The shutdown is just one of two government stories making headlines today. The other, of course, is the opening of consumer health insurance marketplaces, also known as exchanges, in every state that will let consumers purchase coverage that takes effect as early as January 1, 2014. (Sign up after December 15, 2013 and coverage could begin after January 1.) The marketplaces are the cornerstones of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) signed into law three years ago.

The exchanges will not only sell insurance, but also serve as electronic sign-up centers for public health coverage. For example, under the ACA, Medicaid has been expanded to cover many low-income adults; previously in order to qualify for Medicaid, most adults had to have children under 18 years of age as dependents. Information on the exchange websites will let people comparison shop for health insurance by price and other options, as well as find out whether they qualify for subsidies and tax breaks to help cover the cost of the insurance. In a statement released to announce the opening of the marketplaces, the American Public Health Association (APHA) underscored the fact that all Americans using the marketplace will be guaranteed access to health care and a range of preventive services, including cancer screenings; vaccinations; care for managing chronic diseases; and mental health and substance use services.

“This is a defining moment in the transformation of our U.S. health system,” said Georges Benjamin, MD, APHA’s executive director. “Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Americans will finally have greater access to affordable, quality care and preventive health services. The marketplace gives preventive care to Americans who never had it before, especially the 44,000 who die prematurely every year because they lack health insurance.”

According to the APHA, under marketplace and Medicaid expansion provisions 25 million uninsured Americans will gain health coverage within 10 years and even more will lower their health costs. Other provisions of the ACA include the Prevention and Public Health Fund already in place to improve the health of Americans through proven community-based preventive health services and strengthening of the public health work force and infrastructure.

Experts at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have created and compiled resources to help individuals and health experts navigate the exchanges in their states.

>>Bonus Links: Read previous posts about the Affordable Care Act on NewPublicHealth:

• Do You Speak Affordable Care Act? — Sept. 4, 2013
• What’s the Role of Local Health Departments in Implementing the Affordable Care Act? — July 24, 2013
• Health Departments Begin Implementing the Affordable Care Act: NACCHO Annual — July 11, 2013
• How Will the Affordable Care Act Impact Public Health? — Dec. 3, 2012
• RWJF Statement on the Supreme Court's Affordable Care Act Ruling — July 28, 2012

Health Insurance Marketplaces Under the Affordable Care Act Open Today in Every State
Health insurance marketplaces, also known as health insurance exchanges, open today in every state under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law three years ago. Coverage obtained through the exchanges gives purchasers guaranteed access to health care and a range of preventive services, including cancer screenings; vaccinations; care for managing chronic diseases; and mental health and substance use services. “Most importantly…coverage will translate into more opportunities to live longer, healthier and fuller lives,” saidRisa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which has launched a comprehensive resource site to help individuals, families and small businesses learn about coverage options available to them, and enroll. Read more on the Affordable Care Act.

2010 California Pertussis Outbreak Linked to ‘Personal Belief Exemptions’ to Vaccines
Researchers have linked the 2010 California pertussis—or “whopping cough”—outbreak to parents who refused to have their children vaccinated for other than medical reasons. During the outbreak, 9,120 people became sick and 10 infants died. The study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics, looked at both outbreaks and filed personal belief exemptions, finding that people who lived in areas with high rates of such exemptions were about 2.5 times more likely to live in an area with many cases of pertussis. Approximately 95 percent of a population must be vaccinated in order for it to maintain herd immunity. Read more on vaccines.

Study: Against Medical Advice, 14 Percent of Infants Sleep in the Same Bed as Parents, Caregivers
Despite the associated risks, many infants still sleep in the same bed as parents, other adults and or children, according to a new study in the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The rate has more than doubled since the early 1990s and now stands at about 14 percent. Such sleeping arrangements increase the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or death from other sleep-related causes. Study co-author Marian Willinger, special assistant for SIDS at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said it is important for doctors to discuss proper sleep-time habits with new parents; the study found that parents who receive advice against sleeping in the same bed as infants are 34 percent less likely to do so. Read more on maternal and infant health.

“Thanks to decades of neuroscience research on brain development, adversity and toxic stress, we now understand how a child who is exposed to violence, or neglect, or homelessness at an early age may develop behavioral and physical health problems later in life,” said Jane Lowe, Senior Adviser for Program Development at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). “We can now use this rapidly evolving knowledge to create real-world solutions.”

RWJF.org recently pulled together a collection of resources on “adverse childhood experiences”—how common they are and what they can mean for the adults those traumatized children become. The website includes an infographic that illustrates the subject:

NewPublicHealth has previously written about the importance of addressing and changing youth violence, so that these behaviors don’t become even more severe—and more damaging—while spreading from act to act and person to person. In a Q&A, Kristin Schubert, MPH and then-interim director of RWJF’s Public Health, spoke about the Foundation’s approach to the issue of violence prevention and strategies in the field that are working to create change.

“We know that the child who was abused is that much more likely to be a victim or perpetrator of bullying a few years down the line, and then is that much more likely to be a victim or perpetrator of dating violence a few years later in high school, and then is much more likely to be a part of more family violence later on. There’s no form of violence that stands alone,” she said. “It’s a multigenerational phenomenon that is passed down.

“This context is so essential—in considering why someone engages in violent behavior, it’s important to recognize that it’s not just the ‘bad apple,’ it’s not the person. It’s the behavior. As Gary Slutkin of CeaseFire says, ‘Violence is a learned behavior.’”

Schubert pointed to the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which found that the more “adverse” events a child faces in their youth—from maltreatment to neglect to abuse to witnessing violence—the more likely they are to have health problems later in life. That includes hypertension, diabetes and heart disease.

>>Read the full NewPublicHealth interview.

>>Read more about Adverse Childhood Experiences.

New NIH Study to Look at House-to-House HIV Testing, Other Measures, to Reduce HIV Burden in Africa
A study in South Africa and Zambia is assessing whether house-to-house voluntary HIV testing and prompt treatment of HIV infection, along with other proven HIV prevention measures, can substantially reduce the number of new HIV infections across communities. The trial is funded primarily by the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), administered by the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. “Through this new study, we aim to learn whether the treatment of HIV-infected individuals as a form of HIV prevention, an approach previously tested in roughly 1,800 heterosexual couples where one partner was infected, will be just as effective when implemented across an entire adult population,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, MD. “The study also will tell us whether this method of delivering population-wide HIV treatment as prevention is feasible and cost-effective.” The trial is being conducted in South Africa and Zambia because the HIV prevalence in those countries is among the highest in the world. An estimated 12.5 percent of adults in Zambia and 17.3 percent of adults in South Africa are infected. The study team will measure the impact of the two HIV prevention packages by determining the number of new HIV infections among a representative sample of 52,500 adults drawn from the 21 study communities and followed for three years. The study is expected to end in 2019. Read more on AIDS.

Study: Better Awareness Likely Reason for Increase in ER Visits for Youth Concussions
Improved awareness of the signs and symptoms of traumatic brain injuries (TMI)—such as concussions—is likely the cause of a noticeable increase in TMI-related emergency department visits by children, according to a new study from doctors at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The study appeared in the journal pediatrics. Visits for these types of injuries climbed about 92 percent from 2002 to 2011, while the overall severity of the injuries decreased and the hospitalization rate remained at around 10 percent. "We are doing a better job at educating ourselves and educating the public about concussion," said Dr. Holly Hanson, lead study author and an emergency medicine fellow. "People and doctors are recognizing sports-related concussions more. People are recognizing the signs and symptoms. People are more aware of the complications. So people are coming in more." According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevent, each year TMI accounts for about 630,000 emergency department visits, 67,000 hospitalizations and 6,100 deaths in children and teens annually. Read more on injury prevention.

HHS Developing New Burn Treatments to Improve Disaster Response, Daily Care
Through its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HUD) is working to develop five new types of burn treatments for disaster response and daily emergency medical care. The thermal burn medical countermeasures—which could take the form of drugs, vaccines or medical products—will be for chemical, radiological or nuclear incidents. Developing new measures is critical, because with only 127 burn centers in the country, a mass casualty event could quickly overwhelm the public health response. “Sustainability of these medical countermeasures for thermal burns is critical for their availability when they are needed most,” said BARDA Director Robin Robinson, PhD. “Our repurposing and multi-purpose strategy facilitates development, ensures availability, and reduces overall costs for thermal burn medical countermeasures.” Read more on disasters.

For some kids, getting ready to head back to school takes more than a new backpack and a sharpened pencil. In an effort to reduce the deaths and harassment that some Chicago kids faced on their way to and from school, the city has enhanced a program called “Safe Passage,” which trains city workers to help children get to school safely. Last year there were 600 workers in the program, and this year that number has been doubled.

“The whole city is with you, shoulder to shoulder, doing our part to make sure every child in every neighborhood is safe on the way to and from school and has academic success once they get there,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel in a meeting with Safe Passage workers late last month.

The program currently serves 91 schools. Over the last two years crime on Safe Passage routes was down 20 percent and incidents among students were down 27 percent the schools.

Training for Safe Passage workers includes work on how to build relationships, anticipate issues before they occur and strategies for de-escalating situations. Training continues throughout the school year.

Stationing workers is actually part of a much larger strategy in Chicago for improving school safety, which has included trimming trees and removing weeds to make areas easier to see and safer; installing safe passage signs; removing graffiti; and repairing broken sidewalks and street lights. The city has also conducted community education training about the Safe Passage program. Parents along the Safe Passage routes got school specific information before the term began. See safe passage routes here.

Even Healthy Weight Adults with High Body Fat at Increased Risk of Heart Disease
Even older adults with healthy body weights can be at increased risk of cardiovascular diseases if they have high percentages of body fat, according to a new study The American Journal of Cardiology. "Just because someone has a normal BMI does not necessarily mean they are metabolically normal," said lead researcher Dr. John Batsis, a geriatrician at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. The study found that women with excess body fat (above 35 percent) were 57 percent more likely to die from heart-related causes within 11 years than were women with healthy body fat levels. Javier Salvador, MD, an endocrinologist at the University Clinic of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, who was not involved in the study, said the findings demonstrate the limits of body mass index (BMI), which measures weight in relation to height. Read more on heart health.

‘Image Discrepancies’ of Job Roles Can Hurt Job Satisfaction, Performance and Pay
The lack of client understanding of the actual job roles of nurse practitioners and other professionals can negatively impact job satisfaction, performance and pay, according to a recent study in the Academy of Management Journal. "If people don't understand what you do, they tend to devalue what you do," study co-author Michael Pratt, a professor of management and organization at Boston College. "They don't understand why you're making all this money—'Why should I pay you all this money?' is a common question these professionals keep hearing." The study looked at “image discrepancies” in four professions—nurse practitioners, architects, litigation attorneys and certified public accountants—finding a noticeable and negative lack of understanding by clients for each. For example, many patients don’t realize that nurse practitioners can examine patients and prescribe medicine, and instead insist on seeing a doctor. "I assumed professionals would actually get over it, that there would be frustration, it would be an interpersonal problem, and that would be the extent of it," Pratt said. "I didn't think it would have such a big impact on how they did their job, how it affected their pay and how they performed. I was surprised at the depth of how this affected job performance. It's not simply annoying -- it has real impact.” Read more on mental health.

CDC Emphasizing Electronic Laboratory Reporting to Improve Public Health’s Response to Disease Outbreaks
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) emphasis on the widespread adoption of electronic laboratory reporting (ELR) has helped improve public health’s response to dangerous infections, according to data from CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). ELRs enable labs to report disease outbreak information quickly and in a usable format. The number of labs that utilize ELRs has more than doubled since 2005, and CDC has helped fund their increased use since 2010 in 57 state, local and territorial health departments. Current estimates are that about 62 percent of lab reports were received electronically. “Electronic laboratory reporting can give health officials better, more timely and complete information on emerging infections and outbreaks than they have ever received before,” said Robert Pinner, MD, associate director for surveillance, programs and informatics in CDC’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases. “Implementing these systems is a complex task that requires substantial investment, but ELR will provide health departments the tools they need to quickly identify and respond to disease threats and monitor disease trends now and in the future.” Read more on technology.

A new report, “Women on a Roll,” from the League of American Bicyclists finds the numbers of women taking to bikes is increasing, and credits bike share programs and other city biking enhancements for the uptick. The report says the reasons that women are more hesitant cyclists than men include concerns about comfort, convenience, confidence, equipment and having a community of riders to share the sport. But the report also found that increasing a community’s biking infrastructure—including bike lanes and signage—pushes up the numbers of women riders. Recent examples:

• In New Orleans, female ridership went up 115 percent on South Carrollton Street after a bike lane was installed.
• In Philadelphia, the presence of a bike lane increased female use by 276 percent.
• In New York in 2011, 15 percent of riders on a street without bike lanes were women, compared with 32 percent on a street with bike lanes.
• 53 percent of women say they would ride more if there were more bike lanes and paths.

Women, and all bikers, have even more options now. Chicago opened a 4,000-cycle bike share program this summer and San Francisco is set to launch its 700-bike program shortly. However, as NewPublicHealth reported a few months ago, infrastructure given can potentially be infrastructure taken away. A story last February from The New York Times found that some candidates for mayor of New York City, which holds elections for the post in November, have mulled removing bike lanes to mollify drivers who want more of the road.

After years of deliberation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued final guidance on the regulation of smartphone medical devices. In a nutshell, generally speaking any device used in diagnosis or treatment can’t be marketed until it’s approved by the FDA; other apps—such as calorie counters, or pedometers built into a phone—don’t need the FDA’s nod. The FDA’s criteria is how much risk an app poses for a consumer. The agency says it “intends to focus its regulatory oversight on a subset of mobile medical apps that present a greater risk to patients if they do not work as intended.”

Specifically, the FDA will focus its oversight on mobile medical apps that: 

• Are intended to be used as an accessory to a regulated medical device—for example, an application that allows a health care professional to make a specific diagnosis by viewing a medical image from a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) on a smartphone or a mobile tablet.
• Transform a mobile platform into a regulated medical device—for example, an application that turns a smartphone into an electrocardiography (ECG) machine to detect abnormal heart rhythms or determine whether a patient is experiencing a heart attack.

“We have worked hard to strike the right balance, reviewing only the mobile apps that has the potential to harm consumers if they do not function properly,” said Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “Our mobile medical app policy provides app developers with the clarity needed to support the continued development of these important products.”

While the final guidelines were only just released, FDA has cleared 100 mobile medical apps for marketing in the last few years, and 40 of those were just in the last two years.

Synim Rivers, an FDA spokesman, answered questions for NewPublicHealth about the final guidance on mobile medical apps.

Average Monthly Cost of Mid-tier Insurance Under Affordable Care Act Estimated at $328
The average monthly cost of a mid-tier health insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act will be $328, and government subsidies will also help reduce that cost for most Americans, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The health exchanges open for enrollment next week and the federal government hopes to enroll as many as 7 million people within the first year. The cost varies from state to state, with Minnesota projected to have the least expensive plan at $192 per month and Wyoming projected to have the highest at $516. Read more on access to health care.

NIH Initiative Will Help Move Science from the Laboratories to the Commercial Sector
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $31.5 million in grants to establish three inaugural NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations that will work to improve how basic science discoveries move from laboratories to commercial products. The Centers are funded by NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and will focus on technologies to improve the diagnosis, treatment, management and prevention of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders and diseases. “These centers essentially will offer a one-stop shop to accelerate the translation of early-stage technologies for further development by the private sector and ultimate commercialization,” said Gary H. Gibbons, MD, director of NHLBI. As a result, the public will gain access sooner to new biomedical products that improve human health while also benefiting from the economic growth associated with the creation of new companies and the expansion of existing ones.” Read more on research.

‘Cycling’ Drugs Could Help Combat Antibiotic-resistant Bacteria
“Cycling” between antibiotics may extend their life and effectiveness, while also enabling doctors to stay ahead of drug-resistant bacteria, according to a new study in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "You cycle between drugs that have reciprocal sensitivities," said study co-author Morten Sommer, a lead researcher with the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark. "If you become resistant to drug A, you will become more sensitive to drug B. That way, you can cycle between drug A and drug B without increasing resistance in the long term.” With the increased use—and overuse—of antibiotics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming an increasingly serious public health problem, leading researchers and health care professionals in search of new ways to combat the problem. More than 2 million people are made ill and more than 23,000 people die every year in the United States due to antibiotic-resistant infections, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read more on prescription drugs.

Florence Fulk, MS, BS, a research biologist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Tami Thomas-Burton, BS, MPH, of the Office of the Regional Administrator-Environmental Justice at EPA, will be speaking at the National Health Impact Assessment meeting this week on HIAs and environmental policy. NewPublicHealth caught up with Fulk and Thomas-Burton ahead of the conference to ask about EPA’s use of health impact assessments.

NewPublicHealth: What steps has the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) taken with respect to health impact assessments?

Florence Fulk: Within EPA is the Office of Research and Development, and within that office we have a Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program which is providing tools, models and approaches to support HIAs across the country. We’re also demonstrating HIA as an approach to integrate and weigh tradeoff in community decision making.

NPH: Why is the EPA investing in health impact assessments?

Fulk: The primary vision for the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program is to inform and empower communities to look at human health, economic and environmental factors in their decision making, and to do it in a way that fosters community sustainability. And that vision is very closely linked to the values and the function of HIAs. The number of HIAs that are being conducted in the United States and the number of people that are conducting HIAs in the United States has formed this growing community of practice, which can inform our Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program by understanding the decisions that communities are facing and how they’re bringing health, economic and environmental information to the process.

We also see that by growing a community of practice as a network to disseminate EPA tools, models, data and guidance, the research that we do to support HIAs also gives us a way to raise awareness about sustainable alternatives in community decisions.