Public Health

COLUMBUS, Ohio - An Ohio funeral home that is the first in the nation to use a cremation alternative that dissolves bodies with lye and heat has effectively been blocked by state regulators from using the procedure. Edwards Funeral Service in Columbus is the only U.S. funeral business offering the procedure called alkaline hydrolysis to the public, according to Jessica Koth, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association. Proponents say the process is better for the environment than cremation.

One thing in Japan's favor: A strong health-care system By Robert Field, a law and public health professor at Drexel University Japan is facing a public health catastrophe. Thousands killed and injured from the earthquake, and many drowned by the tsunami. Thousands more may be poisoned by radiation from damaged nuclear reactors. And that is just the start. Severe traumatic injuries may take years to heal, and rare infections from tsunami-contaminated water may resist antibiotics.

A year after a Johns Hopkins University study found Delaware County's public-health system lacking in leadership and coordination, the county has been slow to implement many of the study's recommendations. County officials said Thursday that they are trying to remedy that soon by hiring a senior medical adviser to help coordinate public-health efforts. They have spent the last year, they said, planning how best to address the shortfalls highlighted in the study done by Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Alison Snow Jones, 61, of Center City, an associate professor at Drexel University whose blog, "Maxine Udall (Girl Economist)," sparked lively debates, died of an apparent heart attack Monday, Jan. 17, at home. At Drexel, Dr. Jones directed research concerning alcohol use and health, and led joint programs between the Schools of Business and Public Health. She was a consultant on a number of evaluations of the cost-effectiveness of programs targeting children's health, and taught courses in health economics, research methods, and statistics.

A few months ago, after hearing unrelated presentations about youth smoking (level: high) and safe sex among teenagers (low), the Philadelphia commissioner of public health had an idea: Perhaps condom machines should be placed at retailers where youths buy cigarettes. It hasn't happened (yet); the focus now is on reducing illegal tobacco sales. But the remark at a Board of Health meeting in November reflects an approach - driven by science, connected to the community, and focused relentlessly on the nuts and bolts of big issues - that observers say makes Donald F. Schwarz the city's most effective top doc in memory.

The arrest of West Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell on charges of murdering a patient and seven newborn infants has thrown an unusual spotlight on Pennsylvania regulators who, a Philadelphia grand jury concluded, "should have shut him down long ago. " But Pennsylvania's system of oversight - or lack of it, in the grand jury's view - may not be unusual. For five months last year, New Jersey regulators received complaints that abortion doctor Steven Brigham, 54, was running a secret, cash-only, late-term abortion business using a risky interstate scheme - one for which he was disciplined in the 1990s.

Lynn Heinisch says her infant son's life was saved by mothers' milk - other mothers' milk. Heinisch wasn't producing enough breast milk for Liam, and formula made him horribly sick. At 4 months, he weighed a skeletal eight pounds. So Heinisch, who lives in Croydon, turned to friends and the Internet, tapping a trend that proponents see as well-informed wet-nursing in a wired world - and public health officials call risky. "At first, my pediatrician was concerned.

Re: "Let's clear the air," editorial, Sept. 11: Of the 10 largest cities in the country, Philadelphia has the highest rate of smoking among adults and high school students. Nearly three in 10 adult Philadelphians - or 300,000 people - smoke regularly. That's enough smokers to fill more than four Lincoln Financial Fields. Smoking in Philadelphia is both a public-health and economic crisis: 2,500 Philadelphians die every year from smoking-related diseases. Of existing smokers, one in two will die of a smoking-related disease.

New Jersey's family planning health centers are bracing for reduced hours, layoffs, and even closings after Gov. Christie's veto of a bill to restore $7.5 million for women's health services. Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey, for example, expects patients will have to wait or travel longer to receive care following the elimination of state funds, which make up a quarter of the organization's budget. Since the spring, advocates and a group of lawmakers had pressed the Christie administration to reconsider eliminating all state funding for 58 family planning centers.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Nearly 2,000 people in five states and Washington were urged to get hepatitis B tests after patients and volunteers at a free dental clinic in West Virginia contracted the blood-borne disease, public health officials said Friday. Officials say the risk of widespread illness is low, but they are concerned that low-income people who can't afford medical care may not know they are sick and could pass the disease to others. "The problem comes if there has been unrecognized transmission and someone is chronically infected," said Danae Bixler of the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health.