Several months ago I posted about the new New York City law that regulated calorie counts on restaurant menu’s. The New York State Restaurant Association challenged the law in court. Well, today the courts upheld the new law. Restaurant chains that have 15 or more chains across the country are mandated to list calories on their menus starting April 21, 2008. Read below.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Calories-on-Menus.html
I was recently asked “why don’t you have Senator McCain’s health plan highlighted on the Blog?” similar to the democratic nominees. In response to that question, I give you this New York Times article. Read it, it’s not that long.
Today I read a piece entitled Pitching in the New York Times by David Brooks, also of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer (yes, that is a plug for PBS). It’s the beginning of the baseball season and a lot of people are talking baseball but this piece transcended baseball and spoke to me about our society as a whole and our health care system in particular. Brooks discussed the book “The Mental ABC’s of Pitching,” by a sports psychologist named H.A. Dorfman. It was fascinating. It may seem alittle astray from my normal blog post but just indulge me. Dorfmans’ book is about the art of pitching and how pitchers become successful. His mantra is built on discipline and the belief that behavior shapes thought (At some point we will look at the science behind that.)
To me, Brooks analysis of Dorfman’s book came down to focus or as he describes it “putting the task at the center.” By putting the task at the center it quiets the background noise. Yesterday I wrote about the health care industry’s slow move towards Patient-Centered Health Reform which to me does just what Dorfman is referring to, puts the task of caring for patients at the center. When the overall health care industry truly places the quality and care of the consumer at the center then it’s own individual and group needs and wants will not seem so important and the country will be the better for it. Just my thoughts.
Yours in Good Health
Read the article (it’s short):
I see a significant glimmer of hope in the calls for change in our health care system, first the release of the first ever hospital patient care survey on Friday and today the announcement of a national agreement with leading physician groups and the health insurers groups. They agreed upon the principles that will guide how health plans measure physician performance and report information to consumers. The organizations basically agreed to rank physicians on the basis of both the cost and quality of care they provide to patients. Why did it take so long to reach something that is seemly basic and exhibits some common sense? I think it has to do with a term that you will hear a lot in the next several years, Patient-Centered Health Reform. The health care industry is finally steering itself toward placing the health care consumer at the center, not the profits of health insurance companies or physician income but consumer health.
Yours in Good Health
http://healthcaredisclosure.org/docs/files/PatientCharterDisclosureRelease040108.pdf
What does dreadlocks have to do with the state of health care today? Nothing. I should more appropriately answer the question, nothing that I am aware of yet, but given that this is my blog I can write what I please. Today I choose dreadlocks. If you have objections feel free to comment.
After taking a long break from the gym (longer than it should have been), I returned the other night. While in the shower I overheard a conversation between 2 women discussing their hair. I presume they were not African American based on their comments. One lady commented to the other about how her hair had grown quite a bit in the past several months. The other lady responded by saying that she had not washed her hair as much because she understood that Blacks with dreadlocks don’t wash their hair and that is why it grows so long in a short period of time. After pulling my jaw up from the ground I decided I would investigate this absurdity. The beginnings of an unscientific report because a true scientist is open to all results at the beginning of the investigation.
In recent years dreadlocks have become increasingly popular and seemingly acceptable in the African American Community. The acceptability of locks in the business world has been hotly debated. Susan Taylor of Essences Magazine turned down a speaking engagement at Hampton University (a historically black college) because the university has a policy that stated that braids and dreadlocks were “unacceptable”. Earl Graves of Black Enterprise Magazine wrote the following in his column “we must remove every reason – including things as superficial as our style of hair or dress ……… might have for not wanting to do business with us,”. The National Football League even had something to say about dreadlocks, they found that dreadlocks had a direct correlation to concussions. I thought it was a joke until I read why. Players were more likely to get concussions because of ill fitted or the wrong sized helmets.
But I have strayed from my ease dropping shower story. Other than the obvious fact that Blacks with dreadlocks do wash their hair (I have observational proof), the essence of the experience for me was to determine how much scientific data was available about dreadlock and/or Black hair. I found hundreds of images of dreadlocks but extremely limited scientific data about dreadlocks. The closest article was a small study done in Cape Town, South Africa that examined African hair length. It revealed that combing African hair on a daily basis may be equivalent to a daily haircut. There were a lot of blogs entries and magazine articles with suggestions about how to start and how to maintain your locks.
Yours in Good Health
