Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows, alumni and grantees. Some recent examples:

CBS Evening News profiled RWJF Community Health Leader Roseanna Means, MD, who founded the nonprofit Women of Means in 1988 to provide free medical care to homeless women in the Boston area. Today, 16 volunteer doctors and staff nurses provide care at the city’s shelters to women with unique sensitivities and needs. Read a post Means wrote about her nonprofit for the RWJF Human Capital Blog.

A study led by RWJF Clinical Scholars alumnus Matthew M. Davis, MD, MAPP, finds more than 40 percent of American parents give over-the-counter cough and cold medicines to children under age 4, despite product label warnings to the contrary. Health Day and the Examiner report on the findings.

Helena Hansen, MD, PhD, an alumna of the RWJF Health & Society Scholars program, is the lead author of an analysis that concludes social determinants—rather than changes in the environment or flawed diagnostic criteria—help explain the dramatic rise in the number of Americans diagnosed with mental disorders in recent years. Health Canal and MedPage Today report on the findings.

Forty-seven percent of children with cancer who receive part of their treatment at home have been exposed to at least one medication error, according to a study led by RWJF Physician Faculty Scholars alumna Kathleen E. Walsh, MD, MSc. Those errors had the potential to harm 36 per 100 patients, and actually did cause injury to four per 100, MedPage Today reports.

Jason Houle, PhD, is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at the University of Wisconsin. He recently published a study online in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine that finds association between depressive symptoms and mortality is due to later health problems, not prior physical health conditions.

Human Capital Blog: Why did you decide to look at this particular topic?

Jason Houle: I first started looking at this topic in graduate school, when I took a course on event history models (a quantitative method often used when studying mortality). Up to that point, most of my research focused on the social determinants of mental health, but I had become increasingly interested in the link between mental and physical health. While there’s a long literature on how depression influences physical health (and vice versa), as a demographer, I was really interested in the link between depression and mortality. When researching this topic, I discovered a rather large literature that showed that people who experience depression tend to die younger, on average, than those who do not. However, it wasn’t clear from prior research why, exactly, depressed people tend to die younger than those who are not. Though it makes sense that depression is linked with mortality, the reasons behind it remained a puzzle, and I thought it would make an interesting project.

The following are among the many honors received recently by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows, grantees and alumni.

The Chicago Parenting Program, an innovative program that supports healthy parenting and reduces behavioral problems among children, was recently added to the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. RWJF Executive Nurse Fellow alumna Deborah Gross, DNSc, RN, FAAN, was a driving force behind the program, which is used by Head Start centers in Chicago and New York City, among others.  RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholar Susan Breitenstein, PhD, RN, PMHCNS-BC, and Executive Nurse Fellow alumna Sharon Tucker, PhD, RN, joined with Gross and others to conduct a study on the program, published in Research in Nursing & Health. It was recently named the journal’s Best Research Article award for 2012.

David Kindig, MD, PhD, RWJF Health & Society Scholars program director at the University of Wisconsin, and Health & Society Scholars program National Advisory Committee (NAC) member George Isham, MD, MS, co-chaired the Institute of Medicine’s Roundtable on Population Health Improvement, which is exploring factors beyond medical care that affect people's health. Among other participants in the Roundtable: RWJF Senior Program Officer Pamela Russo, MD, MPH, and Health & Society Scholars NAC Member James Knickman, PhD.

RWJF Health Policy Fellows alumna Carmen R. Green, MD, was appointed the University of Michigan Health System’s inaugural Associate Vice President and Associate Dean for Health Equity and Inclusion. In the position, Green will find and address inequalities in care, education and research, and promote health care careers to those from groups that are underrepresented in the field.

Sylvia Garcia, JD, a member of the RWJF Community Health Leaders program NAC, was elected to the Texas State Senate (District 6) in a run-off election to fill the seat previously held by the late state Sen. Mario Gallegos.

Sammy Zahran, PhD, is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health & Society Scholar (2012 - 2014). He is assistant professor of demography in the Department of Economics at Colorado State University, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology in the Colorado School of Public Health, and co-director of the Center for Disaster and Risk Analysis at Colorado State University. This blog is based on his study: "Linking Source and Effect: Resuspended Soil Lead, Air Lead, and Children's Blood Lead Levels in Detroit, Michigan."

RWJF Health & Society Scholars lead the field of environmental health. This is part of a series highlighting their 2013 research.

Human Capital Blog: Tell us about your recent study, published in Environmental Science and Technology. What questions did you set out to answer? And what did you find?

Sammy Zahran: We sought to understand a mysterious statistical regularity in blood lead (Pb) data obtained from the Michigan Department of Community Health.  The dataset contained information on the dates of blood sample collection for 367,800 children (<10 years of age) in Detroit. By graphing the average monthly blood Pb levels (μg/dL) of sampled children, we found a striking seasonal pattern (see Figure 1). Child blood Pb levels behaved cyclically. Compared to the reference month of January, blood Pb levels were 11-14 percent higher in the summer months of July, August, and September.

Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

Asthmapolis, founded and directed by RWJF Health & Society Scholars alumnus David Van Sickle, PhD, MA, has secured a $5 million investment that will be used to expand operations and further enhance its product, the Milwaukee Business Journal  and Journal-Sentinel report. The company has engineered a GPS-enabled asthma inhaler called the Spiroscout, which sends a signal with the time and location to a remote server every time a patient uses it, allowing patients and providers to track and analyze the onset of asthma symptoms. Read more about Asthmapolis here and here.

Health & Society Scholar Sammy Zahran, PhD, is co-author of a study that finds that children in Detroit are being exposed to lead from an overlooked source: contaminated soil. Zahran and his team examined seasonal fluctuations in children’s blood lead levels and found that levels were highest in the summertime, when contaminated soil turns into airborne dust. The researchers were able to rule out exposure to lead-based paint as the main source of the contamination, NPR’s Shots Blog reports, because blood lead levels were lower in the winter, when children are more likely to be indoors.

A study from the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, which is directed by RWJF Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research recipient Edward W. Maibach, PhD, MPH, finds a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents think action should be taken to address climate change, United Press International reports. The New York Times Dot Earth Blog also reported on the findings.

Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

A study led by RWJF/U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Clinical Scholars alumnus Jeffrey Kullgren, MD, MPH, finds that weight loss programs motivate patients to lose more weight when they offer financial prizes in group competitions, rather than individual rewards. MedPage Today and Medscape [registration required] report on the findings.

Healthcare Finance News reports on a study co-authored by RWJF Investigator Award in Health Policy Research recipient Mark A. Hall, JD, that finds insurers subject to the medical loss ratio requirements in 2011 spent less than one percent of premium revenue on quality improvements (0.74%) or rebates (0.35%). The researchers write that “current market forces do not strongly reward insurers’ investments in this area.”

In a post on the New York Times’ Room for Debate blog about prenuptial agreements, Investigator Award recipient Celeste Watkins-Hayes, PhD, writes: “There is no doubt that women need to be savvy about protecting their assets and ensuring that their contributions and hard work are valued, even in marriage. But prenups can only protect a certain demographic. What is needed is a comprehensive strengthening of all women’s safety nets through access to jobs that build wealth, increased financial literacy and a better infrastructure for raising children with or without a significant other.”

Brendan Saloner, PhD, is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health & Society Scholar in residence at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. This is the first in a series of essays, reprinted from the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics’ eMagazine, in which scholars who attended the recent AcademyHealth National Health Policy Conference reflect on the experience.

Like Goldilocks wandering through the house of the Three Bears, policy-makers in search of a health care payment model have found it difficult to settle on an option that is "just right."

Fee-for-service—paying doctors separately for each service they provide—leads to too much unnecessary and duplicative care (too hot!). Capitation—paying doctors a fixed fee for caring for patients—leads doctors to skimp on care and avoid costly populations (too cold!). A "just right" payment model should give providers incentives to provide all the clinically necessary care to patients while keeping costs low.

Shared savings models—allowing providers to keep a portion of the money they save caring for patients—have been touted as one method for aligning the incentives of providers and payers. Most prominently, shared savings is a central element of the Affordable Care Act's Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).

An ACO is a network of providers that have agreed to accept a bundled payment for treating patient populations, and in return stand to gain incentive payments for meeting performance targets (or to lose money for missing targets). In the "happily ever after" version of ACOs, groups of providers will finally have a business case for coordinating patient medical records, reducing costly visits to the emergency room, and improving patient compliance with chronic disease therapies without leading to excessive procedures or gaps in care. Healthy patients, healthy profits.

But will it work?

Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

Eating high-fat dairy products may raise breast cancer survivors' risk of dying years later, according to a nearly 15-year study led by RWJF Health & Society Scholars alumna Candyce Kroenke, ScD, MPH. Breast cancer survivors who ate one or more servings of high-fat dairy a day had a 49 percent higher risk of breast cancer death and a 64 percent higher risk of death from any cause, compared to those who consumed little or no high-fat dairy, Health Day reports. Kroenke hypothesizes that the elevated estrogen rates in milk fats, present because of the production methods common in the Western world, contribute to a relapse of breast cancer.  Fox News and MedCity News also reported on the findings.

A study funded by the RWJF Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) and the National Institute of Nursing Research finds that insufficient nurse staffing in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) can lead to high infection rates among the most vulnerable babies, which can lead to mortality or long-term developmental issues affecting the quality of their lives. Nurse.com, The Star-Ledger, HealthDay and The Lund Report are among the outlets to report on the findings. Read more about the study.

Politico reports on a study co-authored by RWJF Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research recipient Cathy J. Cohen, PhD, that finds young minorities are disproportionately affected by voter identification laws. “Significantly more” minority youths (age 18-29) were asked to show identification at the polls than white youth, the study finds. In addition, minority youth are much less likely to have one of the required forms of identification than white youth—a barrier that was a primary reason many minority youth did not vote in 2012, according to the study.

Jeff Niederdeppe, PhD, is an assistant professor of communication at Cornell University and an alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health & Society Scholars program at the University of Wisconsin.

For the past 10 years or so, my colleagues and I have been studying how Americans make sense of public information about the causes of cancer and ways to prevent it. This has brought both good and bad news.

First the bad (and perhaps not surprising) news: many Americans are overloaded with information about cancer prevention and feel powerless about what they can do to prevent it. According to national surveys, one in four say there’s not much a person can do to reduce their risk of cancer, half feel that almost everything causes cancer, and three in four think there are too many recommendations to know which ones to follow. People who hold these beliefs are less likely than those who do not to engage in behaviors that we know reduce their risk of cancer – avoiding smoking and sunburn, eating a diet rich with fruits and vegetables, exercising regularly, and maintaining a healthy weight. These beliefs thus appear to have troubling consequences for broader efforts to reduce the rate of cancer in the U.S. through primary prevention.

In many ways, these feelings are understandable – it IS confusing. Cancer is not a single disease, but hundreds of them affecting different organs in the body, with different causes, different tests to screen for them, different treatments, and different prognoses. By some estimates, half of all cancer cases have an unknown cause. Cancer research moves slowly and incrementally, but increasingly publicly – one study might suggest that coffee causes cancer, while another points to its preventive potential. Science requires a back-and-forth between scientists as they sort out what findings hold up and which ones prove only preliminary. This process is absolutely necessary, but can offer a false sense of hope or opportunity if appropriate caveats aren’t offered in early stages of this work, or if preliminary results are publicized widely through the media.

Cassandra Okechukwu, MSN, ScD, is an assistant professor in the department of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an alumna of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program.

With the arresting title of “Why women can’t have it all,” Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic magazine article generated many discussions on the issues women face in balancing competing work and family demands. However, these discussions have not addressed the vast disparities in the types of work-family issues women face and the limited resources available to many working women. Also painfully missing from the discussion are the health implications of these competing work and family demands.

One group for which these issues cannot be separated is nursing home workers. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that the majority of nursing home workers are drawn from racial/ethnic minority groups and low-income communities; as such, many face significant health disparities. For example, racial/ethnic minority and low-income populations have a disproportionate burden of diagnosis of several cancers that are related to adiposity—including cancers of the lung, esophagus, endometrium, colon and rectum, kidney, pancreas, gallbladder and thyroid.