Opinions
Opinions
| Date | Opinions | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 26, 2012 |
PTA President to Parents: Support the New School Meals In a new opinion editorial in Education Week, Betsy Landers, National PTA President, comments on the importance of parental support for the new school lunches. |
School Food |
| Jul 24, 2012 |
A Healthy Dose of Bipartisanship Passed by Congress on June 26 and signed by President Obama on July 9, the FDA Safety and Innovation Act will increase inspections of foreign manufacturers that supply 80 percent of the ingredients in our pharmaceuticals, putting American companies on the same footing as their foreign competitors. In addition, it requires drug makers to hold their suppliers to high standards. |
Medical Safety |
| Jun 26, 2012 |
''Disclosure can address doctors' conflicts of interest'' Pew Prescription Project Director Daniel Carlat opines in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Monetary relationships among doctors and drug and device companies are not inherently bad; in fact, they are crucial for advancing medical research and patient care. Yet they can also skew prescribing practices and research results. That's why transparency and education are such an elegant solution: They allow these often important relationships to exist, but only on the condition that other professionals and patients are fully informed about them." |
Medical Safety |
| Sep 21, 2010 |
"Most of the antibiotics sold in the United States — 70 percent — go to the animals we eat, especially pigs and chickens. To speed up growth and to prevent the spread of disease in crowded conditions, growers put small amounts of antibiotics into animals’ daily feed." |
Medical Safety, Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Aug 10, 2008 |
''A Second Chance for Children'' Children can spend months or years in foster care waiting for a permanent home, particularly those who are older or have special needs. The federal Adoption Incentive Program helps by giving states money to promote adoptions of children in foster care. But the program will expire next month unless Congress acts. |
Health Topics |
| May 13, 2008 |
''Foster Care Should Respect Heritage'' "According to a report by the National Indian Child Welfare Association and Kids Are Waiting, Washington has one of the nation's highest rates of American Indian foster children. While they make up only 2 percent of Washington's child population, American Indians represent 8.4 percent of children in foster care." |
Health Topics |
| Dec 17, 2007 |
''When a Child Can't Be Home for Christmas'' "For youth from foster care, the holidays are often a stark reminder of what it means not to have a family. We miss the comfort of knowing we have a place where we are always welcome, year after year. We don't know the family traditions of mom's best tablecloth and china, dad's carving the turkey, grandma's famous stuffing recipe, football in the den with the cousins, or even the inevitable family dramas." |
Health Topics |
| Sep 7, 2006 |
''For Children Raised by Grandparents, Every Day is Grandparents' Day'' "'I raised my grandchildren. I had to because I had no alternative but to raise them,' Dorothy, age 79, says of her grandchildren. "I had to take my little Social Security and my retirement benefits and take care of these kids. I don't know how I did it."Dorothy is remarkable, but not unusual. Rather than let he |
Health Topics |
| May 30, 2006 |
''On Foster Care: Why Foster Care Reform Must Happen'' "'Let me stay in a home with loving parents that care for me,' writes Antoinette, age 14, in her poem, "To the Judge." "I want to be somewhere where I can live life as a child, in a better situation. Can you find a home that is truly good and where the people will help me?"In California, we are responsible for 8 |
Health Topics |
| Apr 2, 2006 |
''Fixing The Nation's Foster Care System'' "Our nation's foster care system is far from perfect, and its casualties are vulnerable children. As a young woman who spent more than half of her life in foster care, and a judge who oversees foster care cases, we witness its impact firsthand.On average, children remain in foster care for three years, and move three times. They are separated from friends, siblings and family for long, uncertain periods of time, and can grow out of foster care without becoming part of a loving, permanent family." |
Health Topics |
| Nov 5, 2011 |
''N.Y. has to really study gas drilling impact'' "When Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he would let science and health concerns drive his decision about issuing permits for hydraulic fracturing natural gas wells, we were encouraged. When we read the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, however, that encouragement evaporated." |
Health Impact Assessment |
| Oct 19, 2011 |
''Thinking outside the doctor’s office to build a strong, healthy nation'' "The most urgent health problems facing our nation — such as obesity, asthma, diabetes, heart disease and injuries — are shaped more by where we live and work than by what happens in the doctor’s office or hospital." |
Health Impact Assessment |
| May 1, 2011 |
''Health Impact Assessments Are Needed In Decision Making About Environmental And Land-Use Policy'' "The importance to public health of environmental decisions—including those about land use, transportation, power generation, agriculture, and environmental regulation—is increasingly well documented. Yet many decision makers in fields not traditionally focused on health continue to pay little if any attention to the important health effects of their work." |
Health Impact Assessment |
| Jan 5, 2011 |
''Health Impact Assessment: A Tool That Can Build A Healthier America'' "In December, the Department of Health and Human Services released “Healthy People 2020” — a 10-year blueprint aimed at improving the health of the nation. The plan comes amidst rising rates of many diseases – such as asthma and diabetes — and skyrocketing health care costs." |
Health Impact Assessment |
| Jun 28, 2013 |
''Congress Shouldn't Weaken Food Safety Laws'' "Being a Minnesotan, Jeff Almer searched for a polite term to describe how he feels about a congressional push to roll back the new food safety laws his family fought for when his elderly mother died after eating salmonella-laced peanut butter in late 2008." |
Food Safety |
| Jun 10, 2013 |
''For Our Kids' Sake, Food Safety Must Be a Priority'' As a pediatrician, my No. 1 concern is to keep children safe and healthy. Inside the walls of my office, I can provide services and counseling to help do just that, whether by giving an infant her first childhood vaccine, providing a mental health screening to an adolescent patient or counseling parents about how to keep their homes as safe as possible. Unfortunately, there are some threats to children's health that are beyond my control, including the food they consume. |
Food Safety |
| Apr 8, 2013 |
''Pew Report Shows Flaw in Tracing Food-Safety Lapses "Twenty-two weeks. That’s how long it took federal health officials to determine the contaminated food source after the first person was infected in a 2011 outbreak of salmonella that swept across 34 states, sickened 136 people and led to one of the largest national recalls of ground turkey." |
Food Safety |
| Mar 26, 2013 |
Mr. President: Make Imported Food Safe The Obama administration has taken an important step by releasing the draft rules central to implementing the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), but it must do more. Important draft regulations focused on the safety of imported foods are still awaiting release. These rules are especially important since about two-thirds of fruits and vegetables and 80 percent of seafood consumed in the United States come from abroad. |
Food Safety |
| Mar 11, 2013 |
''FDA Must Ensure Safety of Imported Food'' "Several months ago, my life was changed forever when I fell severely ill after eating imported ricotta cheese contaminated by the dangerous bacteria Listeria. Protections in a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) law could help prevent infections, like mine, from harming other Americans. But they need to be fully implemented to help anyone." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''Improving Food Safety Essential'' "The announcement earlier this month of proposed federal food safety regulations certainly took long enough — the authorizing legislation, the Food Safety Modernization Act, was passed two years ago with bipartisan support. Between then and now, the nation has seen a number of incidents (the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified 15 multistate outbreaks) in which thousands of people took ill, even died, because of illness carried in contaminated food." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''Time to Move on New Food Rules'' "America hasn't made major changes to its food-safety laws since the 1930s, so it probably should come as no surprise that - once a decision was finally made to update them - it took two more years to generate new regulations. But the Food and Drug Administration's menu for reform is now mostly assembled, and that's welcome news. For decades, federal regulators have reacted to outbreaks of foodborne illnesses rather than working aggressively to prevent them." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''Editorial: An Unconscionable Delay'' "After two frustrating years of delay, the U.S. Food and Drug administration should soon have the power to prevent food-borne outbreaks rather than merely reacting to them." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 16, 2013 |
''FDA: Plain Sense is the Key for New Food Safety Guidelines'' "The new food safety guidelines proposed for the people who supply the nation's food, including farmers and manufacturers, are a good preventative step toward a healthy America." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 11, 2013 |
Editorial: ''New FDA Food Safety Rules Are a Huge Step Forward'' "At long last, after seven frustrating and sometimes deadly decades of inaction, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has the power it needs to recall tainted foods and require common-sense safety measures for farmers and food manufacturers. But the new food safety rules announced last week won't do much good if there's no money to enforce them, and therein lies the rub." |
Food Safety |
| Jan 10, 2013 |
''Editorial: Late Better Than Never for New Food-Safety Rules'' "The Food and Drug Administration has proposed the most sweeping changes in food-safety rules in decades. The changes being made under the Food Safety Modernization Act, which became law in 2011, are long overdue and should be implemented as soon as possible." |
Food Safety |
