury Their Mistakes
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: Fecal Transplants: They Work, the Regulations Don't…
December 19, 2011
J. Freedom du Lac reports in the Washington Post that Army Spec. David Emanuel Hickman, killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad on November 14th, was the 4,474th US servicemember to be killed in Iraq. With all the US troops now gone from Iraq, Hickman's death may well be the last servicemember…
December 14, 2011
Following up on last year's nine-minute animated video explaining the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Kaiser Family Foundation has produced a new interactive feature that gives examples of how different individuals' situations will change (or not) in 2014 when the law is fully…
December 12, 2011
My colleague Susan F. Wood had an excellent op-ed in the Washington Post over the weekend about the Obama administration's overruling of the scientifically grounded FDA decision to approve emergency contraceptive Plan B for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. She begins by going back in…
December 9, 2011
By Kim Krisberg
Public health vs. tobacco. It's a David and Goliath kind of story. The kind in which the good guys win and everyone sleeps a little sounder knowing that the bigger, richer guys don't hold all the power.
Of course, the story isn't so cut and dry. While public health has been slowly…
December 7, 2011
During the George W. Bush Administration, one of the prime examples of politics trumping science was the FDA's refusal to approve the emergency contraceptive Plan B (levonorgestrel) for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. Now, during the Barack Obama Administration, history seems to be…
December 6, 2011
by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
Every year, the United Health Foundation (UHF) publishes America's Health Rankings. Today UHF released their 22nd annual report. Rankings are a useful gimmick for getting attention as everyone surely looks at his/her own state. I was particularly proud to find my…
December 5, 2011
by Mark Pendergrast
This is my third and final post about the state of Japan's renewable energy efforts and other measures that are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In my first post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate…
November 30, 2011
by Mark Pendergrast
This is my second post in a series of three about the state of Japan's renewable energy efforts, which are vital to prevent further climate change and to wean the country from fossil fuel and nuclear power. In the previous post, I covered the public-health impacts of climate…
November 29, 2011
Although the news of a shopper using pepper spray was disturbing, I was glad that Black Friday 2011 passed without the kind of tragedy that happened in 2008, when 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was killed by a stampede of shoppers at a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, Long Island. OSHA cited Wal-Mart for a…
November 28, 2011
The UN climate talks going on in Durban aren't likely to lead to any major breakthroughs, but it would be nice if the US could at least avoid backsliding on the better-than-nothing steps it's taken on emissions. One important step for controlling emissions is ensuring the availability of affordable…
November 23, 2011
A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
A special investigative series by several reporters at Center for Public Integiryt/iWatch News and NPR: Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: About Pepper Spray (also see her followup, Fox News Food Products)
and…
November 22, 2011
by Kim Krisberg
It's too early to tell just how many families Elizabeth Frerking and her colleagues at the Saline County Health Department in Marshall, Mo., will have to turn away, but it's likely to be too many. As of Oct. 1 and due to cuts in federal immunization funding, Frerking can only…
November 21, 2011
by Mark Pendergrast
I'm going to talk about Japanese renewable energy in a minute, but first let me explain why.
In 2010, I published a book on public health (Inside the Outbreaks), and as a follow-up, I concluded that the overarching threat to the world's public health that we face in the coming…
November 17, 2011
By Elizabeth Grossman
We have learned from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request and released by the Center for Public Integrity earlier this month that there are currently about 465 United States industrial facilities on what the EPA…
November 16, 2011
by Dick Clapp, DSc, MPH
My friend Dr. Paul Epstein succumbed to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on Sunday, Nov. 13, three days short of his 68th birthday. Here are some thoughts about him that I wanted to share with TPH readers. First, he was a compassionate physician who worked in low income communities…
November 15, 2011
A few thought-provoking pieces I've read this week demonstrate the extent to which the US is failing to invest in our next generation. John Schmid of the Journal Sentinel points out that 44 other countries have lower infant mortality rates than the US (by UNICEF ranking), and we're tied for 45th…
November 10, 2011
Thailand is experiencing its worst flooding since 1942, and millions of people are affected. The death toll has reached 533, due mostly to drowning but also to electrocutions. CNN reports that more than 113,000 people have arrived at 1,700 government shelters set up across the country, and Bangkok…
November 9, 2011
A rock burst at a coal mine in China's Henan province has killed a total of 10 miners. The explosion happened just after a minor 2.9-magnitude earthquake occurred nearby, and 45 workers were rescued after 36 hours underground - although two of those workers later died of their injuries.
Last month…
November 7, 2011
By Mark Pendergrast
As I watched the blockbuster bio-thriller Contagion, I was struck by how realistic it was in many ways. That isn't surprising, since many epidemiologists, including those from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, served as advisors. The film was…