Health care worker monitored for Ebola in New Jersey

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NEWARK, N.J., Oct. 24 (UPI) -- A health care worker who treated Ebola patients in West Africa was put in quarantine at a New Jersey hospital after developing a fever.

The female health care worker, whose name wasn't reported, didn't have any symptoms of the Ebola virus Friday when she arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport.

But that changed.

"This evening, the health care worker developed a fever and is now in isolation and being evaluated at University Hospital in Newark," New Jersey health department spokeswoman Donna Leusner told CNN.

The woman, who does not live in New Jersey, has not tested positive for Ebola. She has been isolated at University Hospital in Newark.

Earlier in the day, the governors of New Jersey and New York institute a new quarantine policy, under which any passenger who had contact with Ebola patients in West Africa would be placed in quarantine for 21 days. This policy goes into effect regardless of if the traveler appears healthy.

The health care worker was the first person to be quarantined under the new measures.

The new policy came on the heels of a positive Ebola diagnosis of a Doctors Without Borders physician Dr. Craig Spencer who tested positive for Ebola Thursday.

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Health care worker monitored for Ebola in New Jersey

McHenry County Board's rejection of health care grant could flood ERs, agencies say

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WOODSTOCK McHenry County Board members are rethinking a controversial vote that stripped grant funding that covered Affordable Care Act counselors, as local health service agencies thrashed the original decision Friday.

Acting board Chairman James Heisler, R-Crystal Lake, said he and several others will meet at noon Monday to discuss how to revisit the grant, and whether it can wait until Nov. 6 or whether a special meeting is needed.

Member Donna Kurtz, R-Crystal Lake, also said a re-vote likely will happen after talking to other board members. She said an Illinois Department of Public Health grant coordinator agreed to temporarily hold off on distributing a $584,791 state grant elsewhere to allow for a re-vote.

"A lot of County Board members are now recognizing that we need to reassess this whole situation," Kurtz said.

On Tuesday, the County Board voted 10-10 to turn down the $584,791 grant from the state health department that would have covered the counselors, who help enroll people through the state health care exchange. Kurtz voted for the grant funding while Heisler voted against it.

The proposal needed 16 votes to pass. Some members, who voted for the grant, said the 10 other members voted against it to protest Obamacare.

Numerous health service agencies warned Friday that their clients will turn to the emergency room for primary care without health care counselors assisting clients through the complicated Affordable Care Act application process.

In a newsletter released Friday, Suzanne Hoban, executive director of the Family Health Partnership Clinic, said the local health care group already laid-off its navigator, who the agency paid through the grant.

"We immediately had to lay off our trained navigator and will no longer be able to assist people through this complex process," Hoban said in the newsletter.

"Without assistance to get people private insurance or public aid, we expect the number of patients we serve to increase, and many more to use the emergency room as their primary care clinic, wasting precious local health resources," she added.

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McHenry County Board's rejection of health care grant could flood ERs, agencies say

A Retiree Health-Care Fix That Isnt

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Since the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010, supporters and opponents have argued about whether the measure would lead employers to drop health coverage for workers. This issue has returned to the news; Wal-Mart recently decided to drop coverage for some of its part-time workers, and The Wall Street Journalreportedthis week that some firms, seeking to avoid employer penalties under the law,have encouraged employees to enroll in Medicaid.

While their private-sector counterparts have received more attention, public-sector employeesparticularly retireescould face similar problems with dropped coverage. The Atlantic reported last weekon the trend of cities in financial distress, from Detroit to Chicago to Sheboygan, Wis., reducing or eliminating coverage and seeking to use the insurance exchanges to get out of their health-care obligations to retirees. As one pension expert quoted in the Atlantic noted, every public-sector employer is looking at the exchanges as a potential way to get out of the unfunded liabilities that the public sector is bearing.

But transferring state and municipal retirees to insurance plans on the exchanges doesnt reduce the amount of unfunded liabilities; it shifts the cost from state and local governments to Washington. Many of the retirees in question could qualify for federal premium and cost-sharing subsidies for their exchange insurance policies. Even by Washington standards, the magnitude of the problem is daunting: A 2012 Pew study found that state governments held $627 billion in unfunded retiree health obligations; adding local government health plans could push those obligations toward $1 trillion.

State governments are grappling with a difficult revenue environment, while the federal government faces long-term fiscal challenges caused by demographic shifts. Given these dynamics, what looks to some mayors like a quick fix to their budget woesshifting retirees to the federal exchangescould, in the broader fiscal sense, amount to shifting deck chairs on the Titanic. If efforts by cities and states ultimately encourage private-sector firms to drop health coverage for their workers and retirees, they will add to our nations collective entitlement obligationsand could end up sinking our federal fiscal ship.

Chris Jacobs is policy director ofAmerica Next, a conservative think tank. He is onTwitter:@chrisjacobshc.

ALSO IN THINK TANK:

In Some States, a Cost Crunch Over Expanded Health Benefits

The Flaw in Using Medicare Price Caps as a Cost-Control Model

One Way to Control Costs: Health Savings Accounts

______________________________________________________

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A Retiree Health-Care Fix That Isnt

UTSW researchers receive CPRIT funding to expand genetic screening program

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

24-Oct-2014

Contact: Lori Sundeen Soderbergh lori.soderbergh@utsouthwestern.edu 214-648-3404 UT Southwestern Medical Center @UTSWNews

DALLAS October 24, 2014 Genetic screening services for rural and underserved populations will expand from six to 22 counties in North Texas under a $1.5 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The goal is to identify patients with Hereditary Breast-Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) and Lynch syndrome, two of the most commonly inherited cancer predisposition syndromes. For those carrying these mutations, the lifetime risk for breast, ovarian, colorectal, and uterine cancer is as high as 85 percent.

"Overall, about 10 percent of cancer diagnoses are hereditary," said Linda Robinson, Assistant Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics at UTSouthwestern. "The power of genetic testing is that we can lessen the amount of treatment for these people by finding the cancer early, and for some patients we can prevent it from happening altogether."

Cancer Genetic Services for Rural and Underserved Populations in Texas is part of the Genetics Department at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center, in partnership with Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and the Moncrief Cancer Institute and JPS Health Network in Fort Worth. The cost of the genetic evaluation and testing is covered through the CPRIT grant and other external funding sources.

"This support from CPRIT is crucial in enabling us to offer genetic counseling to populations who have never received these services," said Dr. James K.V. Willson, Dean of Oncology Programs, Professor and Director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, Professor of Internal Medicine, and holder of The Lisa K. Simmons Distinguished Chair in Comprehensive Oncology.

The principal investigator on the grant is Dr. Keith Argenbright, Director of the Moncrief Cancer Institute, Associate Professor at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center and Department of Clinical Science, UT Southwestern.

"We now have the ability to connect with patients through telemedicine, a high tech communications system linking patients in outlying counties with our genetic specialists," said Dr. Argenbright. "With this new grant, we are building on the success of a similar program CPRIT funded three years ago, which brought state-of-the art genetic testing closer to home for our patients."

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UTSW researchers receive CPRIT funding to expand genetic screening program

Heres How Well Your Genes Can Predict Your Breast Cancer Risk

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TIME Health Cancer Heres How Well Your Genes Can Predict Your Breast Cancer Risk Researchers say genetic sequencing can predict breast cancer risk better than previously thought

Your genes have a lot to say about who you are and how healthy you are. But for certain diseases, including cancer, so many genes are likely involved that its hard for doctors to come up with a useful, reliable way to turn your DNA information into a precise risk score.

But in a paper published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, researchers say that combining the known genetic players in breast cancer can predict with much higher accuracy a newborn girls theoretical risk of developing the disease.

MORE: Angelina Jolies Surgery May Have Doubled Genetic Testing Rates at One Clinic

Alice Whittemore, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Stanford University School and Medicine, and her colleagues included 86 known genetic variants that have been associated with breast cancerincluding BRCA1 and BRCA2, which are relatively rare but confer a very high risk of disease compared to those that have a smaller contributionand created a computer model that took into account the rates of breast cancer among 120,000 women who had these genetic variants.

This model served as a predictor for breast cancer based on womens genetic makeup. When researchers looked at the top 25% of risk scores, they found that these would account for about half of breast cancer cases in the future. Using previous models, genetic variants could account for only 35% of future cancer cases.

Our results are more optimistic than those that have been previously published, says Whittemore, because we took 86 known genetic variants associated with breast cancer, and took what was in the worlds literature about how common those variants are, and by how much a factor they increase risk. And the more genetic variants that are identified, the better we will get at this.

MORE: BRCA Gene Can Be A Cancer Triple Whammy, Study Finds

Since the paper was submitted, several new genetic variants have been linked to breast cancer, and adding those to the model, says Whittemore, could make it more effective.

But just because a woman may have been born with a high genetic risk for breast cancer doesnt mean that she cant change that risk. The model found that lifestyle factors, which are in a womans control, can generally lower the genetic risk by half. And the higher a womans genetic risk, the more she can reduce it with healthy behaviors. So avoiding excessive amounts of alcohol and smoking, or maintaining a healthy weight, for example, can bring a genetic risk of 30% down to around 15%, while a woman with a 4% genetic risk of developing breast cancer can reduce her risk by 2%.

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Heres How Well Your Genes Can Predict Your Breast Cancer Risk

UT Southwestern Researchers Receive CPRIT Funding to Expand Genetic Screening Program to Reach Medically Underserved …

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Newswise DALLAS October 24, 2014 Genetic screening services for rural and underserved populations will expand from six to 22 counties in North Texas under a $1.5 million grant from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The goal is to identify patients with Hereditary Breast-Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) and Lynch syndrome, two of the most commonly inherited cancer predisposition syndromes. For those carrying these mutations, the lifetime risk for breast, ovarian, colorectal, and uterine cancer is as high as 85 percent.

Overall, about 10 percent of cancer diagnoses are hereditary, said Linda Robinson, Assistant Director of Clinical Cancer Genetics at UTSouthwestern. The power of genetic testing is that we can lessen the amount of treatment for these people by finding the cancer early, and for some patients we can prevent it from happening altogether.

Cancer Genetic Services for Rural and Underserved Populations in Texas is part of the Genetics Department at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center, in partnership with Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and the Moncrief Cancer Institute and JPS Health Network in Fort Worth. The cost of the genetic evaluation and testing is covered through the CPRIT grant and other external funding sources.

This support from CPRIT is crucial in enabling us to offer genetic counseling to populations who have never received these services, said Dr. James K.V. Willson, Dean of Oncology Programs, Professor and Director of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, Professor of Internal Medicine, and holder of The Lisa K. Simmons Distinguished Chair in Comprehensive Oncology.

The principal investigator on the grant is Dr. Keith Argenbright, Director of the Moncrief Cancer Institute, Associate Professor at the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center and Department of Clinical Science, UT Southwestern.

We now have the ability to connect with patients through telemedicine, a high tech communications system linking patients in outlying counties with our genetic specialists, said Dr. Argenbright. With this new grant, we are building on the success of a similar program CPRIT funded three years ago, which brought state-of-the art genetic testing closer to home for our patients.

The new grant funds the program for an additional three years. The initial $1.6 million CPRIT grant from 2011 included Tarrant, Dallas, Wise, Hood, Johnson, and Parker counties, a population of 3,511,623. The expansion includes a population increase of 1,156,449 and covers an estimated additional 13,480 square miles, more than double the size of Massachusetts. In Texas, 43 percent of the population is uninsured or underinsured. CPRIT funding allows for genetic services for patients who have never had access to these services before.

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UT Southwestern Researchers Receive CPRIT Funding to Expand Genetic Screening Program to Reach Medically Underserved ...

Plenary Session: Gene Therapy & Gene-Modified Cell Therapies – Video

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Plenary Session: Gene Therapy Gene-Modified Cell Therapies
This session will bring together several of the leading in-vivo and ex-vivo gene therapy companies in addition to pharma companies making a large bet in gene-modified cell therapy. While the...

By: Alliance for Regenerative Medicine

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Plenary Session: Gene Therapy & Gene-Modified Cell Therapies - Video

Google Executive Breaks Record With Near-Space Skydive

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Google Executive Alan Eustace descends from his record-breaking jump. (Credit: Paragon)

Two years ago this month, Felix Baumgartner broke a record with his near-space skydive in which he broke the sound barrier.

Alan Eustace, a Vice-President of Knowledge at Google Google, just broke it.

The funny thing is, though, is that in a project nearly three years in the making, it wasnt until the last minute that anyone knew he was going to.

As we were watching him go up today, somebody asked us what the record was, Paragon Space Development CEO Grant Anderson told me. We had to look it up! It was cool to break the record, but frankly it was not in the forefront of our minds at all.

Eustace first approached Paragon, which specializes in developing life support equipment for extreme environments, including space, in December of 2011. The goal apart from the fun of the stunt itself was to develop technologies that could be useful for more human exploration of the stratosphere and beyond.

The day of the flight began with a four-hour stint in an oxygen chamber, where Eustace had the nitrogen in his lung and tissues slowly washed out. Next Next up, he was prepared in the space suit, which is similar in design and material to the spacesuits used by astronauts on the International Space Station. (If it looks funny in the photos, thats because the life support system is on the front instead of the back in order to accommodate the parachute.

The spacesuit itself was absolutely necessary at the altitude Eustace flew to, the atmosphere is so thin that a human cant breathe. Also, the pressure is so low that even at the cool temperatures, the fluids in the body will begin to boil

The balloon that took Eustace to the stratosphere was then inflated with helium, and Eustace was hooked up in place to it. Unlike Felix Baumgartner, Eustace wasnt in a capsule. He was directly attached to a module held by the balloon.

Alan Eustace ascending to the stratosphere. (Credit: Paragon Space Development)

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Google Executive Breaks Record With Near-Space Skydive