NOTES ON NURSING
Nurses Take Activism Beyond the Bedside Nurses and environmental activists from across the U.S. are joining hands this week to step up the message that there is still time to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline before it stops all of us.
St. Louis University Hospital RNs Win First Contract Registered nurses at Saint Louis University Hospital (SLUH) have won their first ever collective bargaining agreement with a new three year contract that provides for significant improvements in patient care protections, compensation, and job protections.
HEALTH CARE
AMA Recognizes Obesity as a Disease Experts in obesity have struggled for years to have obesity recognized as a disease that deserves medical attention and insurance coverage as do other diseases. Previously the AMA and others have referred to obesity as “a major public health problem.”
Wiser Medication Use Could Cut Health Care Costs If doctors and patients used prescription drugs more wisely, they could save the U.S. health care system at least $213 billion a year, by reducing medication overuse, underuse and other flaws in care that cause complications and longer, more-expensive treatments, researchers conclude.
Non-Profit Launches Campaign to Reach Uninsured The “Get Covered America” campaign will include door-to-door visits by volunteers, brochures handed out at farmers markets and churches and, possibly, partnerships with sports leagues and celebrities, said Anne Filipic, a former White House official who recently became president of Enroll America, the group sponsoring the campaign.
LABOR UPDATES
50 Years of Recessionary-Level Unemployment in Black America August 28 will mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the setting of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In 1963, civil rights activists were keenly aware that blacks were suffering disproportionately from high unemployment, and, therefore, one of the demands of the march was for a jobs program that would provide a job to every American who wanted to work. As this recent EPI report explains, we have not yet achieved this goal and blacks have persistently endured what can be considered a “permanent recession.”