President Obama on Monday nominated for surgeon general an influential rural family physician who has spent the past two decades caring for a shrimping community along the Gulf Coast.
Obama said Regina Benjamin understands the needs of the poor and uninsured and is a tireless promoter of wellness programs, making her qualified to be America's advocate during health care reforms.
Benjamin founded her non-profit clinic in 1990 for a diverse community of 2,500 near her home in Bayou La Batre, Ala., and had to rebuild it three times. It was destroyed twice by hurricanes and once by fire. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Obama said, she mortgaged her own house for the reconstruction and told the pharmacy to send her patients' bills to her when they couldn't afford their medicine.
"And for all that she's seen and overcome, she represents what's best about health care: doctors and nurses who give and care and sacrifice for the sake of their patients, those Americans who would do anything to heal a fellow citizen," Obama said. "When people couldn't pay, she didn't charge them. When the clinic wasn't making money, she didn't take a salary for herself."
Benjamin, 51, became the first African-American woman to be named to the American Medical Association's board of trustees in 1995 and last year received one of the MacArthur Foundation's $500,000 "genius grants." After graduating from the University of Alabama School of Medicine in 1984, she worked in Alabama as part of her obligation to the National Health Service Corps, a Department of Health and Human Services program that places physicians in underserved communities in exchange for tuition reimbursement.
Public health also has become "very personal" to her.
"My father died of diabetes and hypertension. My older brother and only sibling died at age 44 of HIV-related illness. My mother died of lung cancer because as a young girl, she wanted to smoke, just like her twin brother. My uncle Buddy, my mother's twin, is at home right now on oxygen struggling for each breath because of the years of smoking."
Those preventable diseases, she said, were why her family wasn't present with her at the nomination announcement: "While I cannot change my family's past, I can be a voice in the movement to improve our nation's health care and a nation's health for the future."
Read more.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
USA Today reports: Did toxic chemical in Iraq sicken GIs?
Larry Roberta's every breath is a painful reminder of his time in Iraq. He can't walk a block without gasping for air. His chest hurts, his migraines sometimes persist for days and he needs pills to help him sleep.
James Gentry came home with rashes, ear troubles and a shortness of breath. Later, things got much worse: He developed lung cancer.
David Moore's postwar life turned into a harrowing medical mystery: nosebleeds and labored breathing that made it impossible to work, much less speak. His desperate search for answers ended last year when he died of lung disease at age 42.
What these three men — one sick, one dying, one dead — had in common is they were National Guard soldiers on the same stretch of wind-swept desert in Iraq during the early months of the war in 2003.
James Gentry came home with rashes, ear troubles and a shortness of breath. Later, things got much worse: He developed lung cancer.
David Moore's postwar life turned into a harrowing medical mystery: nosebleeds and labored breathing that made it impossible to work, much less speak. His desperate search for answers ended last year when he died of lung disease at age 42.
What these three men — one sick, one dying, one dead — had in common is they were National Guard soldiers on the same stretch of wind-swept desert in Iraq during the early months of the war in 2003.
These soldiers and hundreds of other Guard members from Indiana, Oregon and West Virginia were protecting workers hired by a subsidiary of the giant contractor, KBR Inc., to rebuild an Iraqi water treatment plant. The area, as it turned out, was contaminated with hexavalent chromium, a potent, sometimes deadly chemical linked to cancer and other devastating diseases.
Friday, July 3, 2009
LA Daily News reports: Equality and better treatment sought for lung cancer patients
As an emergency physician, Dr. Michael Weitz battles illnesses to save the lives of others.
In his own personal fight with lung cancer, he is battling the stigma that his disease carries.
Weitz, who is one of the 215,000 people diagnosed each year with lung cancer, knows what others think: "You did it to yourself," the Woodland Hills man said.
But Weitz never smoked cigarettes - did nothing he knows of that would infect the delicate tissue of his lungs.
Yet even for those with lung cancer who have never smoked, the condition comes with a negative stereotype. They often are asked, "Did you smoke?"
It's a perception health advocates say needs to be shattered. Why, they ask, should state or federal funding toward the detection and treatment of lung cancer be any different than, say, for illnesses associated with obesity, alcoholism or other kinds of cancer?
"We have to get to the point of saying it doesn't matter," said Kim Norris, a Los Angeles resident who founded the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.
The foundation's goal is to raise enough funds to lead to lung cancer research and treatment. The five-year survival rates for all stages of lung cancer haven't changed in decades, a result of little progress toward finding better treatments, Norris said.
Norris and others note that research for lung cancer treatment remains "under-funded, under-researched and under-reported," because government funders view it as the "the black sheep" of cancers.
"Just because smoking is legal - and the Department of Defense once handed out cigarettes during wars - doesn't mean (those who smoked) deserve (lung cancer)."
Read more.
In his own personal fight with lung cancer, he is battling the stigma that his disease carries.
Weitz, who is one of the 215,000 people diagnosed each year with lung cancer, knows what others think: "You did it to yourself," the Woodland Hills man said.
But Weitz never smoked cigarettes - did nothing he knows of that would infect the delicate tissue of his lungs.
Yet even for those with lung cancer who have never smoked, the condition comes with a negative stereotype. They often are asked, "Did you smoke?"
It's a perception health advocates say needs to be shattered. Why, they ask, should state or federal funding toward the detection and treatment of lung cancer be any different than, say, for illnesses associated with obesity, alcoholism or other kinds of cancer?
"We have to get to the point of saying it doesn't matter," said Kim Norris, a Los Angeles resident who founded the Lung Cancer Foundation of America.
The foundation's goal is to raise enough funds to lead to lung cancer research and treatment. The five-year survival rates for all stages of lung cancer haven't changed in decades, a result of little progress toward finding better treatments, Norris said.
Norris and others note that research for lung cancer treatment remains "under-funded, under-researched and under-reported," because government funders view it as the "the black sheep" of cancers.
"Just because smoking is legal - and the Department of Defense once handed out cigarettes during wars - doesn't mean (those who smoked) deserve (lung cancer)."
Read more.
SCCA: SC Cancer Registry publishes 10-year report
June 17, 2009
DHEC's S.C. Cancer Registry publishes first 10-year report
The S.C. Central Cancer Registry has published its first 10-year report of cancer trends in the state, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control announced today.
"This report is a milestone for the state," said DHEC Commissioner Earl Hunter. "Cancer is one of the leading causes of deaths and illness. It is critical not only to be able to track the number of deaths, but to have information on the number of people who have been diagnosed with the disease. This cancer survival data provides another avenue to measure the burden of cancer on our residents."
"The S.C. Central Cancer Registry has maintained national standards of quality, timeliness, and completeness evidenced by certification from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries each year since 1997," he said. "Meeting those standards in all categories assures that the data are valid and reliable for use in the healthcare and research communities across the state and nation."
According to the report, deaths due to cancer decreased by 18.2 percent from 1996 through 2005 for all races and genders combined. The total incidence for all cancers decreased by 3.2 percent over the 10-year period.
"Decreasing cancer death rates is a sign of progress in the fight against cancer," he said. "But there is still much to be done. The report shows that there are still cancer disparities, as indicated by the differences in cancer death rates among races."
The five leading types of cancer were prostate, lung, breast, colorectal and bladder. The five leading causes of cancer deaths were lung, colorectal, breast, prostate and pancreatic.
Five-year observed survival rates for all cancers combined in the state were 51.4 percent, meaning a little over half the patients with cancer survive for five years. The median survival time, which is the time at which half the patients with cancer are still living, was 66.5 months or about 5.5 years. Survival was highest for white females (55.8 percent), followed by white males (50.3 percent), black females (47.1 percent) and black males (44.6 percent).
Cancers with the poorest survival for all race and gender groups in order from the poorest to the best were liver, pancreatic, lung, brain and esophageal.
"The survival data will help our public health efforts by providing insights about where our next steps need to be for the best results as we work to fight cancers," Hunter said.
For more information and data from this report, please visit the DHEC Web site or you may call the Cancer Registry toll-free at 1-800-817-4774.
DHEC's S.C. Cancer Registry publishes first 10-year report
The S.C. Central Cancer Registry has published its first 10-year report of cancer trends in the state, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control announced today.
"This report is a milestone for the state," said DHEC Commissioner Earl Hunter. "Cancer is one of the leading causes of deaths and illness. It is critical not only to be able to track the number of deaths, but to have information on the number of people who have been diagnosed with the disease. This cancer survival data provides another avenue to measure the burden of cancer on our residents."
"The S.C. Central Cancer Registry has maintained national standards of quality, timeliness, and completeness evidenced by certification from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries each year since 1997," he said. "Meeting those standards in all categories assures that the data are valid and reliable for use in the healthcare and research communities across the state and nation."
According to the report, deaths due to cancer decreased by 18.2 percent from 1996 through 2005 for all races and genders combined. The total incidence for all cancers decreased by 3.2 percent over the 10-year period.
"Decreasing cancer death rates is a sign of progress in the fight against cancer," he said. "But there is still much to be done. The report shows that there are still cancer disparities, as indicated by the differences in cancer death rates among races."
The five leading types of cancer were prostate, lung, breast, colorectal and bladder. The five leading causes of cancer deaths were lung, colorectal, breast, prostate and pancreatic.
Five-year observed survival rates for all cancers combined in the state were 51.4 percent, meaning a little over half the patients with cancer survive for five years. The median survival time, which is the time at which half the patients with cancer are still living, was 66.5 months or about 5.5 years. Survival was highest for white females (55.8 percent), followed by white males (50.3 percent), black females (47.1 percent) and black males (44.6 percent).
Cancers with the poorest survival for all race and gender groups in order from the poorest to the best were liver, pancreatic, lung, brain and esophageal.
"The survival data will help our public health efforts by providing insights about where our next steps need to be for the best results as we work to fight cancers," Hunter said.
For more information and data from this report, please visit the DHEC Web site or you may call the Cancer Registry toll-free at 1-800-817-4774.
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