Few public health events over the past decade have galvanized the attention of the American public like the outbreak of the H1N1 virus in 2009. Health officials scrambled to build models predicting how the disease might spread and to find measures to mitigate its impact.
Previous attempts at quantifying the scope of food allergies among U.S. children have produced a wide range of estimates, from 2% to 8%. From a public health standpoint, getting more details on the main causes of causes of food allergies, and precise demographics of those afflicted, is crucial.
For researchers, it has often been difficult to conduct experimental studies on health care outcomes due to biases introduced by differences between insured and uninsured individuals. To produce unbiased data, the ideal circumstance would require the provision of health care to be randomly assigned across a population.
Since cell phones were first popularized in the 1980s, questions have been raised over their potential health risks. In the past 10 years, numerous observational studies have been released suggesting harmful links to brain function and sleep patterns, and to heart palpitations and various forms of cancer. Often, however, other studies have arrived at opposing conclusions.
Research has suggested that an increase in unemployment rates tends to bring about a rise in recreational exercise, leaving open the possibility that a period of persistent joblessness may actually have health benefits across the population. But as a paper from scholars at Pace University and Bentley University notes, any such overall assessment of physical activity levels must also take into account the lost physical labor that is normally expended at many jobs.
Estimates for the amount of time the average American spends watching television per day has recently been reported to be as high as five hours. This sedentary practice, often accompanied by less-than-ideal lifestyle and dietary choices, contributes to the poor health outcomes experienced by many Americans today.
Smoking bans have been found to reduce heart attacks, but how such laws bring about other improved health outcomes is less clear. Little is known about the degree to which bans reduce second-hand smoke exposure, for example.
