Who will champion the CMA’s health policy recommendations?
The Canadian Medical Association, which has lately been taking a far more social determinants-focused approach to health, has come out swinging with a report clearly titled “Health Care in Canada: What Makes Us Sick?”, which identifies poverty as one of four fundamental factors external to the health care system that underlie ill health among Canadians.
The latest issue of Open Medicine is not our usual research paper or comment piece. This week, we are proud to feature the proceedings of the Afri-Can Forum, which took place in Entebbe, Uganda in January of this year. Researchers from African and Canadian institutions as well as senior officials of public funders and NGOs met for three days.
With the American Medical Association’s recent decision to reclassify obesity as a disease (it was previously "a condition"), the Canadian Medical Association may well begin considering a similar stance beginning at their August meeting and continuing into the fall. In practice, doctors in Canada may already treat obesity as a disease; however, a formal decision to label it as such would have policy implications.
Andre Picard has a great piece in today's Globe and Mail. It's summed up pretty well in the headline, "Take news of cancer 'breakthrough' with a big grain of salt". He looks at the coverage of the recent research from renowned cancer researchers Tak Mak and Dennis Slamon that was described breathlessly--both in the press release from Princess Margaret Hospital and in subsequent media reports--as a "breakthrough" drug.
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Herpes zoster as a marker of underlying malignancy
Today, Open Medicine <http://www.openmedicine.ca/> published a study assessing whether a diagnosis of herpes zoster is a risk factor for subsequent malignancy.
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Probiotics for the prevention of antibiotic-associated diarrhea and Clostridium difficile infection among hospitalized patients: systematic review and meta-analysis