01-10-2012 22:56 Healthcare spending was up by 4.6 percent in 2011, according to a new report by the Health Care Cost Institute. That's higher than the 3.8 percent increase reported for 2010. The report is based on claims data of more than 40 million insured, about 25 percent of all those with employer-sponsored health insurance, ESI. 2011 healthcare spending for people with ESI averaged $4547 per person for the year. Star Nutrition, a California-based health and wellness industry company, has added Peak Performance Products as the newest Canadian distributor for its Incrediwear brand. Incrediwear products, including socks, insoles, and braces, provide benefits such as additional blood flow, thermal regulation, and wicking moisture to allow users to train harder and longer, and recover faster from workouts while aiding pain relief to injured body parts. Other companies working with Peak include Nogii, Dymatize, BPI Sports, Organique, and other athletic, lifestyle, and beauty products. EMC's IT has been adopted by Munson Healthcare, a regional group of eight hospitals and five clinics in Michigan, to transform the system's IT infrastructure and deliver new IT services. Munson has created a Health Information Exchange to enable providers to facilitate a high level of patient care through a private cloud enabled by EMC and VMware technologies. For more information on these and other stories, go to http://www.csrminute.com. The Health Minute is produced for 3BL Media by Video4Good

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Healthcare Up 4.6%; New Star Nutrition Distributor; Munson Adopts EMC's IT - Health Min 10/1/12 - Video

01-10-2012 22:37 La Joya ISD held a school board meeting on Monday in order to clear things up a bit. Find this story and more at

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La Joya ISD board members question nutrition program controversy - Video

Public release date: 2-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Sumrina Yousufzai syousufzai@plos.org 415-568-3164 Public Library of Science

Both obesity and under-nutrition are common in women and children from the Western Sahara living in refugee camps in Algeria, highlighting the need to balance both obesity prevention and management with interventions to tackle under-nutrition in this population, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

The authors, led by Carlos Grijalva-Eternod and Andrew Seal from the UCL Institute of Child Health in London, surveyed 2005 households in this refugee population who have been living in four refugee camps since 1975 and measured and weighed 1,608 young children and 1,781 women. They found that obesity and overweight in women affected more households than acute malnutrition, stunting and underweight in children: 9.1% children had acute malnutrition, 29.1% were stunted, 8.6% were underweight and 2.4% were overweight, while among the women, 14.8% were stunted, 53.7% were overweight, and 71.4% had central obesity.

Overall, the authors classified a third of households as being overweight, a quarter as undernourished, and a quarter as affected by the double burden of obesity and malnutrition.

These results are important: 15.4 million refugees (based on 2010 figures) are dependent on host governments and international humanitarian agencies for their food, so it is essential that these governments and organizations provide appropriate food assistance programs to refugees, especially long-term refugees.

The authors say: "The results raise crucial and challenging issues for the design of refugee assistance programmes, and the future provision of care for obesity-associated co-morbidities among Sahrawi refugees and other similar populations."

They continue: "Careful policy and advocacy work will be required to convey the complexity of the situation, and to ensure that continued support for life-saving food assistance programmes and the tackling of under-nutrition and nutritional deficiencies is not jeopardised as the threat of obesity to refugee health receives the attention it deserves."

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Funding: This work was partly funded by the European Community Humanitarian Office, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and the United Nations World Food Programme. Part of this work was undertaken at the Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics, which benefits from funding support from the MRC in its capacity as the MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health. The UCL Institute of Child Health receives a proportion of funding from the Department of Health's National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres funding scheme. UNHCR personnel participated in the study design, data collection, data interpretation, and contributed revisions to the manuscript. All other sponsors of the study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, writing of the report, and in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

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Both obesity and under-nutrition affect long-term refugee populations

Public release date: 2-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Weston d.weston@ucl.ac.uk 44-020-310-83844 University College London

A quarter of households in refugee camps in Algeria are currently suffering from the double burden of excess weight and under-nutrition. According to a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, obesity is an emerging threat to this community, with one in two women of childbearing age being overweight, whilst nutritional deficiencies such as iron-deficiency anaemia and stunted growth remain a persistent problem.

The collaborative study by the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH), the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), looked at the prevalence of the 'double burden' of malnutrition under-nutrition and obesity - among Western Sahara (Sahrawi) refugees living in a prolonged emergency situation, who rely mostly on humanitarian food assistance for survival.

Over 1,600 children and 1,700 women from 2,005 households took part in a routine UNHCR nutrition survey in 2010, which collects and monitors health and nutrition indicators of refugee children under five and women of childbearing age (15-49 years). The Sahrawi refugees are based in four camps originally set up in 1975 near Tindouf city in Algeria. Many adults have, from birth, received food assistance as their main source of food, and their children are now the second or third generation living on a diet consisting mainly of refined starchy foods.

The nutrition survey recorded the weight and height of women and children, and waist circumference of women, to determine the prevalence of global acute malnutrition (GAM, which includes thin 'wasted' children and those with nutritional oedema or swelling), stunting (a low height for age) and underweight, and overweight (a low and high weight for age, respectively) in children; and stunting, underweight and overweight (a body mass index lower than 18.5 kg/m2 and higher than 25 kg/m2, respectively), and central obesity (a waist circumference of more than 80 cm) in women.

Nine per cent of children were found to have GAM, while 29 per cent were stunted, 18 per cent were underweight, and 2.4 per cent were overweight. In women, 15 per cent were stunted, 54 per cent were overweight or obese, and 71 per cent had central obesity. Notably, central obesity and overweightness in women affected more households than under-nutrition in children. Overall, a third of the households were classified as overweight, a quarter as undernourished, and a quarter as double burden-affected.

Based on the findings, the paper makes a number of recommendations: to revise food assistance policies to take into consideration the longer term effects of meeting minimum nutritional needs in emergencies; and to promote long-term food security in protracted emergencies, for example by encouraging the refugee community to adopt small-scale gardening and food-growing schemes. Innovative approaches and resources may be needed to encourage behavioural change in these communities, given that a more sedentary lifestyle may also be contributing to the rise in obesity.

Carlos Grijalva-Eternod, lead-author, UCL Institute of Child Health, says: "Over a third of the children surveyed showed signs of malnutrition and 15 per cent of women showed signs of having experienced nutritional deficiencies during their development; at the same time, over half the women surveyed were overweight. These high levels of obesity do not imply that this population receives excessive or even adequate nutrition, given the high prevalence of undernourished children and stunted women. Rather, the population's diet may be suboptimal for health."

"A number of reasons may account for these trends. This traditionally nomadic population itself once favoured larger women, and has an excessive sugar consumption habit. However, other factors come into play, such a predominance of starchy foods, pulses and blended foods in food assistance packages, but with few, if any, fresh or dried vegetables and fruit. We need to find ways of boosting the supply of fresh produce to improve the adequacy and diversity of their diets."

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Obesity and under-nutrition prevalent in long-term refugees living in camps