Obama Administration Launches HIV/AIDS Campaign
The White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a five-year communication campaign called Act Against AIDS this week in an effort to bring attention to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Someone in the United States becomes infected with HIV every 9.5 minutes, and 56,000 Americans are newly infected with HIV annually, according to the CDC. The Act Against AIDS campaign will involve public service announcements, targeted messages and outreach to groups of people who are disproportionately affected by HIV, and a website that communicates the severity of the problem. "Our goal is to remind Americans that HIV/AIDS continues to pose a serious health threat in the United States and encourage them to get the facts they need to take action for themselves and their communities," Melody Barnes, assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a prepared statement.
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African-Americans are heavily affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and will be targeted in the Act Against AIDS campaign, according to the CDC. Experts recommend regular HIV testing, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists last year recommended HIV testing for most adult women. And while some recent HIV news has been encouraging, increasingly alarming infection statistics provide cause for concern.
Depression in Teenagers: Experts Say to Screen All
The subject of depression in teenagers was thrust into the national dialogue recently when a government-appointed panel of medical experts advised that primary-care doctors routinely screen all patients ages 12 to 18 for major depression, an about-face from a 2002 conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to recommend for or against doing so, Lindsay Lyon reports. Now, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says in April's Pediatrics , there's "adequate evidence" that screening tests do a good job of accurately detecting depression in teenagers and adolescents—important, it says, since "the majority of depressed youth are undiagnosed and untreated." An estimated 2 million teens and preteens experience clinical depression each year. They're more likely than peers to fall behind in school, suffer social isolation, and experience substance abuse, pregnancy, or suicide.
Are you a parent who is concerned about protecting your child's mental health? Learn how to raise kids who can cope. And check out 4 areas where parents can help teens steer clear of trouble.
What Farrah Fawcett Can Teach Us About Anal Cancer
Farrah Fawcett was hospitalized earlier this week for complications of anal cancer, which she was first diagnosed with in 2006, Deborah Kotz reports. Anal cancer is one of those cancers no one likes to talk about because it's, well, anal cancer. But we really should discuss it as much as, say, cervical cancer. Both are predominantly caused by the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus. In fact, a 2004 study of 6,000 anal cancer patients (the majority of whom were women) found that 73 percent of the patients tested positive for the strain HPV-16, one of the strains that the Gardasil vaccine protects against.
What's worrisome is that unlike cervical cancer, which has dropped dramatically since the advent of the Pap smear, anal cancer is on the rise. Incidence rates over the past 30 years have jumped by 78 percent in women and 160 percent in men, probably because more people now have more sexual partners and more people have anal sex (both among heterosexuals and gay men), says Lisa Johnson, a cancer epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who led the 2004 study.
While the Gardasil vaccine can guard against HPV, it's not without risks, and parents have much to consider when deciding whether to get their children vaccinated. Also, a new HPV test is being recommended for certain women; learn whether it should replace Pap smears in cervical cancer screening.
—January W. Payne
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