Health Care

Obesity has long been a rising problem across the United States, and currently 35.7% of the adult population is obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Among all groups, non-Hispanic blacks have the highest obesity rates (49.5%); the next highest are Mexican Americans (40.4%), all Hispanics (39.1%) and non-Hispanic whites (34.3%).

Substance among women has been shown to have high costs, yet intervention efforts continue to lag behind needs. To address this gap, researchers at Yale University and Washington University of St Louis conducted a randomized controlled trial of various types of health care interventions.

The high variability in hospital costs for the elderly Medicare beneficiaries has been cited as evidence of hospitals’ inefficient resource use. Nonetheless, an accurate analysis on hospital efficiency must take account of both health outcomes and resource usage.

For decades, women with early diagnoses of breast cancer have been encouraged to have the lymph nodes beneath their arm pits surgically removed. Draining the lymph nodes often precedes the surgery, which is then followed by radiation treatment. While painful and fraught with potential complications, removal of the lymph nodes has been standard practice in the medical community.