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Do Pets Improve Mental Health During COVID Lockdowns?

October 14, 2020

Source: Photo by Dmitry Naumov/123 RF

In response to the social isolation associated with COVID-19, lots of people are taking the advice of those like fellow Psychology Today blogger Catherine Sanderson, who described “5 Great Reasons to Adopt a Dog During The Pandemic.” Animal shelters all over the United States have experienced a run on adoptions of dogs and cats. In April, for example, Chicago’s Animal Care and Control shelter completely ran out of adoptable animals for the first time.

But is there solid evidence that getting a pet will actually cure the COVID blues? Months ago researchers who study human-animal interactions began posting online questionnaires to answer this question. In June, a group of researchers reported that 70% of the 4,000 dog owners they surveyed agreed their pets helped them cope with loneliness and depression caused by the pandemic. The participants also reported increases in positive emotions such as

Dr. Scott Gottlieb says U.S. coronavirus testing must still improve

October 12, 2020

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| Health News

Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Monday the U.S. still needs to expand and improve its coronavirus testing and contact tracing to bring its epidemic under control — even if it will never be able to employ an operation as rigorous as China.

“We don’t need to have their level of surveillance state to have better testing and tracing in place, and we could be doing a lot better at calling on collective action for people to wear masks on a more routine basis,” Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.”

The former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner pointed to recent developments in the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao. After 12 cases were reported, the city now plans to test all 9 million residents over the next five days, according to the BBC.

“So they’ll manage to snuff out that outbreak,” said Gottlieb, who served in the Trump administration from May

Superior HealthPlan Working to Improve Health Literacy across Texas

October 12, 2020

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| Health Facts

AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 12, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Many Texas healthcare consumers find it challenging to understand health information, from medical forms and terminology to the impact of a disease diagnosis. A recent study found that 88% of Americans struggle at one time or another with what’s called health literacy¹. Health Literacy Month is in October and, due to the low numbers of health literacy across the country – including in Texas – Superior HealthPlan is taking time to help its employees and the general public learn how to better access, understand and use health information and services.

Health literacy is how well a person is able to obtain, communicate, process and understand health information and services to make their best health decisions. Being able to act on health knowledge can improve the health of individuals as well as their communities. For example, people with higher levels of

Denmark boosts its support to WHO to improve global health

October 12, 2020

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| Global Health

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Oct 12 2020

On 5 October 2020, WHO and Denmark signed a multiyear agreement in which Denmark increased its flexible support to WHO.

As part of the agreement, Denmark’s funding to WHO will exceed 140 million Danish kroner (over US$ 20 million) of flexible and thematic contributions for the 2020-2023 period.

Denmark’s voluntary flexible contributions rise to 25 million Danish kroner (over US$ 3.9 million) per year. A further 10 million Danish kroner (over US$ 1.5 million) of thematic funds will be provided to WHO broadly earmarked towards the battle of non-communicable diseases.

The Danish government commits to doubling Denmark’s voluntary core contribution to @WHO from 2021, subject to parliamentary approval, to take global responsibility in strengthening health for the most vulnerable. @RasmusPrehn #healthforall https://t.co/S5F0Z4CgSL-; Morten Jespersen (@DKAmb_UNGva) September 2, 2020

The Danish Government announced in September their commitment to double Denmark’s voluntary core contribution

Our mission to improve mental health care

October 11, 2020

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| Community Health

Imagine having cancer or a heart condition and not having access to high quality care. Tragically, this has been the reality for the 1,300 youth in Sonoma County who experience their first psychotic episode each year. Connecting youth with the appropriate treatment early on can drastically alter a young person’s future. But to date there hasn’t been a program in Sonoma County equipped to handle this need.

Our family knows this all too well having lost our brilliant, talented and compassionate daughter, Elizabeth, to suicide in 2018 at the age of 19. When she was almost 17, and having completed two years of college, she came to us for help saying she was not feeling right. She was suffering from severe depression and anxiety, which we and she believed could be addressed with our health care provider’s assistance. We were so wrong.

The brain is an organ in our bodies.

MoHAP launches ‘Post Office’ initiative to improve health insurance claims process

October 11, 2020

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| Health Plans

DUBAI — The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) has launched the “Post Office” initiative as part of the National Unified Medical Records “Riayati”, a linkage system between hospitals and clinics and health care providers.

From improving treatment services and reducing healthcare costs in the UAE, to achieving a smart and integrated health system that serves the beneficiaries of health services and strengthening the control over the insurance system to reduce the misuse of financial resources, the new service helps provide better management of the central information related to the electronic insurance claims and their tracking

The post office service is covering the workflow of all claims between healthcare facilities and insurance companies, such as the verification of eligibility and insurance coverage and e-payments, including claims submission and tracking refusals. All the mentioned services are available for use by the authorized users in the healthcare facilities without having to rely

How music could improve our mental health

October 10, 2020

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| Health Benefits

If you’re a musician and you’re angry at being told you should “retrain” to do something “useful” while we’re trapped in this pandemic, you have every right to be. As much as academics and politicians look down on the arts (despite consuming them on a daily basis), what they don’t seem to realise is the importance of music to our psychological health. And since our collective mental health has taken a downturn this year, it seems that music has never been more important.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

As part of World Mental Health Day, we want to educate on the health benefits of listening to music. It’s been a part of human culture since the dawn of time, used primarily as a way of bringing people together and inciting revelry and merryment in communal spaces. But now we know that the purposes of music go well beyond that.

Here are

5 Simplest And Most Effective Ways to Improve Your Mental Health

October 10, 2020

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| Health Food

© Juhi Kumari | India.com Lifestyle Staff
World Mental Health Day 2020 (Picture Courtesy: Instagram)

We cannot emphasize enough how significant having good mental health is. It ensures your overall well being and helps you manage everyday difficulty in the most healthy way. A disturbed emotional or psychological state can take away the enjoyment from your life and can throw you in the darkness that can further make you feel lonely, stressed, depressed and can push you towards committing suicide. There is a lot of stigmas attached to mental health conditions and that creates a barrier in the timely diagnosis of these conditions leading to increased prevalence of death due to the psychological disorders. To prevent these occurrences, here we tell you 5 easiest ways to boost your mental health.

Surround Yourself With Positivity

This is in your control. You need to stay miles away from any kind of negativity

Health systems seek out patient feedback to improve telehealth platform

October 10, 2020

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| Health Magazine

The pressure is on for health systems to create digital experiences patients will enjoy or risk losing out on revenue. In the digital age, consumers have high expectations of what these platforms should be like. “Systems are no longer just competing with other health systems in their region, they are competing with the experiences people have in their daily lives from other brands—that is the bar,” Kalis said. “When those experiences are cumbersome, that can lead to choosing one provider over another … and in the most extreme case, even switching providers.”

Telehealth’s increased popularity has prompted Stanford Health Care to totally rethink how it is assessing patients’ experience with the platform. The California system now does about 62,000 telehealth visits a month, up from about a 1,000 a month before COVID-19.

Now that volumes have stabilized and are staying strong, Alpa Vyas, vice president for patient experience at Stanford,

Spectral optimization shows potential to improve energy efficiency and quality-of-light experience (MAGAZINE)

October 8, 2020

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| Health Magazine

Electric lighting is a significant part of the energy consumption in buildings. Driven by the rising energy demand, the contribution of lighting to energy consumption is anticipated to grow. In the last decades, this growing energy demand forced governments and manufacturers to think about alternative ways of generating electric lighting. Promising developments in the lighting industry, such as the introduction of solid-state lighting (SSL) devices for general lighting, made a huge impact. SSL devices have several advantages over previous lighting technologies, such as compact size, longer lifetime, directionality, high efficacy, ease of control of light output, and high color quality.

Spectral power distribution (SPD), radiant power as a function of wavelength, is a crucial part of luminous efficacy and quantification of the color quality of a light source. The color appearance of an object is constituted by the light source spectrum, the object’s spectral reflectance, and the human visual