Mammography Rates Remained Steady After Change in Guidelines
The proportion of women undergoing screening for breast cancer every year did not change after U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released recommendations saying there wasn't enough evidence to support routine mammograms for women in their 40s, according to a new study published in the journal Cancer. In 2009, the Task Force changed their recommendations to state that women aged 50 to 74 should have a mammogram every other year, and screenings for women under age 50 should be evaluated by each woman with her doctor, according to individual risk factors. "When there are conflicting versions of guidelines, providers may err on the side of screening," said David Howard, a health policy researcher from Emory University in Atlanta, in an interview with Reuters. Read more on cancer.

Latest HIV Vaccine Study Halted
The National Institutes of Health halted a study testing an experimental HIV vaccine after an independent review board found the vaccine did not prevent HIV infection and did not reduce the amount of HIV in the blood. The trial, started in 2009, is the latest in a series of failed HIV vaccine trials, according to Reuters. The halted study included more than 2,500 volunteers in 19 U.S. cities. Study populations included men who have sex with men and transgender people who have sex with men. Read more on HIV.

CDC's Food Safety Report Card: Some Foodborne Illnesses Spiked in 2012
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released the "nation’s annual food safety report card," and it shows that 2012 rates of infections from two types of foodborne bacteria—campylobacter and Vibrio—have increased significantly when compared to a baseline period of 2006-2008, while rates of most others have not changed during the same period. The data are part of the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network report. Campylobacter infections have been linked to tranmission in many foods, including poultry, raw milk and produce. These infections were at their highest level since 2000, up 14 percent since 2006-2008. Vibrio infections, often associated with raw shellfish, were up 43 percent.

“The U.S. food supply remains one of the safest in the world,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH. “However, some foodborne diseases continue to pose a challenge. We have the ability, through investments in emerging technologies, to identify outbreaks even more quickly and implement interventions even faster to protect people from the dangers posed by contaminated food.” Read more on food safety.

The increasing globalization of the world circles back to health as well. That’s a key tenet in a new report, The U.S. Government Engagement in Global Health: A Primer, from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The report describes the U.S. agencies and programs involved in global health and the federal budget supporting these efforts. Following the release of the primer, NewPublicHealth spoke with Josh Michaud, a Principal Policy Analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation focused on the U.S. government’s role in global health.

NewPublicHealth: Why did the Kaiser Family Foundation create the global health primer?

Josh Michaud: The Kaiser Family Foundation has produced primers for other health issues on which we work, including Medicare and Medicaid. We felt that global health was an area in which we’ve built up some good data and analysis and we wanted to put it together in a format accessible to as wide an audience as possible. There has also been a growing interest at universities among young people in global issues, in particular global health issues.

Another critical reason to produce the primer is to set out a baseline for discussions, whether it is for different sides of a policy debate, student’s writing papers or people just getting started in the field. We don’t come at this with a particular recommendation, it really is meant to be a portrait of all the different parts of the U.S. government that are involved in global health. In the final section of the primer, we pulled together some policy issues that are of particular importance right now.

NPH: What trends or changes does the report note?

Michaud: The major trends have been increased levels of funding and an engagement by many different parts of the U.S. government in global health. The budget has increased significantly. In fiscal year 2001 the global health budget was about $1.5 billion. In fiscal year 2012 it was $8.8 billion. And while the United States is the most important and largest donor to global health, contributions from other governments have also grown significantly.

Much of the increased funding has been driven by increases for HIV/AIDS programs worldwide, and in particular, the PEPFAR program that the United States funds, as well as U.S. funding in support of Malaria. Earlier in the decade, there were significant increases year by year. That’s now leveled off and we don’t know what will happen in the future.

Eleven Public Health Departments First to Achieve National Accreditation Status
The Public Health Accreditation Board (PHAB) has awarded 5-year accreditation to eleven public health departments. The national program, which is jointly supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aims to improve and protect the health of the public by advancing the quality and performance of the nation’s state, tribal, local and territorial public health departments. The newly accredited agencies are the first of hundreds currently preparing to seek national accreditation through PHAB, an independent organization that administers the national accreditation program. “With accreditation, we now have national standards that promote continuous quality improvement for public health and a mechanism for recognizing high performing public health departments,” said PHAB President and CEO Kaye Bender, PhD, RN, FAAN. “These are the first of many health departments that we look forward to being able to recognize for achieving national standards that foster efficiency and effectiveness, and promote continuous quality improvement.”Read more on accreditation.

Report: HIV Cured in Baby
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center will report today that a baby in rural Mississippi has been cured of HIV through aggressive use of anti-retroviral drugs following birth. The finding will be presented at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Atlanta. The findings have not been yet been published in a peer review journal and the researchers say the findings may not apply to adults. Read more on HIV/AIDS.

Public Health and Sequestration
Several public health organizations has issued statements  on the potential impact of sequestration, across the board budget cuts to the federal budget, including the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers (ASTHO), the National Association of County and City Health Officials  (NACCHO) and the American Public Health Association (APHA). Read more on budgets.

On World AIDS Day, Saturday, December 1, I’m Positive, a new documentary produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation and MTV, will introduce three young adults living with HIV. The documentary is part of a project called GYT: Get Yourself Tested, a campaign to encourage testing for STDs, including HIV. GYT is a sexual health public information partnership between the Kaiser Family Foundation and MTV.

NewPublicHealth spoke with cast member Otis Harris, who is an HIV/AIDS peer advocate who lives in Chicago.

NewPublicHealth: How old are you and how old were you when you found out that you were HIV positive?

Otis Harris Jr.: I am 25 years old and I was 22 [when I found out I was HIV positive].

NPH: What do you wish you had known then that you know now?

Otis Harris Jr.: I wish that I could have been a little more educated about the virus and what to look for and how to protect myself. And if I would have known what I know now then I probably wouldn’t have been infected.

NPH: People have been working on HIV/AIDS education efforts for so many years now, but clearly they weren’t getting through. What are the ways in which they didn’t communicate well and how can they communicate better?

>>EDITOR'S NOTE: On 9/13/2012 CeaseFire changed its name to Cure Violence.

Mandisa Madikane, a 20-year old, HIV-positive, newly minted journalist from Soweto, South Africa, was the star at a high-wattage Washington D.C. event Wednesday night hosted by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief in conjunction with the 2012 AIDS International Conference meeting this week. Her co-panelists, who spoke about empowering women to protect them from rape, poverty, discrimination and humiliation included Tom Frieden, MD, director of the Centers for Disease Control; Rajiv Shah, Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development; and Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues. Discussion was helped by a video, “Mandisa’s Story,” aired at the event. Directed by the young journalist, it tells the story of her rape by a neighbor at age six, which is how Mandisa contracted HIV.

Mandisa is one of three HIV-positive young women from South Africa covering the AIDS conference who received their journalism training through GlobalGirl Media (GGM), a non-profit that teaches teenage girls from disadvantaged communities around the world, including the U.S., to become citizen-journalists. Launched in 2010 by a group of women broadcasters and journalists, GGM teaches girls to use print, video and electronic media to tell their stories in order to build their self-esteem and champion the role of girls throughout the world. The project currently has bureaus in South Africa, Morocco, Los Angeles and one opened just this month in Chicago. “The girls who train with GGM are a family, and we all have important stories to tell,” said Evelyn Mokele, one of the South Africa journalists in Washington this week. “When I found out I was HIV positive, I almost gave up on everything. But instead of letting my status be a death-sentence, I used it as a tool to find my voice.”

NIH Will Test Vaginal Ring for HIV Prevention in Women
U.S. researchers announced at the 2012 International AIDS Conference yesterday that they will begin a multinational clinical trial this month to test the effectiveness and extended safety of a vaginal ring containing an experimental antiretroviral drug to prevent HIV infection in women. Results are expected in early 2015.

“Developing scientifically proven forms of HIV prevention that women can control is essential,” said Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Because the vaginal ring is a long-acting intervention, it has a potential added benefit in that women may find it relatively easy to use.”

Most women who acquire HIV do so through unprotected sex, according to the National Institutes of Health. Because many women cannot negotiate male condom use with their sexual partners, women need forms of HIV prevention that they can use independently and regularly. The clinical trial will be conducted in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Read more on AIDS.

Ground Beef, Strollers Recalled
Cargill Meat Solutions is recalling 29,339 pounds of fresh ground beef products that may be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis, according to the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. Although the “use by date” has passed, the USDA is concerned that consumers may have packages of the meat, which is stamped EST. 9400, in their freezers. So far, 33 people in seven states have become ill. The states are Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia and Vermont.

Baby stroller firm Peg-Perego is recalling more than 200,000 strollers sold between 2004 and 2007 because of a baby death caused by a Peg-Perego stroller eight years ago. A baby’s head and neck can become trapped between the stroller tray and the seat bottom. Read more on food safety.

Study: Tanning Beds Vastly Increase Skin Cancer Risk in Young People
Using a tanning bed increases the risk of skin cancer by 20 percent, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal. However, starting to use tanning beds before age 35 can raise that risk by 87 percent, according to the study. The results are based on an analysis of 27 studies published between 1981 and 2012 that looked at 11,000 cases of skin cancer. Read more on cancer.

The choice of Washington, D.C. as the site of the 2012 International AIDS Conference is an important one – about 3 percent of the adult and teen residents of the city are HIV positive. That exceeds the definition of an AIDS epidemic by UNAIDS – 1 percent of a population.

A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation says that, “In many ways, the D.C. epidemic is a microcosm for what is happening nationally”: D.C. is a small, densely populated community with overlapping sexual networks that can fuel transmission, and also faces significant health care access challenges, poverty, drug use, high rates of other sexually transmitted infections, stigma and lack of knowledge about HIV status.

Blacks in D.C. have the highest HIV prevalence rates per 100,000 adults and adolescents (4,264.6)—more than twice the rate among Latinos (1,836.4) and three times the rate among whites (1,226.3). One difference is that in D.C., there is a higher prevalence of HIV among Black women (2.6%) compared with white men (2.4%).

Importantly, though, the report finds gains in HIV awareness and testing in the city. Over 100,000 HIV tests were done in DC last year, triple the number in 2007. And, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, D.C. was the first jurisdiction to adopt CDC recommendations for routine HIV testing in health care settings and actively works with providers to expand testing. More than four in 10 D.C. residents, ages 18-64, report being tested for HIV within the past year, the highest share of any state.

>>Bonus Link: The Washington Post has been live blogging the AIDS conference this week and the site also has some notable features including an important story on the stigma of AIDS in the South and obstacles in the U.S. to successful treatment for HIV/AIDS.

The International AIDS Conference is taking place in Washington, D.C., this week, and the Kaiser Family Foundation recently released a quiz to test your knowledge of the disease. Some answers may surprise you, and quiz creators hope that increasing awareness will help reduce the burden of the disease in the United States and around the world. Stats revealed include:

• Nearly 1 in 5 people with HIV don’t know they’re infected.
• Blacks account for the greatest number of new HIV infections in the U.S. (And although Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for 44 percent of new HIV infections in 2009.)
• Since 2006, the CDC has recommended voluntary, routine HIV testing in health care settings for all people ages 13 to 64. In addition, CDC recommends more frequent testing for certain groups at higher risk for HIV infection or transmission.

>>Bonus Link: The AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on display in Washington, D.C., during the conference, but online viewers can see the quilt, and learn its history online.

Study Finds Alarming HIV Rates Among Many Young Black Men
A key study conducted in six cities and released yesterday at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. by the HIV Prevention Trials Network  finds alarming rates of new HIV infections occurring among gay and bisexual black men in the United States (who are also known as men who have sex with men, or MSM), especially among young black MSM. The rate of new HIV infections among U.S. black MSM in the study was 2.8 percent per year, nearly fifty percent higher than white MSM. And the infection rate of young black MSM age 30 years and younger was 5.9 percent, which is three times the rate among U.S. white MSM. According to the researchers, the overall infection rate among black MSM in the study is comparable to the rate seen in the general populations of countries in sub-Saharan Africa hardest hit by the HIV epidemic. Read more on AIDS.

Coordinated Campus Strategies to Address Student Drinking to Reduce Self Harm and Injuries to Others
Strategies that address alcohol availability, alcohol policy enforcement and drinking norms can help colleges and their communities protect students from the harms of high-risk drinking, according to a new study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. The study was published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The researchers compared five campuses with coordinated approaches to five campuses without the program, finding that on campuses with dedicated efforts to control student drinking the percentage of students reporting severe consequences fell from 18 percent to 16 percent, but stayed the same on the campuses that had not initiated drinking controls. Reports of injuring another person while drinking decreased from 4 percent to 2 percent on dedicated campuses, with only a tiny change at the control colleges. The researchers estimate that on a campus with 11,000 students, drinking control efforts would result in 228 fewer students experiencing at least one severe consequence of drinking over the course of a month and 107 fewer students injuring others due to alcohol use during the year.

“This is the basic principle of public health — small changes at the population level can translate into significant improvements in the health of a population,” says Mark Wolfson, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Health Policy at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, and the lead author of the study. Read more on alcohol.

DOT Announces Nearly $800M in Grants Help Fix the Aging U.S. Transit Infrastructure
The Department of Transportation has announced grants of almost $800 million to modernize and replace aging transit facilities and vehicles in 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Projects include:

• New Jersey Transit: $76 million to upgrade the bus fleet, which will help improve commuting times and air quality for state residents.
• Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority: $15 million to replace aging buses with new buses that use compressed natural gas. The new buses are expected to improve reliability for riders, leave a smaller environmental footprint and reduce fuel costs.
• Capital Area Transportation Authority in East Lansing, Michigan: $6.3 million to redevelop a former Amtrak station near Michigan State University, which will improve bicycle and pedestrian access and connections to local bus and rail service.

Read more on transportation.

The XIX International AIDS Conference is taking place in Washington, D.C., this week at a pivotal point in the prevention and treatment of the disease. The World Health Organization on Friday recommended using antiretroviral medicines to try to prevent the infection in people who do not have HIV but are at high risk of transmission. The recommendation is based on recent research that found the drugs effective for many people. And, the International Antiviral Society has recommended treating all patients diagnosed with HIV with antiretroviral drugs, rather than waiting for levels of the virus to reach a certain point. Earlier treatment may help prevent certain diseases associated with HIV, including cancer, heart and kidney disease.

In advance of the meeting, Conference Co-Chair Diane Havlir, MD, chief of the HIV/AIDS division at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, sat down with UCSF science writer Jason Bardi to talk about the pivotal research and global commitments being discussed in meeting sessions and hallway conversations in Washington, D.C., this week. Here are some key excerpts from that conversation, which originally ran on the UCSF News Center website.

Jason Bardi: What can we expect at the AIDS 2012 conference?

Dr. Havlir: Over the last couple of years, we’ve had breakthroughs in AIDS, mostly in the prevention area which include treatment as prevention, adult male circumcision having sustained benefits, pre-exposure prophylaxis, and data showing that early treatment benefits the individual. So, the big theme at AIDS 2012 is about how we begin to end the AIDS epidemic. The conference theme is “Turning the Tide Together,” and there is going to be emphasis on the how: how are we going to start to begin the end the AIDS epidemic? And there’s going to be emphasis on the together: who’s going to finance this, and what partners do we need to bring to the table? The way I like to explain it is that we need to think about the short- and medium-term strategies and the long-term strategies.

Jason Bardi: Your research group at UCSF is presenting quite a lot of research at the conference. Can you talk about some of the highlights?