The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) has chosen the National Diabetes Centre of Sri Lanka (NDC) as one of the 11 first funding recipients of its translational research grant programme, BRIDGES, from over 108 global applications. The National Diabetes Centre project was awarded $399,670 USD by the BRIDGES programme to complete research over the next three years. Dr.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced the nominations of eight individuals to his Advisory Committee on Re-Designation of Head Start Grantees. The committee was created in accordance with the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 to develop a transparent and reliable system for evaluating the renewal of agencies’ designation as Head Start providers. “Head Start programs play an important role in the communities they serve,” Secretary Leavitt said.

House Democrats plan to send to the floor a mental health parity bill (HR 1424) financed by limits on the growth of physician-owned specialty hospitals, CQ Today reports. The legislation, sponsored by Reps. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), would require most health insurers to provide equal levels of coverage for physical and mental illnesses.

The Bush administration on Friday sent Congress a letter that included 13 proposed spending offsets for the farm bill, such as a reduction in Medicare coverage of certain medical equipment, CQ Today reports. The proposed offsets, which total $22 billion, would allow lawmakers to increase the baseline budget for the legislation by $10 billion over 10 years (Richert, CQ Today, 3/3).One of the proposed offsets would save $6.

Proposed changes to federal Medicaid guidelines would reduce payments to states by nearly $50 billion over five years — more than three times the federal estimates, according to a report released by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Democrats on Monday, CongressDaily reports (CongressDaily, 3/3).

Several Thai government agencies are working to strengthen a project aimed at protecting workers living with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS by encouraging the private sector to provide adequate care for employees, the Thai News Service reports. Thailand’s Department of Labor Protection and Welfare, the Social Security Office, the Department of Communicable Disease and the

CMS estimates that Medicare payments to physicians will decline by 10.6% below current levels on July 1 and by 15.4% below current levels on Jan. 1, 2009, under the current payment formula, CQ HealthBeat reports. The estimates were released on Friday in a letter from Jeffrey Rich, director of the CMS

A nuclear receptor protein, known for controlling the ability of cells to burn fat, also exerts powerful anti-inflammatory effects in arteries, suppressing atherosclerosis in mice prone to developing the harmful plaques, according to new research by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Women and men experience a similar prevalence of adverse drug reactions in the treatment of coronary artery disease; however, women are significantly less likely than their male counterparts to be treated with statins, aspirin, and beta-blockers according to a new study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center. The study is published in the March issue of the journal Gender Medicine.

HHS did not ensure that two Medicaid pilot projects in Florida and Vermont would be budget neutral before approving them, according to a Government Accountability Office report released on Monday, CQ HealthBeat reports.