Health Buzz: WHO Says Don’t Delay H1N1 Treatment and Other Health News
World Health Organization Warns Not to Delay H1N1 Treatment
The World Health Organization says pregnant women should be getting antiviral medications like Tamiflu as soon as they experience symptoms of H1N1 infection, the Associated Press reports. The threat of serious complications from swine flu has WHO urging doctors not to delay administering antiviral drugs to those considered to be at high risk of serious problems, including pregnant women, children, and people with asthma or a weakened immune system. Lab tests can confirm H1N1, but the organization is giving doctors the go-ahead to treat people without the confirmation in cases where the disease is or could become severe.
[Read: No Luck Finding an H1N1 Flu Shot? You're Not Alone and Sick With H1N1? 6 Ways to Keep From Infecting Friends and Family.] [Slide Show: 10 Do's and Don'ts to Protect Yourself From Swine Flu.]
America's Best Health Insurance Plans
As Congress debates legislation that could redefine healthcare for decades, millions of Americans just want to figure out by December 31 which of the health insurance plans offered by their employer for 2010 they should enroll in. It's not always simple, and U.S. News and the National Committee for Quality Assurance, managed care's major accrediting and standards-setting body, want to help. So they have joined for the fifth year to rank commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid health plans.
NCQA looked at 730 health plans overall to create the 2009-10 "America's Best Health Insurance Plans" rankings. NCQA analyzed quality-related information supplied by most of the plans, including dozens of measures covering three broad areas: member satisfaction, prevention, and treatment. Commercial plans were graded on 50 measures, Medicare plans on 44, and Medicaid plans on 41. Each plan got a score of 0 to 100 according to how well it performed compared with other commercial or Medicare or Medicaid plans. Member satisfaction made up 25 percent of the score, prevention and treatment together 60 percent, and NCQA accreditation 15 percent. Rank was determined by plan score.
The Honor Roll consists of plans that received the highest scores—the 10 top-ranked commercial plans, five Medicare plans, and five Medicaid plans. Read more.
[Read: How to Choose a Health Plan: 12 Helpful Tips and No Data, No Ranking: Uncooperative Health Plans.]
Your Kids Can't Say No to Candy? Blame It on Their Brains
Don't be surprised if your children just can't ignore the fact that there's still Halloween candy in the pantry. Their brains are designed to be obsessed with Snickers, Nerds, and Reese's Pieces. And that inability to ignore the candy is what makes them such amazing learners and discoverers, U.S. News contributor Nancy Shute writes.
For 15 years, Sharon Thompson-Schill, a professor of psychology and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, has been studying adults who have trouble remembering things because of damage to the frontal lobe of their brains. Along the way, she realized that young children act a lot like brain-damaged adults. "Learning and behaving without a frontal lobe is different than learning and behaving with one," Thompson-Schill says. "[Children are] impulsive, they don't follow rules, don't stay on task."
The past decade of research on children's brain development has shown conclusively that children are not little adults and that the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain used for higher-order decision making, doesn't mature in humans until the teenage years or beyond. That's undoubtedly an evolutionary development, says Thompson-Schill, since there's no such difference between child and adult brains in other primates. Read more.
[Read: Neurofeedback: An ADHD Treatment That Retrains the Brain? and How to Deploy the Amazing Power of the Teen Brain.]
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