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From The CDC: Top Ten Greatest Public Health Achievements

The Center for Disease Control published the top ten public health achievements from 2001-2010, the first decade of the 21st century.  In no order they are:

  • Vaccine-preventable Diseases – new vaccines for herpes zoster, pneumonia, HPV and rotavirus have saved thousands of lives  When you add in the older vaccines for diptheria, pertussus, tetanus and measles/mumps millions of lives have been saved around the world.  (I saw diptheria in Haiti and it is horrible)

  • Tobacco Control- We have been battling tobacco since 1964 but there is finally progress with more states enacting smoke-free laws and raising cigarette taxes.  By 2010, the FDA banned flavored cigarettes and established restrictions on youth access.  We have a long way to go.  Smoking costs us all about $193 billion a year on medical costs and loss of productivity.


  • Motor Vehicle Safety –Enforcing seat belt and child safety legislation has reduced deaths from crashes.  Teen drivers have new policies too.
  • Cardiovascular Disease Prevention-During the past decade, age-adjusted heart disease and stroke deaths declined.  What worked? Treating hypertension, elevated cholesterol and smoking…along with improved treatment and medication. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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