CDEWorld is offering an on-demand webinar:

Presenter: Jana Grube

Provider: AEGIS Publications, LLC

Commercial Supporter: Sesame Communications

COST: $0.00

CDE CREDITS: 1 Interactive

May 1st, 2013 - May 31st, 2016

Learning Objectives:

After watching this program, the viewer should be able to:

• discuss the relevance of social media to dental practice marketing

• describe how to successfully implement social media campaigns to optimize practice marketing

• describe how to create a social media brand identity for a practice

The Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services sent a joint letter in June to the nation’s medical schools, dental schools, nursing schools, and other health-related schools regarding hepatitis B discrimination. 

In the letter, the departments express concern that some health-related schools may be making enrollment decisions based on an incorrect understanding of the hepatitis B virus, resulting in discrimination. 

The letter updates schools on the latest recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding the participation of students with hepatitis B in health-related schools. The letter also emphasizes the importance of CDC’s recommendations, especially as they relate to the schools’ obligation to comply with federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability, race, color, and national origin.

Approximately 800,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States have hepatitis B.  Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders make up roughly 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, but represent 50 percent of the persons with hepatitis B in the United States. 

The letter cites to a March 2013 settlement agreement that the Justice Department reached with a medical school and a school of osteopathic medicine resolving allegations that the schools violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by excluding previously-accepted applicants with hepatitis B from their programs. 

The updated CDC recommendations, based on the most current scientific information, dispel many myths associated with hepatitis B and provide guidance to health-related schools on managing students with the virus.  The CDC also notes that since the last update of the recommendations in 1991, there have been no reports of hepatitis B transmission in the United States or other developed countries from medical or dental students to patients.  Among other recommendations, the CDC recommends that chronic hepatitis B virus infection, in itself, should not preclude the study or practice of medicine, surgery, dentistry, or allied health professions.

 “The Justice Department strongly urges health-related schools to review the CDC’s recommendations and to ensure that their policies and practices comply with federal nondiscrimination laws,” said Jocelyn Samuels, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.  “Applicants and students with hepatitis B should not have to face exclusion on the basis of unfounded fears and stereotypes, and the Justice Department will not tolerate it.”

“Both public health and civil rights will be promoted when medical schools rely on the most recent scientific information, not overbroad generalizations, in dealing with medical students with hepatitis B,” said Seth Galanter, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the Department of Education. 

Leon Rodriguez, Director of the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services, agrees that health-related schools must ensure that they do not deny equal access to individuals based on discrimination, adding:  “The CDC recommendations promote public health and safety while also offering guidance on the management of students with hepatitis B. Our agencies place considerable weight on this guidance in our enforcement of Federal civil rights laws.”

The Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services share responsibility for protecting the rights of students and applicants with disabilities, including those with hepatitis B, in schools of higher education by enforcing titles II and III of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.  These laws prohibit covered postsecondary institutions from discriminating on the basis of disability and from refusing to make reasonable modifications to their policies, practices, or procedures when necessary to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability, unless such modifications would fundamentally alter the nature of the program or the services provided.  The Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services also enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance, including those of health-related schools.

The joint letter can be found on OCR’s website at: https://www.hhs.gov/ocr/office/hep-b-letter.pdf

Additional information about the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is available on its website at www.justice.gov/crt. Additional information about the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is available on its website at www.ed.gov/ocr/. Additional information about the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office for Civil Rights is available on its website at www.hhs.gov/ocr/. 

Employers are increasingly using Facebook to screen job applicants and weed out candidates they think have undesirable traits. But a new study from North Carolina State University shows that those companies may have a fundamental misunderstanding of online behavior and, as a result, may be eliminating desirable job candidates.

Researchers tested 175 study participants to measure the personality traits that companies look for in job candidates, including conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion. The participants were then surveyed on their Facebook behavior, allowing researchers to see which Facebook behaviors were linked to specific personality traits.

“Companies often scan a job applicant’s Facebook profile to see whether there is evidence of drug or alcohol use, believing that such behavior means the applicant is not ‘conscientious,’ or responsible and self-disciplined,” says Dr. Lori Foster Thompson, a professor of psychology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the study. However, the researchers found that there is no significant correlation between conscientiousness and an individual’s willingness to post content on Facebook about alcohol or drug use.

“This means companies are eliminating some conscientious job applicants based on erroneous assumptions regarding what social media behavior tells us about the applicants,” says Will Stoughton, a Ph.D. student at NC State and lead author of the paper.

And companies that are looking for extroverts – such as those hiring for sales or marketing positions – may be doing themselves an even worse disservice. The study found that extroverts were significantly more likely to post about drugs or alcohol on Facebook. So companies weeding out those applicants are likely to significantly limit the pool of job candidates who are extroverts.

However, the researchers did find one online indicator strongly correlated to the personality traits that employers look for. Study participants who rated high on both agreeableness and conscientiousness were also very unlikely to “badmouth” or insult other people on Facebook.

“If employers plan to keep using social media to screen job applicants, this study indicates they may want to focus on eliminating candidates who badmouth others – not necessarily those who post about drinking beer,” Stoughton says.

The paper, “Big Five Personality Traits Reflected in Job Applicants’ Social Media Postings,” was published online July 1 in Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and was co-authored by Dr. Adam Meade, an associate professor of psychology at NC State.

Source: https://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-foster-thompson-fb-2013/

NEW YORK — The 9/11 attacks on America appear to have caused about one million former smokers across the country to take up the habit again and maintain it, according to a Weill Cornell Medical College public health study.

The analysis, published in the June 20 issue of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy, is the first to look at the net costs to society of terrorism-induced smoking in the United States after 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

"This helps us better understand what the real costs of such disasters are in human and economic tolls, and it suggests ways that such future stressful reactions that result in excess smoking might be avoided," says the study's author, Dr. Michael F. Pesko, an instructor in Weill Cornell Medical College's Department of Public Health. While the Oklahoma City bombing didn't affect smoking rates in the U.S., Pesko suggests that 9/11 caused a significant 2.3 percent increase nationwide. The increase started after 9/11 and continued through the end of 2003, when analysis of the data ended, he says.

Self-reported stress was also found to especially increase in communities with a higher concentration of active-duty and reserve members of the military, and among higher-educated groups. The increase in stress following 9/11 was found to account for all of the increase in smoking.

"This study provides the first unbiased estimate of the effect of stress on smoking, and the finding that there was such a big increase in smoking nationwide, seemingly due to one event, is extraordinary, and surprising," says Dr. Pesko. "It sheds light on a hidden cost of terrorism."

Dr. Pesko has long been interested in the relationship between stress and substance abuse. "There is a consensus in the research community that stress is a very large motivator for individuals to use substances, but this has not really been studied very thoroughly," he says.

To shed light on the relationship, Pesko chose two domestic terrorist attacks and examined data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which tracks annual rates of risky personal behavior across the nation. Health departments in every state conduct monthly phone surveys of residents, asking about seat-belt use, smoking and drinking habits, the last time they visited a doctor or dentist, etc. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then aggregates that data and extrapolates it into an annual, nationally representative report. Since the same questions are asked yearly, responses can be compared over time, Dr. Pesko says. He chose to examine self-reported days of stress and what he considers to be a bona fide stress response — whether former smokers begin smoking again.

Dr. Pesko compared 1,657,985 responses to the nationally representative questionnaire, and extrapolated that from the fourth quarter of 2001 through 2003, when the study ended, between 950,000 and 1.3 million adult former smokers resumed smoking, representing a 2.3 percent increase in adult smokers across the country. There was no increase in the months and years following the Oklahoma City bombing.

"I was really surprised to find that former smokers across the nation resumed their old habit," Dr. Pesko says. "I was expecting to see impacts just in the New York City area — or, at most, the tri-state area."

He estimated the cost to government of 9/11-induced smoking at $530 million to $830 million, and potentially higher if the smoking continued beyond 2003. These figures represent changes in the use of Medicare and Medicaid, productivity losses associated to illness from smoking, and decreased tax revenue linked to lost work. The figure also takes into account increased tax revenue from cigarette purchases.

The study findings suggest a potential public health response to future stress-inducing events, says Dr. Pesko. One possibility would be programs that offer free nicotine replacement therapy soon after the events, he says. "Another strategy would be to alert health professionals to do more substance abuse screening during regular medical appointments following terrorist attacks, or any such event that is likely to stress the nation," he says.

Source: https://weill.cornell.edu/news/releases/wcmc/wcmc_2013/06_20_13.shtml

Clearwater, FL (PRWEB)--American Dental Association (ADA), in collaboration with Russell Johns Associates, has launched a new dental industry job board called ADA CareerCenter that provides a versatile recruitment platform for dentists and dental professionals. The new job board, located at CareerCenter.ADA.org, is available to members of the ADA as well as all dental employers and job seekers. The site includes postings for dental assistants. 

“ADA CareerCenter is our brand new online interactive job board for dentists and other dental professionals, and is part of our new recruitment classifieds advertising program,” stated ADA’s Senior Vice President for Business and Publishing Michael Springer. “We are enhancing the way our members and all those seeking dental careers interact with potential employers and recruiters by supplying them with the resources to find the right job opportunities in their field.”

Niche industry job boards have become a powerful way for employers and recruiters to reach qualified job seekers and an effective use of recruitment budgets. ADA CareerCenter provides a single online source for dentistry employers and recruiters to reach a highly targeted audience of ADA members and other dentistry job seekers.

“ADA CareerCenter features jobs that are solely relevant to job seekers in the dentistry profession,” said Russell Johns Associates President Heloise Povey. “With the ability to connect with many quality opportunities, both employers and employee candidates will benefit from this highly focused recruitment resource.”

The launch of ADA CareerCenter runs parallel with the launch of ADA Marketplace, a new online product & service classifieds website. Both sites are part of the new recruitment and classifieds advertising program that debuts with the July issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) and the August 5 issue of ADA News. The ADA’s recruitment hub that connect employers and recruiters with qualified dentist job seekers, is made up of recruitment classifieds advertising in JADA and on ADA CareerCenter.

ADA CareerCenter is a dynamic job board where employers can post jobs, banner advertisements or upgrade to Featured Employer accounts with unlimited job postings and bonus exposure. Job seekers can search, view and apply to jobs, receive new job alerts for postings that match specific search criteria and post resumes / CVs. To learn more, visit ADA CareerCenter at CareerCenter.ADA.org.

About American Dental Association

The not-for-profit ADA is the nation's largest dental association, representing 157,000 dentist members. The premier source of oral health information, the ADA has advocated for the public's health and promoted the art and science of dentistry since 1859. The ADA's state-of-the-art research facilities develop and test dental products and materials that have advanced the practice of dentistry and made the patient experience more positive. The ADA Seal of Acceptance long has been a valuable and respected guide to consumer dental care products. The monthly The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) is the ADA's flagship publication and the best-read scientific journal in dentistry. For more information about the ADA, visit https://www.ada.org. 

Kids are out of school, with more opportunities to snack and play vigorously during the day. Many families are heading to the pool and on beach trips, playing outside and savoring salt water taffy and ice cream by the gallon.

Stephen C. Mitchell, D.M.D., a pediatric dentist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), offered tips to help maintain dental health over the summer – from what to eat and drink to what to do if a tooth is broken or knocked out.

Eating the right foods at the right times will help.

“Good snacks to eat include fresh fruits, nuts and starches like Cheez-it, pretzels, peanut butter crackers and Goldfish, but keep to specific snack times so kids aren’t constantly grazing,” Mitchell said. “Eating frequently throughout the day is hard on the teeth.” 

Mitchell recommends staying away from drinks like juices, sodas, sweet milks and sports drinks; any drink that has a calorie count higher than 10 should be something kids have no more than once a day. 

“Good drinks to have around for kids that fall below that 10-calorie limit include many flavored waters, Crystal Lite and many of the ‘Zero’ soda products,” Mitchell said. 

There are exceptions – particularly with sports drinks.

“If kids are playing summer sports where they are burning many calories and sweating a lot, they need to rehydrate,” Mitchell said. “This is where sports drinks have value.”  

He recommends parents consider lower-calorie versions such as Gatorade G2 or Powerade Zero, keeping the use of these drinks to rehydrating during and after strenuous activity. For other times, like at the beach or routine outside playing, keep other low-calorie drinks available. 

“Nothing rehydrates better than good old water,” he said.

Summertime also means recreation league baseball and lots of outside playtime for kids. Mitchell said if kids are having fun, there is always the risk of accidents that can damage teeth. 

“Collision injuries with a friend, the ground or side of a swimming pool definitely increase during the summer,” he said. “If something like this occurs, remember first and foremost to make sure your child does not have a head injury. If they have lost consciousness or are dizzy, or if they can’t remember how the injury happened, get medical attention and worry about the teeth later.”

Once parents are sure there are not medical issues, Mitchell said they should think about the following:

--If a tooth is broken, find the fragment and go immediately to the dentist. This is especially true if the tooth appears to be bleeding from the middle and not just the gums.

--If a tooth has been knocked out, the best thing to do is try to put it back in immediately. The site is normally numb immediately following an injury, so this should not hurt your child. If the tooth can be put back in the mouth within 30 minutes, chances of a full recovery are much better.

--If the tooth cannot be put back in, place it in milk and go immediately to the dentist. Try to not touch the root of the tooth, and do not clean it other than gently running it under water.  

--If a tooth has been moved out of its normal location, have your child seen immediately by the dentist.

Mitchell added that summer is a great time to schedule check-ups for children. 

“Don’t wait until the last two weeks of summer because appointments can get very scarce,” he said. “Plan ahead for the best flexibility in appointments.”

Source: University of Alabama press release. https://www.uab.edu/news/news-you-can-use/summer-survival-guide/pediatric-dentist-offers-tips-to-keep-teeth-healthy-over-the-summer

WASHINGTON — Tobacco control measures put in place in 41 countries between 2007 and 2010 will prevent some 7.4 million premature deaths by 2050, according to a study published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization today.

The study is one of the first to look at the effect of measures since the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) was established in 2005. Jt demonstrates the success of the WHO FCTC in reducing tobacco use and, thus, saving lives.

"It's a spectacular finding that by implementing these simple tobacco control policies, governments can save so many lives," said lead author David Levy, PhD, professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington.

In 2008, WHO identified six evidence-based tobacco control measures that are the most effective in reducing tobacco use, and started to provide technical support to help countries fulfill their WHO FCTC obligations.

Known as "MPOWER," these measures correspond to one or more of the demand reduction provisions included in the WHO FCTC: Monitoring tobacco use and prevention policies, Protecting people from tobacco smoke, Offering help to quit tobacco use, Warning people about the dangers of tobacco, Enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, Promotion and sponsorship, and Raising taxes on tobacco.

The authors did a modeling exercise and projected the number of premature deaths that would be averted by 2050 through the implementation of one or more of these measures.

The study focused on the 41 countries (two of which are not Parties to the WHO FCTC) that had implemented the demand reduction measures at "the highest level of achievement," that is, at a level proven to attain the greatest impact.

These countries represented nearly one billion people or one-seventh of the world's population of 6.9 billion in 2008. The total number of smokers in those countries was nearly 290 million in 2007.

Of the 41 countries, 33 had put in place one MPOWER measure and the remaining eight had implemented more than one..

"In addition to some 7.4 million lives saved, the tobacco control policies we examined can lead to other health benefits such as fewer adverse birth outcomes related to maternal smoking, including low birth weight, and reduced health-care costs and less loss of productivity due to less smoking-related disease," Levy said.

If these high-impact tobacco control measures were implemented even more widely, millions more smoking-related deaths would be averted, said Douglas Bettcher, MD, director of the department of non-communicable diseases at WHO.

"Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death in the world, with six million smoking-attributable deaths per year today, and these deaths are projected to rise to eight million a year by 2030, if current trends continue," Bettcher said. "By taking the right measures, this tobacco epidemic can be entirely prevented."

The WHO FCTC was developed in response to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic. Since the WHO FCTC came into force in 2005, 175 countries and the European Union have become parties to it. It is the most rapidly and widely embraced treaty in United Nations history, covering almost 90 percent of the world's population. 

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the Preventing Antibiotic Resistence Act, a bipartisan bill that would eiliminate certain antibiotic-related practices that contribute to the rise of drug-resistent bacteria and endanger human health. 

To read the Pew Charitable Trust news story, click here. 

Work pressure, tension at home, financial difficulties … the list of causes of stress grows longer every day. There have been several studies in the past showing that stress can have negative effects on health (cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, high blood pressure and more). The Inserm researchers at unit 1018, “The Epidemiology and Public Health Research Centre”, working in collaboration with researchers from England and Finland have demonstrated that it is essential to be vigilant about this and to take it very seriously when people say that they are stressed, particularly if they believe that stress is affecting their health. According to the study performed by these researchers, with 7268 participants, such people have twice as much risk of a heart attack, compared with others.

These results have been published in European Heart Journal. 

Today, stress is recognized as one of the main health problems. When people face a situation that is considered stressful, they may experience several physical, emotional and behavioural symptoms (anxiety, difficulty in concentrating, skin problems, migraines, etc.). Previous studies, particularly the recent studies performed within the Whitehall II cohort[1], composed of several thousand British civil servants, have already shown that the physiological changes associated with stress can have an adverse effect on health.

Herman Nabi, Inserm researcher at Unit 1018 “The Epidemiology and Public Health Research Centre”, and his team went further and studied people who declared themselves to be stressed, in order to look more closely at whether there was a link between their feeling and the occurrence of coronary disease some years later.

Using a questionnaire prepared for the Whitehall II cohort, the participants were invited to answer the following question: “to what extent do you consider the stress or pressure that you have experienced in your life has an effect on your health”, the participants had the following answers to choose from: “not at all”, “a little”, “moderately”, “a lot” or “extremely”.

The participants were also asked about their stress level, as well as about other factors that might affect their health, such as smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and levels of physical activity. Arterial pressure, diabetes, body mass index and socio-demographic data such as marital status, age, sex, ethnicity and socio-economic status were also taken into account.

According to the results, the participants who reported, at the start of the study, that their health was “a lot” or “extremely” affected by stress had more than twice the risk (2.12 times higher) of having or dying from a heart attack, compared with those who had not indicated any effect of stress on their health.

From a clinical point of view, these results suggest that the patient’s perception of the impact of stress on their health may be highly accurate, to the extent that it can predict a health event as serious and common as coronary disease.

In addition, this study also shows that this link is not affected by differences between individuals related to biological, behavioural or psychological factors. However, capacities for dealing with stress do differ massively between individuals depending on the resources available to them, such as support from close friends and family.

According to Hermann Nabi, “the main message is that complaints from patients concerning the effect of stress on their health should not be ignored in a clinical environment, because they may indicate an increased risk of developing and dying of coronary disease. Future studies of stress should include perceptions of patients concerning the effect of stress on their health”.

In the future, as Hermann Nabi emphasizes, “tests will be needed to determine whether the risk of disease can be reduced by increasing the clinical attention given to patients who complain of stress having an effect on their health.”

Source: https://presse-inserm.fr/en/stress-it-should-never-be-ignored/8616/