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by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA President Obama's health reform has been derailed in a collision with health insurance software, but this is hardly a unique experience. In 1995, I was invited to Prague to try to help the Czech Republic reconcile two co-existing public health practice cultures–the…

Wonkblog's Sarah Kliff has helpfully compiled "A guide to surviving Obamacare debates at Thanksgiving," and it starts off with a good one: "Your mom wants to know whether Obamacare is a total disaster." Kliff's response focuses on the disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov, the online marketplace…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Mariya Strauss in The Nation: Regulations Are Killed, and Kids Die: Under pressure, the Obama administration withdrew rules barring young laborers from dangerous work—a decision with grave consequences for several families. Maryn McKenna in Medium: Imagining…

I've written before about the importance of the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion and about the role of community health centers in delivering primary care to underserved patients. With roughly half of the states declining the now-optional Medicaid expansion and an uncertain federal funding…

Last week, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released a proposed rule that would make public much of the injury and illness data employers are already required to collect. Large employers (those with 250 or more employees) would be required to electronically submit their…

According to the latest figures from the Census Bureau, 15% of the US population lives in poverty. The figure’s even worse for children: 22% of those under 18 are living in households with incomes below the federal poverty level. The US economy is officially out of the recession, but an estimated…

At the American Public Health Association's annual meeting in Boston this week, the organization officially approved 17 policy statements, including one calling for the US to improve access to paid sick and family leave and one urging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to…

If you only have time for one long read this week, make it the excellent "Breathless and Burdened" series by Chris Hamby of the Center for Public Integrity. The series website explains, "This yearlong investigation examines how doctors and lawyers, working at the behest of the coal industry, have…

I spent much of yesterday at a hearing held by the District of Columbia City Council’s Committee on Business, Consumer, and Regulatory Affairs – but I didn’t manage to stay for the entire 11 hours. Nearly 150 witnesses signed up to testify about the two main issues under consideration: raising the…

Ian Frazier's in-depth New Yorker article on homelessness in New York seems especially timely, coming after a government shutdown that demonstrated how quickly low-income workers can fall into homelessness if their paychecks suddenly stop. (The shutdown also demonstrated some things about Congress…

This month's issue of EHS Today includes a special section on Bangladesh factory safety, a topic that has continued to attract news coverage following the April collapse of the Rana Plaza building, which killed more than 1100 workers. Sandy Smith's introductory article summarizes some of the…

As Kim Krisberg reported earlier this year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that in no state can full-time workers earning minimum wage afford the average rent for two-bedroom apartments without spending more than 30% of their income on housing. The combination of rising rents…

by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA A recent editorial in the New York Times, "Rolling the dice on food-borne illnesses," focused on just one of the many health dangers related to the federal government shutdown.  The editorial reminded me of developments in Vermont almost forty years ago, when I was…

Over the course of three days, three miners were killed on the job in West Virginia, Illinois, and Wyoming. Ken Ward Jr. describes their deaths in the Charleston Gazette: In the recent incidents, 62-year-old Roger R. King of Moundsville was killed Friday when he was hit in the head by part of a…

The government shutdown has cut off the flow of funds from USDA to WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Some states have enough money to keep their programs running for a while, but Utah's WIC clinic has already closed its doors to new clients as staff in…

Today is an exciting day in US healthcare history: For the first time, uninsured US residents can go online to shop for individual health insurance policies and feel confident of a few things: they can easily see information to make meaningful comparisons between plan options; they won’t be…

Last year, California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights passed by the state's legislature. Yesterday, he signed a Domestic Worker Bill of Rights that is watered down from its original version but takes the important step of extending overtime protections to nannies and…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Brian Beutler in Salon: The $200K lesson I learned from getting shot Sarah Kliff, Sandhya Somashekhar, Lena H. Sun and Karen Tumulty in the Washington Post: How eight lives would be affected by the health law Sendhil Mullainathan in the New York Times: The…

A new Health Wonk Review compiled by Peggy Salvatore is now up at the Healthcare Talent Transformation blog. It's got links and descriptions for a great collection of posts on several healthcare topics, from health information technology and patient-experience reviews to the impact a government…

At the Center for Public Integrity, Sasha Chavkin has the latest news on a mystifying occupational health problem: chronic kidney disease (CKD) in young, previously healthy agricultural workers in Central America, India, and Sri Lanka. Since 2011, the International Consortium of Investigative…

Antibiotic-resistant infections kill 23,000 people in the US and sicken two million each year, and the problem is getting worse, warns a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2013 ranks several strains of bacteria…

Earlier this week, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed legislation that accepts the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion for his state, and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has signaled his intention to do so if the federal government approves his proposed program changes. Wonkblog’s Sarah…

Earlier today, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez announced that the Department of Labor has finalized a rule extending minimum-wage and overtime protections to home care workers. Starting on January 1, 2015, the wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act will apply to home health…

Days before the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the New York Times published an article about respirators. This protective equipment was intended to protect response and recovery workers at Ground Zero, but often failed to do so because of discomfort, inadequate training, or…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: Dorry Samuels Levine at National COSH: On 12th anniversary of September 11 attacks, more than 1,100 reported cases of cancer among responders and survivors Emily Badger at The Atlantic Cities: How Poverty Taxes the Brain Laura Helmuth at Slate: Fourteen…

As Celeste and I were putting together The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2012 – Summer 2013 (released on Labor Day), we noticed that many of the year’s developments in occupational health and safety occurred in various parts of the food chain. From fields and silos to poultry…

A regular contributor to The Pump Handle, Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA, and his co-editor Phyllis Freeman wrote the following editorial which is available at the Journal of Public Health Policy. In early July 2013, James R. Clapper, Jr, United States Director of National Intelligence apologized to the…

Last year, Celeste Monforton and I started a new Labor Day tradition: publication of a report that highlights some of the important research and activities in occupational health in the US over the past year. The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety: Fall 2012 – Summer 2013, the second…

In a recent article in Environmental Health Perspectives, Charles W. Schmidt takes on the topic of artisanal brick kilns, a major source of pollution in developing countries. The article focuses largely on Latin America, where the Swiss-funded group EELA (that's Eficiencia Energética en Ladrilleras…

By Veronica Tinney and Jerome Paulson Children breathe more air, drink more water and eat more food per unit of body weight than adults.  Therefore, if a child’s air, water or food is contaminated with chemicals, children receive a larger dose per unit of body weight than would an adult in the…