Johns Hopkins Medicine Announces Healthy Beverage Initiative

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Newswise Johns Hopkins Medicine announces the start of its Healthy Beverage Initiative, a program designed to ensure that beverages containing relatively low levels of sugar are more readily available in the hospital cafeterias, vending machines and retail outlets on many Johns Hopkins Medicine campuses.

Changes took effect in September in cafeterias and other campus retail outlets. Self-serve beverage stations will offer sugar-free drink choices, and sugar-sweetened drinks will be available in containers of 12 ounces or less. The next stage which includes limiting higher caloric drink options in vending machines will occur in 2015.

As part of our mission to improve the health of the community and the world, we must lead by example, says Pamela Paulk, senior vice president for human resources for Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Health System. Our goal is to provide the education and tools that will help our campus communities make healthier choices.

To help identify healthy beverages, drinks are classified into a color-coded system based on the density of calories per ounce and volume of each container. Green choices are the best selections, with 0 to 25 calories per 12-ounce serving; yellow choices are better but should be limited, with 26 to 100 calories per 12-ounce serving; and red choices are considered the least healthy, with more than 100 calories per 12-ounce serving.

With the goal of modifying behavior, which can help combat obesity and related diseases, the initiative was developed by the Healthy@Hopkins committee and approved by the Johns Hopkins Wellness Steering Committee, a multidisciplinary team that includes faculty, staff members and subject matter experts from across Johns Hopkins Medicine and The Johns Hopkins University.

We care about the health and well-being of everyone visiting and working in our hospitals and related buildings, says Richard Safeer, M.D., medical director of employee health and wellness at Johns Hopkins HealthCare and chairman of the steering committee. As health care providers, it is our responsibility to make healthy choices available to our staff, visitors and the surrounding community.

The committee has been working for the past year on a number of projects to advance its goal to actively support a healthy workforce. This is also part of Johns Hopkins Medicines larger Strategic Plan, which includes investing in and rewarding its employees healthy lifestyles.

Johns Hopkins HealthCare and Johns Hopkins Home Care Group modified their drink options as part of an initial phase of this initiative. In this new phase, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, Howard County General Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital and Suburban Hospital are adopting the plan.

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Johns Hopkins Medicine Announces Healthy Beverage Initiative

Medical school just what the doctor ordered

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A thriving, bustling medical school smack in the middle of downtown Tampa? As Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn puts it, this would be a game changer. (If you don't mind a sports analogy about downtown that has nothing to do with actual sports, or baseball, or baseball downtown.)

A very big buzz about downtown Tampa's future has long been baseball specifically how to land the much-loved Tampa Bay Rays here from across the bay one day.

Lightning owner Jeff Vinik made things more immediately interesting recently with his vision for reshaping his own 24-acre chunk of downtown with a sweeping urban district of hotels, shops, commercial space, restaurants and entertainment.

Things are happening. So, about that med school buzz.

The University of South Florida medical school on its main Tampa campus is bursting at the seams and in need of new digs.

Do they expand at the campus or make a big, bold move to give the school urban cachet and help transform downtown along the way?

Imagine students helping to fill a downtown that once slowed to tumbleweed pace when 5 p.m. rush hour hit, living in hipster high-rises, filling pubs, restaurants and stores, taking citified dogs to dog parks on the Riverwalk. Yes, Tampa's newly energized downtown has actual dog parks.

And no, Tampa has not quite reached the breezy, buzzy easiness of living in downtown St. Petersburg, which had a whole lot of historic mindfulness about its waterfront and green spaces. But earlier this year, Buckhorn was at a ribbon cutting for not just another downtown restaurant or hotel these days you can't walk down the street without tripping over one of our fancy hotels but at a veterinarian's office.

Hello, downtown grocery?

The mayor loves the idea of a medical school in our midst, a 24-7 changeup for his city. USF's medical school dean has allowed that it could be an "exciting" option. Vinik's people see its potential in this recent statement: "We admire that USF is dreaming big, and we are doing the same thing!"

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Medical school just what the doctor ordered

Harvard Medical School and University of Pittsburgh Studies Link Weight Loss Surgery with Positive Outcomes in the …

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Huntington Beach, California (PRWEB) October 10, 2014

Three recent studies have added to a growing body of data regarding the relationship between diabetes and weight loss surgery. The studies, which were performed by the Joslin Diabetes Center at Harvard Medical School and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, found that blood sugar levels were more likely to improve among participants who undergone a surgical weight loss procedure when compared with those who had not. In one study, a year after surgery, "half of gastric bypass patients and about one-quarter of the gastric banding group had at least partial remission of their diabetes, meaning their blood sugar levels were closer to the normal range and they didnt need diabetes medications."

Details and findings from the studies published in 2014 in JAMA Surgery: -http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1876616 (July 1, 2014-University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Florida Hospital Translational Research Institute, Duquesne University, Wake Forest School of Medicine) -http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1876617 (July 1, 2014-Harvard Medical School)

In the study conducted by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 61 obese people with diabetes were grouped and randomly assigned gastric bypass or gastric banding surgery. Others were randomly assigned to complete a full weight control program. After a year, half of those undergoing gastric bypass surgery and about 25% of those undergoing gastric banding experienced "at least partial remission of their diabetes." Conversely, no study participants in the non-surgery group saw diabetic condition go into remission. Similar results were found in the Harvard-based study. Both studies were published by JAMA Surgery.

Weight loss surgery should not be looked at as a panacea by any means. But the more research that is done the more clearly we understand that there is an ever-growing list of benefits to those who are willing to undergo weight loss surgery and make lifestyle changes." Dr. Mazin Al-Hakeem, a practicing physician at the Plastic Surgery Institute of California. Diabetes affects so many Americans, and we're thrilled to be working in an area of the medical field that can give a second chance to those suffering from the disease."

The Advanced Surgical Institute, located in Huntington Beach, California, is one of Southern Californias most well-known and respected health care facilities. The Institute offers plastics, weight loss surgery and post weight loss plastic surgery through its surgery centers in Huntington Beach and Rancho Cucamonga. The Institute also offers a additional consultation center in Beverly Hills. Among other services, the Institutes cosmetic surgical options include breast enhancement, liposuction, tummy tucks, mommy makeovers and rhinoplasty. Also, its weight loss surgery options include gastric band, beltplasty (body lift), gastric bypass, vertical Sleeve gastrectomy, standard Sleeve gastrectomy, spider Sleeve gastrectomy, longitudinal Sleeve gastrectomy, gastric restrictive surgery procedures. For more information log to plasticsurgeryinstituteofcalifornia.com or call (714) 969-2520.

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Liberty Football Set to Face Appalachian State on Saturday – Video

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Liberty Football Set to Face Appalachian State on Saturday
Following the team #39;s final full practice this week, head football coach Turner Gill met with the media on Thursday to discuss his team #39;s preparation for the Appalachian State game. The contest...

By: Liberty University Flames

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Liberty Football Set to Face Appalachian State on Saturday - Video

Liberty Reserve Founder Extradited to New York, U.S. Says

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Liberty Reserve founder Arthur Budovsky was extradited to New York from Spain to face federal charges that his company was a black-market bank which masked more than $6 billion of criminal proceeds.

Liberty Reserve, incorporated in Costa Rica, was one of the worlds most widely used digital currency services, according to the U.S. The company was created and structured to help criminals conduct illegal transactions, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said. Prosecutors shut it down last year.

Budovsky, 40, who was arrested in Spain in May 2013 after being indicted by the U.S., was brought to New York this afternoon, Bharara said. Hes scheduled to be arraigned Oct. 14.

He and six others have been charged in the case. To date, four co-defendants have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. Charges are pending against Liberty Reserve itself and two other men who the U.S. said acted as its operators. Both are Costa Rican citizens, havent been arrested and arent subject to extradition, prosecutors said.

Liberty Reserve had an estimated 1 million users around the world and conducted about 55 million transactions -- almost all of them illegal -- including 200,000 in the U.S., Bharara said. Investigators have found that criminal rings used Liberty Reserve to distribute illicit proceeds from Vietnam, Nigeria, Hong Kong, China and the U.S.

The company helped users launder illegal proceeds from crimes or transfer funds among associates, prosecutors said. Liberty Reserves digital currency was used by people committing identity theft, credit card fraud, computer hacking, child pornography and narcotics trafficking, prosecutors said.

The case is U.S. v. Kats, 13-cr-00368, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at

pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net Andrew Dunn, Charles Carter

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Liberty Reserve Founder Extradited to New York, U.S. Says