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Hot Health Headlines
Recent health stories from around the country

• Hot Health Headlines merge with AHCJ's blog
  In this new year, we have decided to merge our Hot Health Headlines feature with AHCJ's new blog, Covering Health. This change will allow our readers to have one place to get the latest news in health journalism and links to good work that has been done. We hope you'll visit the blog daily and subscribe to its RSS feed.
• Extensive project explores end-of-life care and choices
  Lee Hancock of The Dallas Morning News explores palliative care, which combines "traditional medicine with pain relief, spiritual counseling, and practical advice" for patients near the end of their lives and their families. Hancock and photographer Sonya N. Hebert spent almost a year at Baylor, documenting some of the most difficult and meaningful moments in the life of any nurse, doctor, patient or family member.
• Central N.Y. hospital CEOs get big paychecks, bonuses
  James T. Mulder of The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., reports on CEO salaries and bonuses at nonprofit hospitals in the area, using IRS 990 forms.
• Mining, drilling could impact major drinking water supply
  Abrahm Lustgarten of ProPublica and David Hasemyer of The San Diego Union-Tribune look at the potential environmental and water-use consequences of increased mining and drilling in the Colorado River's watershed. The river provides drinking water for more than 27 million people and nourishes 15 percent of the nation's crops.
• Indian psychiatrists work to relieve stress of terrorist attacks
  Mark Magnier of the Los Angeles Times reports from Mumbai about the stress on the small number of Indian pyschiatrists to provide adequate professional help for those impacted by the recent terrorist attacks.
• L.A. County to hire health services watchdog
  The Associated Press reports that Los Angeles County is hiring a watchdog to oversee its Department of Health Services in the wake of highly publicized patient deaths and mismanagement at a county-run hospital.
• Flying sick: People board planes despite illnesses
  Alison Young of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used the Georgia Open Records Act to obtain the Atlanta Fire-Rescue Department's database of reports for 2007 and 2008. She found that medics with the department respond to about 4,000 emergency calls a year involving people at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
• Intense competition in stem cell research
  Mark Johnson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes a three-part series detailing the discovery of how to create embryonic stem cells out of normal cells. One of the key labs in the research is located at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Hispanic immigrants least likely to seek mental help
  Sharon Salyer of the Everett (Wash.) Daily Herald and Alejandro Dominguez of the weekly Spanish-language newspaper La Raza del Noroeste, team up to produce a package of stories, available in both English and Spanish, about mental health in the Hispanic and immigrant community.
• Clinical trials outsourced to India, raising questions about oversight
  Kris Hundley of the St. Petersburg Times writes about the latest outsourcing trend: clinical drug trials. Global drug companies are tapping India's population of nearly 1.2-billion to test the safety and effectiveness of compounds. The recent news that 49 children have died during clinical trials at All India Institute of Medical Sciences has "triggered unease about a drug-testing phenomenon, propelled by mountains of money that has swept India with little publicity."
• Reporter questions motives for ruling out single-payer health care system
  Mike Dennison of Lee Enterprises writes a column that looks critically at a plan proposed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who's among those leading the charge for health care reform in America.
• Abortion: Med students must explore this option on their own
  Patricia Meisol writes an article in The Washington Post Magazine about a medical student in Maryland who grapples with the possibility of becoming an abortion provider. Through the student, the article looks at how medical schools generally leave the specialty off the curriculum, leaving students to explore it on their own.
• More health risks for students in schools near industrial plants
  Blake Morrison and Brad Heath of USA Today write about the results of their eight-month examination of the impact of industrial pollution on the air outside schools across the nation. The team found 435 schools that had air pollution 50 or more times higher than their state standards.
• Washington mental hospital fails to monitor suicidal patients
  Chris Halsne of KIRO-Seattle reports on a local state mental hospital that failed to follow its own standards, resulting in a preventable suicide.
• Newspaper test finds Bisphenol A in 'safe plastic materials
  Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel write about new research that shows essentially all plastic materials contain levels of the toxic chemical Bisphenol A when microwaved.
• Obama's health care plan may increase demand for health management degrees
  Dan Mascai writes in Business Week that Obama's health care proposals could produce a greater need for health care management professionals.
• Natural gas drilling may cause more water contamination than regulators admit
  An investigation by ProPublica's Abrahm Lustgarten finds that the levels of water pollution around natural gas drilling sites could be higher than what a 2004 EPA study found. Over the last few years, a series of contamination incidents have raised questions about that EPA study and ignited a debate over whether the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing may threaten the nation's increasingly precious drinking water supply.
• Obama inheriting failing FDA
  Rob Stein of The Washington Post writes about officials who say that the FDA needs special attention by the Obama administration.
• Poor regulation in China brings danger to U.S.
  Time's Billy Powell reports on the regulatory problems in China that have brought drugs, baby formula and milk products tainted with dangerous substances into the U.S.
• Farmers, other small business owners, pay more for health insurance
  Kelley Weiss of Capital Public Radio station KXJZ in Sacramento looks at how farmers and other small business owners who pay for health insurance as individuals are discriminated against by insurance companies.
• Government overlooks mislabeling, allergens in food products
  Sam Roe of the Chicago Tribune writes about how problems with the regulation of allergen labeling in food puts children in danger.
• Critics use Twitter to bring down Motrin campaign
  Michael Learmoth and Rupal Parekh of Advertising Age write about a Twitter outburst that forced Johnson & Johnson to discontinue an ad campaign for Motrin that implied moms carry their babies as fashion accessories.
• Unregulated energy drink industry contributes to caffeine addiction
  Roberta Baskin of WJLA-Washington, D.C. takes a look into caffeine content of energy drinks and the lack of regulation despite petitioning by interest groups for a decade.
• Nutrition 'experts' accept money from food industry
  Tom Avril of The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the influence of corporate money on the study and promotion of nutrition. The article focuses on Lisa Hark, a nutritionist, author and former television host who has been quoted touting orange juice, chicken and dairy products while receiving money from those industries. However, as Avril points out,Hark is not the on