Community Health Resources / Health Education

February is American Heart Month; a month to spread awareness about the importance of heart health. Each year, countless American families are impacted by heart disease and stroke. Although its risk factors can be prevented or controlled, it is still the leading cause of death for all Americans, and accounts for $1 out of every $6 health care dollars. But there are many simple steps we can take to prevent heart disease such as eating healthy foods, exercising regularly, and not smoking.

Source: http://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USHHS-2c1461

The American Medical Association and the AARP have jointly released a brochure (PDF) that physicians can offer their Medicare patients detailing opportunities for free preventive services that are now available under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

High unemployment, lower incomes, increased cost sharing and a large drop in the number of people with private health insurance limited the growth of health spending in the United States to 3.9 percent in 2010, according to a new study.

Those factors meant that many people had to do without care or seek less expensive treatment, said researchers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). They found that total health spending in 2010 was $2.6 trillion, or $8,402 per person.

On a Monday night in December, Lauretta Martin, 47, visited the sleep lab at the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C. for the second time. On her first visit, Martin, a heavyset woman whose husband reports she is a loud snorer, was diagnosed with sleep apnea. This time, she was being fitted for a CPAP machine, which helps keep a snorer’s airway open throughout the night.

The sleep lab has six testing rooms, each of which looks just like a room at a Holiday Inn, with striped wallpaper, a floral bedspread, framed prints of the seaside and free wifi.