By Archelle Georgiou.

“Morning Glory” starring Rachel McAdams, Diane Keaton, and Harrison Ford is a wonderfully funny movie about the behind the scenes challenges in broadcast news. McAdams plays Becky Fuller, an executive producer charged with revitalizing a failing morning news program. The painfully accurate reality depicted in the movie is that news outlets live and die by their ratings so that we, the viewers, can get the news for free.

So who pays for it? Broadcast, print and web news media is supported by advertising revenue, and the basic business model is straightforward:

• News attracts viewers.
• Number of viewers is monetized.
• News outlet sells advertising space/time to marketers.
• The more viewers there are, the more a media outlet can charge for an ad.

The bottom line is that Viewers = Revenue.

Retaining viewers/readers ultimately requires that media outlets deliver information that is timely, accurate, well-balanced, and engaging. However, attracting them requires that outlets successfully break through the morass of news noise. How do they do that? By grabbing our attention with clever, dramatic headlines and teasing viewers/readers with lead-ins and headlines that are unexpected, outlandish, and extreme. It is a bait and hook strategy that works.

Here’s the problem: Too often, we don’t have the time to read or listen to an entire news clip or article. We merely rely on the headline and, subsequently, we become misinformed. And, when there is misinformation about health-related issues, this can lead to poor outcomes, higher cost, and, very commonly, patient confusion, frustration and disappointment.

Here a few examples:

Headline: “Study Pins Alcohol as More Dangerous Than Crack or Heroin”

Facts: This Lancet-published study evaluated 20 different drugs including cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana. Each was ranked on three dimensions: physical harm to the individual user, addiction potential, and the societal effect of the substance. The study clearly showed that an individual level, cocaine and heroine are most harmful. But, since alcohol abuse is so prevalent in the population, its high societal impact score inflated the overall score above that of all the other substances. Hence, the headline.

By the way, the author of the article is Professor David Nutt, a former U.K. drug czar who is using the study to argue that the regulatory classification of substances should use an evidence-based rather than a historical approach rather. This was a political article in drag.

The vast majority of online outlets including ABC, CBS, and FOX, had a headline similar to the one in Time, but kudos to The Boston Herald for their responsible but still eye-catching headline: “Dangers of Abuse Sobering.” (more…)

By Robin Strongin. Every now and then we come across something we just have to share.  Click here and enjoy!

By Phyllis Greenberger. It has become an established fact, although not universally accepted that the complex interaction of hormones,  genetics, physiology, and the environment have very different effects on health and disease between men and women. We know that there are extreme differences between males and females in the prevalence, susceptibility, severity and time of onset of most conditions that affect both men and women.

An  IOM Report, commissioned by The Society for Women’s Health Research in 1995 and released in 2001 unequivocally stated that “every cell has a sex” and research should take sex differences into consideration from “womb to tomb”. In the years since we have established an international scientific society called OSSD (Organization for the Study of Sex Differences) to enhance the knowledge of sex and gender differences that impact health by facilitating interdisciplinary communication and collaboration among scientists and clinicians of diverse background and recently launched an on line open access scientific journal The Biology of Sex Differences”.

Yet here we are 20 years after changing the NIH policies to include women in clinical trials and 10 years after the IOM Report and we have made little or no progress in actually changing provider’s understanding of sex differences, and equally important, while women and minorities are included in most (still often not inthe numbers they should be) clinical trials the actual study of sex differences is pathetic. For example, no medical school requires sex differences in their required course, and we have been told that it is unlikely that it will be because of the competition between so many specialties; only two out of the ten top medical journal’s require researchers to indicate if women were included in the trials and if any sex differences were noted and according to our review and analysis, and accepting the fact that we might  be  slightly off, in the last ten years, under 1% of grants from the NIH were for studying sex differences. We are not talking about solely women’s diseases, but research to understand why men and women react differently  to medications, diagnostics and  devices. We don’t know if prevention should be different, or diagnosis ,  (for example we know that women with AIDS present differently than men, and for a long time were not properly diagnosed)), symptoms and treatment.

What we need is to make sure that research is funded and encouraged, that the results are translated to the bedside and that understanding of sex differences is incorporated into education about all diseases including  but not limited to cardiovascular, autoimmune, osteoarthritis, depression.

While it is more fulfilling perhaps to contribute and fund specific diseases such as breast cancer or heart disease and we understand the emotional element when you or your family has been affected, we all have to realize that these sex differences affect all of us and our families (men also) in any disease we might have or get and we need to support the research that will unlock the answers to these many questions long ignored.

By Alexandra Drane. For three years running now, many of us bloggers have participated in what we’ve called a “blog rally” to promote Engage With Grace – a movement aimed at making sure all of us understand, communicate, and have honored our end-of-life wishes.

The rally is timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these unbelievably important conversations – our closest friends and family.

At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation about end-of-life started. We’ve included them at the end of this post.  They’re not easy questions, but they are important – and believe it or not, most people find they actually enjoy discussing their answers with loved ones.  The key is having the conversation before it’s too late.

This past year has done so much to support our mission to get more and more people talking about their end-of-life wishes. We’ve heard stories with happy endings … and stories with endings that could’ve (and should’ve) been better. We’ve stared down political opposition.  We’ve supported each other’s efforts.  And we’ve helped make this a topic of national importance.

So in the spirit of the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend, we’d like to highlight some things for which we’re grateful.  

Thank you to Atul Gawande for writing such a fiercely intelligent and compelling piece on “letting go” – it is a work of art, and a must read. 

Thank you to whomever perpetuated the myth of “death panels” for putting a fine point on all the things we don’t stand for, and in the process,  shining a light on the right we all have to live our lives with intent – right through to the end.

Thank you to TEDMED for letting us share our story and our vision. 

And of course, thank you to everyone who has taken this topic so seriously, and to all who have  done so much to spread the word, including sharing The One Slide.

We share our thanks with you, and we ask that you share this slide with your family, friends, and followers. Know the answers for yourself, know the answers for your loved ones, and appoint an advocate who can make sure those wishes get honored – it’s something we think you’ll be thankful for when it matters most.  

Here’s to a holiday filled with joy – and as we engage in conversation with the ones we love, we engage with grace.

To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org.

You probably don’t need anything else to be thankful for, but just in case what you have been so patiently for is finally here – the last two video installments of our “Health Reform After the 2010 Election: Assessing the Viability of Health Insurance in the Aftermath of the Mid-Term Elections” event. That’s right… as a special holiday treat, we have not one but TWO segments for you today – chock full of information and analysis about what the midterm elections could mean for health care reform and, more importantly, how these changes could affect YOUR life, YOUR insurance and YOUR health care.

So grab some popcorn (or one more little slice of pumpkin pie), cuddle up by the fire with your laptop and click away at the links below!

In the States: The Future of Health Insurance

In the Trenches: Who Will Buy What From Whom

For those of you who missed our previous post about our Health Reform After the 2010 Election event, you can read it and watch the first video segment here.

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us Disruptive Women!

By Audrey Sheppard. The first time I saw it on television I thought my eyes and ears were deceiving me. The images, the message, were just too ghastly to absorb.  A television ad features five women doctors, black stethoscopes and white coats all, each  identified by name, state and specialty.  One after another, they get right to it:  “The Republicans won the election because they listened. The American people made it clear that repealing ObamaCare is a top issue. And now, they have a mandate to do just that.”

They go further: “What matters now is whether they are serious about repeal. We voted for you for a reason. We’re counting on you. Fulfill the mandate we gave you,” the doctors urge, referring to candidates who are heading to Congress. It concludes by urging women to overturn President Obama’s government take-over of the health care system and sign the ObamaCare Repeal Pledge. On the Saving Our Health Care.org website, activist training, pledges, updates on lawsuits and much more are offered.

How did sixty years of effort to bring health care within reach for tens of millions of Americans who go now without, to provide coverage for young people on their family’s insurance until the age of 26, to clamp down on discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, result in what is no doubt an opening salvo from and to the women of our country?

Of course some individual doctors oppose THE PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT but the American Medical Association and most other physician groups support it. Trying to give the impression that women doctors of various specialties, states of the union, ages, races, shapes and sizes unite to oppose greater access to health care is downright dishonest. Ask the American Medical Women’s Association, THE national organization of women docs, who have been strongly supportive.

When I got out of college, hardly a woman was welcomed to medical school classrooms. Fortunately that has changed radically, along with the opening up of many other professions in the decades since. Strongly supportive of efforts to see that the talents of  one-half the population are not wasted, I’ve labored to get women elected to local, state and national office. As a small critical mass of women has been elected to state legislatures, Congress, county and state executive offices, they have tackled long-neglected issues that directly affect the health and well-being of families; I subscribe to the notion that there are differences between women and men and that often women’s world view leads to greater compassion for other humans. So how is it we have a whole organization of women, appealing to women  -with women spokespeople – turning their backs on the uninsured, those with pre-existing conditions, those who will benefit from a more level playing field in the healthcare market? It’s a plan that objective budget and economic experts say will save, not spend, additional funds. (more…)

By Casey Quinlan. I will admit to a bias on the subject of health insurance, and healthcare reform: I’m one of the millions of America’s uninsured. I’m female, over 50 (I told you, now I’ll have to kill you), and I was diagnosed with cancer in December of 2007.

The first of those facts – being female – is the biggest dinger of the three when it comes to health insurance premiums. The reasoning there: women use more health services, starting in their teens and 20s and continuing through menopause. The second – my age – could signal a better rate, since women typically tail off in their use of healthcare in their mid-50s. However, the third fact – cancer within the last 10 years – gets me insurance coverage quotes of $2,000 per month, with a deductible between at $3,000 to $6,000 a year.

For the math-challenged, that’s between $27,000 and $30,000 out of my pocket per year before insurance covers Dollar One. Since that amounts to much of my annual pre-tax income in each of the two years since Cancer Year – 2008 was the last year I had health insurance coverage – I’ve remained on the uninsured list. And developed some fierce opinions about the future of healthcare and health insurance in the US.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a/k/a “health care reform,” passed earlier this year includes some help for my situation…in 2014. Meanwhile, I’m managing to get the oral chemo meds I’ll be taking until 2013 (which cost $500 a month) with the help of a community clinic. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I stay as healthy as I was before the cancer diagnosis, and as I have been since I finished radiation treatment in 2008.

That’s my current health insurance policy: crossed fingers.

There are two things that I think have to happen to bring about meaningful change in the healthcare cost/payment/insurance conundrum, for me and everyone else:

1. Tort reform
2. Severing health insurance from employment

I realize that the tort bar, the health insurance industry, and pretty much everybody with a job-related health benefits package will take out a hit on me for making those suggestions. But the system has fallen, it can’t get up, and until major changes – not the chipping-away-at-the-edges approach of the current iteration of “health care reform” – are made in both the US legal system and how health insurance is marketed and sold, meaningful change doesn’t have a prayer.

How would tort reform help? Defensive medicine – practicing medicine with one eye over your shoulder looking for lawyers – adds as much as $45.6Billion-with-a-b annually to US spending on healthcare, according to a Harvard study published in September. That may seem like a drop in the bucket when the total annual spend on healthcare in this country is $2.3Trillion-with-a-t, but those dollars are all coming out of our pockets one way or another. Whether it’s in higher health insurance premiums, deductibles, fee increases to help providers cover those who can’t pay, fee increases to help defray the costs of malpractice insurance, or tax dollars for Medicaid and Medicare, we pay for it. (more…)

By Robin Strongin. What happens when two Disruptive Women get together over coffee? Check out this almost-as-if-you-were-sitting-there-with-them article by Halle Tecco to get a glimpse into her recent conversation with Alexandra Drane.

One of the many topics they discussed was this concept called “The Unmentionables.” The idea is based on the fact that over the past decade during which Drane’s company Eliza Corp has interacted with people about their health and health care, certain themes have emerged. It’s not that people don’t want to keep up with their preventive screenings, or maintain a sensible diet and exercise routine – it’s just that life gets in the way. That includes things like consuming debt, a bad marriage, a stressful job, and even a bad sex life.

Of course, the literature review supports the fact that many of these issues have a measurable – and negative – impact on health. Those things which have a significant impact on health yet are rarely addressed in the health care industry are what Eliza is calling “The Unmentionables.”

They recently did a survey of over 1,000 Americans on the issues that keep them from being their best, and shared the findings. It’s sobering.

For example,  94% of people reported dealing with at least one of the following issues: money concerns, social conflicts, relationship conflicts, caregiving, job stress, depression, trouble sleeping, bad sex life, getting enough exercise or diet issues. And of the named issues, the greatest importance was placed on job stress, caregiver stress and money concerns, followed closely by unhealthy sex life and relationship issues. Not surprisingly, as the number of issues a person is dealing with increases, their self-reported general health ranking went down.

Survey analysis also found that while these issues are real pain points for people, they aren’t feeling much support in these areas from the healthcare industry. Eliza has dubbed this gap the Ostrich Index. It shows that while diet and exercise issues are generally felt to be well-addressed by the health care community (pause for a quick collective pat on the back), those other factors like job stress, caregiver stress, relationship issues, an unhealthy sex life and money concerns are either never or poorly addressed.

As Eliza continues to refine the research – in conjunction with industry expert Wendy Lynch, PhD – they’ll also study the impact of these issues on workplace productivity, or specific health issues.

Stay tuned!

By Hope Ditto.  Turkey Day is right around the corner, and as always it’s got me thinking about what to be thankful for (besides four days off! – kidding Robin). As always, my health and the health of my loved ones tops the list, as well as my good job, good friends and great boss (nope, not sucking up at all).  One thing’s for sure – nobody will be giving thanks for agreement and progress on health care reform, but I am selfishly thankful for the endless partisan bickering – it gives me a lot to write about!

We’ll get to all the political mumbo-jumbo, but first let’s take a moment and recap the single most important health issue to surface this week. I am the first to say that I never would have expected any issue to generate more objection, protest or discontent than health care reform, but it is possible that this issue has. What am I talking about? Obviously the proposed ban and resultant termination in production of Four Loko (and other popular caffeinated energy drinks). Regardless of the fact that this alleged “blackout in a can” has been linked to numerous incidents of alcohol poisoning (in some cases even death), people (mostly young people) around the country are speaking out against its imminent demise. These unlikely activists are reacting by taking such efforts as changing their Facebook profile pictures (to a shot of their favorite flavor can), coining the catch-phrase “Viva La Vida Loko” and, in one case, perfecting and sharing a strategy  video with instructions on making Four Loko at home.

Back to more serious matters. Kaiser Health News sums up the attitude towards health care reform – both where things stand now — and where they might be headed. Their summaries are a good indication of what we can expect from the 112^th Congress. Though it is all speculation, one thing we can definitely expect is an early emphasis on health care reform. And the battle of attrition wages on…

One reason to give thanks next week – a unanimous compromise on the Medicare cuts in the Senate! As Politico reported, “the Senate approved a one-month delay of the 23 percent cut in Medicare physician payments planned for Dec 1.” Whether this is making political pundits take back the “lame” in “lame duck” remains to be seen.

The Democrats may be losing some of their power, but that doesn’t mean they’re giving up the health care fight. Per Politico, “A cadre of Democratic House members – all fierce defenders of President Obama’s health care reforms — are asking Republicans who want to repeal the law to forgo their taxpayer-subsidized health insurance out of principle.” No matter your opinion on health reform, you have to give them credit for tenacity.

Meanwhile, the policy-minded folks at National Journal are asking questions no one seems able to answer. The stumper – how will Congress handle the unfunded programs authorized under the health care law? How indeed…

Ezra Klein, Washington Post reporter and frequent health care reform commentator, offers his take on the GOP plan — worth a read (and for many, a few moments of reconsideration).

Wondering who K Street sided with in the election, and how their candidates fared? Kaiser Health News offers a health care PAC scorecard. Check it out here.

And you will all give thanks for this – according to a recent survey, more couples are having sex and having it more often later in life. This – and many more – dirty details in WaPo’s writeup.

We’ll be off next week (recovering from our tryptophan comas no doubt), but if you’re feeling in the mood to deck the halls and/or light the menorah and in the DC area, check out our Disruptive Women in Healthcare Holiday Reception, happening December 1^st. Art & Music Therapy: A Demonstration of Healing , will feature speakers, live music and a one-of-a-kind Duff Goldman (of Ace of Cakes) cake! Space is limited, reserve your spot today!

By Phyllis Greenberger. I, as many of you I am sure, have been following the long drawn out debate about “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Never mind that we need more men and women in the military, that our troops are having way too many tours of duty, that many, if not all of the people this applies to speak farsi are well educated and willing to give their lives for their country. More than I can say for the rest of us and particularly sons and daughters of the Congress, with a few exceptions. But the argument I find most appalling is that it will hurt the morale of the troops.

I have testified three times before Congressional house committees and the most recently on Military Sexual Trauma (MST). Approximately 22% of the women in the military have reported to the VA centers sexual assault or harassment, that is just the women who have left, no one  knows how many currently in the military have been affected and we know that many women who leave active service don’t seek help at the VA for various reasons, one of them being a predominately male culture. So the 22% is a low estimate, some feel it could be twice that number.

The ramifications of MST for women persist long after the initial assault. With most MST assaults being orchestrated by military personnel against military personnel, the environment of trust among those serving is broken, and a chain of command that fails to protect from and respond to MST further degrades unit cohesion.

So, every time I hear the “morale” issue as an excuse I think about the women in the military and  why is it that everyone is so concerned about gays able to serve openly  but not the morale of the women serving our country who are vulnerable to MST while risking their lives for us.

Starting December 2^nd we will be launching a series on innovation, broadly defined. These posts will be compiled into an e-book and released early in 2011. The following post, an interview with our November Man of the Month, Dr. Jack Lewin, CEO of the American College of Cardiology will help get you prepared and excited for the engaging and informative posts to come.

Jack Lewin, MD

Jack Lewin, MD has been the Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) since November 2006. Under Dr. Lewin’s leadership, ACC has continued to build upon its standing as a national leader in advocacy, with a particular focus on reforming Medicare, Medicaid, and the financing and delivery of quality health care. We had the opportunity to ask Dr. Lewin about his thoughts on innovation in the medical sector; below are his responses.

Q: The American College of Cardiology’s mission is transforming cardiovascular care and improving heart health through continuous quality improvement, patient-centered care, payment innovation and professionalism. How big a role does innovation play in ACC achieving this mission?

Innovation is necessary to reduce morbidity and mortality – we have seen a 30 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality nationally within the past 10 years because of new therapies, prevention, systems of care, and innovation.  As the US works towards a decrease in health care costs and works toward promoting sustainability, we have to prevent falling into a trap of slowing the pace of innovation.  The big secret in US health care is that a systematic increase in quality is the way to reduce costs by reducing admissions, readmissions, and complications, and by improving outcomes. Without innovation we will see the increase in people with obesity and diabetes that require expensive treatments we can’t afford. We have to keep moving to create new and better therapies to arrest chronic cardiovascular disease, more effectively treat acute crises, and prevent diseases through earlier diagnosis. 

Q: In a recent blog you said, “I was a speaker last week in another roundtable on “innovation,” something our nation is trashing as we pursue perfection in patient safety.” Can you elaborate on the relationship between innovation and patient safety? Is there anything that can be done to alleviate some of the concerns surrounding medical innovation so that it can flourish?

Today’s regulatory agencies in the US have become more conservative than in the EU, UK, and elsewhere in the world.  Unfortunately this is forcing the US research and biotech industries offshore.  From the point of view of CMS and the federal government, the focus is so fixed on cost containment that the agencies don’t think about how to jump beyond the problem of rising costs by reducing the need for outdated therapies and diagnostic devices and replacing them with better ones that essentially reduce morbidity and decrease overall costs.  Investing in comparative effectiveness research is investing in innovation, but not if it turns into a strategy of purely cost containment in an ever-narrowing context. 

The FDA has become obsessed with concerns around individual patient safety, which is admirable; but if the quest for innovation requires a zero tolerance for adverse events, we will be scientifically paralyzed. Patient safety certainly shouldn’t be deemphasized, but we have tools such as registries that can increase post market surveillance and give new therapies the opportunity to safely reach patients-in-need sooner, and keep the research infrastructure and culture of innovation alive in the US. The “TAVI,” transcatheter aortic valve intervention, is a good example. This percutaneous valve replacement technology was developed in the US, but has been implemented in the UK, Europe, Canada and Asia because we are too risk adverse to bring this potentially lifesaving technology to elderly who are not candidates for open chest surgery. This is taking patient safety to an extreme that is stifling innovation and needed medical and life saving progress.

Q: What are some promising innovations in the field of cardiology?

Promising innovations include the TAVI percutaneous valve replacements as well as new devices that provide ventricular assistance and support, and new short-term uses for ventricular assist devices.  Cardiovascular genetics and cardiovascular cell therapies are also an expanding frontier.  There are new therapies on the horizon such as warfarin alternatives for safer anticoagulation, along with better pharmacologic ways of preventing and treating coronary artery disease, heart failure, arrhythmias, diabetes and hypertension. (more…)

The following post is by guest blogger Helen Durkin, JD. Helen is the Executive Vice President of Public Policy for the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA)—a not-for-profit trade association representing health and fitness facilities, gyms, spas, sports clubs, and suppliers worldwide. She joined IHRSA in 1989 and developed the health club industry’s first government relations and legal service programs. She has served as the association’s director of public policy since 1999. In this leadership capacity, Durkin has succeeded in aligning IHRSA with the national effort to improve America’s health through healthy lifestyle choices and in promoting public policy that recognizes exercise as a key component of preventive health care.

I don’t know a single woman who isn’t terrified by the thought of breast cancer. But I did know a remarkable woman who was able to stare down that fear and turn it into something triumphant.

Shortly after receiving the diagnosis of breast cancer in 1993, Julie Main turned the news about her own health into a spark that motivated her to give strength and support to thousands of other women and their families. It’s a legacy that continues today in the Cancer Well-Fit™ Exercise Program she created in collaboration with the Cancer Center of Santa Barbara (California).

What started 16 years ago as a local pilot program is now an internationally recognized cancer exercise rehabilitation program that bridges the gap between medical and fitness professionals. Julie’s personal commitment to exercise throughout the course of her own treatment, and its effect on her own stamina and resilience, made Julie and her doctors recognize the critical role that exercise can play in cancer treatment and rehabilitation. They realized that if people battling cancer were to be optimally served, medical and fitness professionals needed to forge a working partnership. They needed to share their expertise to maximize patient wellness.

Scores of research studies demonstrate the preventive power of exercise in helping to ward off chronic diseases and some cancers. But an ever-growing body of research also shows that physical exercise has a positive effect on quality-of-life following cancer diagnosis.

Julie and her physicians realized that exercise can help with two of the most common challenges that people undergoing cancer treatment face: fatigue and muscular strength.  But there also are other benefits to exercise. Studies show that functional capacity, body composition, nausea, personality functioning, mood states, and self-esteem are all positively affected by exercise during cancer recovery as well. (more…)

The following post is a guest post written by the staff of The 2012 Project.

Want to use what you know to drive change? Want to have a say in the ongoing health care debate? Want to amplify the voices of women offering bold solutions when health issues are on the table? Then why don’t you run for office?

That’s the premise of  The 2012 Project, a campaign of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.  The 2012 Project aims to increase the number of women officeholders by getting accomplished women to run for legislative office. Key fields that have been under-represented in government – including health care, along with finance, science, technology, energy, environment, small business and international affairs  — are targets for recruitment, and outreach to women of color and diverse backgrounds is a top priority.

It’s not news that the US has a poor track record of electing women – 73rd in the world when it comes to women in the national congress or parliament, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. And the 2010 elections saw the first significant decline in women officeholders in decades at the state legislative level, accompanied by a drastic drop in the number of women in statewide elected executive offices. This under-representation of women in public office looks unfair in a nation whose population is more than half female – but worse, it has a profound impact on policymaking.

2012 presents a once-in-a-decade opportunity for women to increase their numbers in office.  After the 2010 census, when districts are redrawn, we’ll likely see many openings as long-time officeholders retire and new seats are created to reflect population shifts. We know that when women run, women win at rates comparable to men, so if we can turn out hundreds (thousands?) of new women candidates from both parties, we will surely see many more women officeholders.

Baby-boomer women – those age 45 and up – are ideally positioned to run. Their children are well on the way to self-sufficiency, their careers are established, and they have developed strong roots in their communities. (more…)

By Hope Ditto. As some of you may have heard, last week Disruptive Women joined forces with a number of other notable health care organizations and companies to host one of our most exciting events to date: “Health Reform After the 2010 Election: Assessing the Viability of Health Insurance in the Aftermath of the Mid-Term Elections” at the National Press Club. The event featured three panel discussions on major issues facing health care, health reform and the insurance industry and brought together former members of Congress, insurance industry insiders, government officials and many more experts from all different backgrounds to analyze how the Mid-Term Elections’ might effect these industries, and the future of health care reform.

Considering the response that the event generated (we had to have more seats brought into the room!) we knew we hit on a hot topic, and thought that all of you out there in the blogosphere might also appreciate the chance to get in on the action. Over the next week, we will be posting segments of the panel discussions for all of you at home to enjoy. We’re fairly confident you will find them as insightful, informative and thought-provoking as the live audience did!

The first of these segments – Inside the Beltway: Health Reform & The Election – An Analysis – is available now by clicking here. Stay tuned for the next two.

Karen Daley, the newly elected president of the American Nurses Association (ANA), knows firsthand the dangers of the nursing profession – especially the prevalence of needlestick injuries. Daley was herself a needlestick victim – an injury that resulted in her contracting multiple bloodborne infections. As a result, Daley has become one of the most vocal advocates for sharps safety. 

 Ten years ago, Daley had the honor of watching President Clinton sign the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act(NSPA), a landmark step for needlestick safety advocates. But, as Daley stated, NSPA is not enough to make the workplace a safe place.

That is why she, along with ANA CEO Marla Weston, announced last week that ANA would be relaunching their Safe Needles Save Lives campaign. This announcement came during a panel briefing and discussion, “10 Years After the Law, How Safe are We from Sharps?” (watch the full webcast here) sponsored by ANA and held at the National Press Club on November 4th. The briefing brought together experts on the needlestick issue from different professions and perspectives. As part of the 10 year anniversary celebration, needlestick safety experts discussed not only the improvements that NSPA brought to the field but also its shortfalls and where there is still room for improvement. All the speakers agreed on one thing – NSPA was a step in the right direction, but there is still a lot to do.

As Daley explained in her remarks at the briefing, “My injury was preventable. My injury resulted in infection. My infection is a rare event. What isn’t a rare event is my injury.” But if Daley and ANA have anything to say about it, in 10 more years, it will be.