After a successful pilot run, the LSU School of Social Work received $100,000 from the AmeriCares Mental Health Grant Program to continue its study, “Weathering the Storm: Wellness Groups for Children and Caregivers.”The grant enables clinically licensed social workers to offer psycho-educational help by using group interventions in Baton Rouge area schools. [click link for full article]

The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health will examine oversight of the Medicare prescription drug benefit among other priorities for the 110th Congress, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and ranking member Jim McCrery (R-La.) wrote in a letter sent Wednesday to leaders of the [click link for full article]

The University of Pittsburgh has been awarded an estimated $13 million research grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop novel approaches that seek to increase our understanding of and improve outcomes for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a degenerative breathing disorder that is the fourth leading cause of death and the second leading cause of disability annually in the United States. [click link for full article]

“With each new round of argument, the ethical questions at the heart of the [human] embryonic stem cell debate get buried under more layers of hype and confusion,” Yuval Levin, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, writes in a [click link for full article]

UnitedHealth Group on Thursday announced fourth-quarter earnings of $1.2 billion, in part because of the recent acquisition of PacifiCare Health Systems and business from Medicare prescription drug plans, Reuters reports. Revenue increased by 47% from a year earlier to about $18.16 billion, the company said. [click link for full article]

Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke on Thursday at a Senate Budget Committee hearing said that if “early and meaningful action is not taken” by Congress to address the rising costs of retirement and medical services for baby boomers, “the U.S. economy could be seriously weakened, with future generations bearing much of the cost,” the [click link for full article]

Democrats in Congress plan to consider several bills that would “at the very least expand family planning programs to more women, especially poor women,” but President Bush’s recent appointment of Eric Keroack to deputy assistant secretary of HHS’ Office of Population Affairs is a “roadblock to this common ground,” [click link for full article]

Each year, about 40,000 children are adopted across national lines, primarily by families from North America and Western Europe. These joyful occasions mark the growth of new families and also provide the framework for a natural experiment in language development. Although most are infants and toddlers, thousands of older children are also adopted. Typically, these older children lose their birth language rapidly and become fluent speakers of their new language. [click link for full article]

A new study concludes that low birthweight babies born with low sodium (salt) in their blood serum will likely consume large quantities of dietary sodium later in life. In the study, researchers also found that newborns with the most severe cases of low sodium blood serum consumed ~1700 mg more sodium per day and weighed some 30 percent more than their peers. [click link for full article]

Building on newly discovered genetic threads in the rich tapestry of biochemical signals that cause cancer, a Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center team has dramatically killed brain cancer cells by blocking those signals with a statin and an experimental antitumor drug.The unlikely pairing of cholesterol-lowering lovastatin and cyclopamine killed 63 percent of medulloblastoma cells grown in the laboratory. [click link for full article]