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European Paediatric Influenza Analysis (EPIA) Group Formed To Quantify The Burden Of Seasonal Influenza In Children In Europe
The Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL) and SDI, a U.S. private-sector healthcare information company, announced the formation of the European Paediatric Influenza Analysis (EPIA) group, created to generate data needed to inform the decision process about paediatric influenza vaccination policy in individual European countries. Researchers from Denmark, England, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain and Wales are participating; it is hoped that other countries will also join. EPIA was formed to address knowledge gaps highlighted in a recent European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) report that concluded that a key barrier to decision-making about paediatric flu vaccines is the lack of high-quality, European-specific data on disease burden, especially for young children. It is estimated by ECDC that at least 40,000 people die each year from influenza in the European Union (EU). EPIA will present the initial results from their research project at the 27th annual meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) in June.
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Health Care Reform Likely Will Not Provide Coverage To Undocumented Immigrants, Sen. Baucus Says
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, on Thursday said that he supports "a version" of government-run health insurance but that such a program would not cover undocumented immigrants, the Washington Times reports. Baucus was speaking at an event sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation, Families USA and the National Federation of Independent Business (Haberkorn, Washington Times, 5/22). Baucus said that health care reform likely would provide coverage to between 94% and 96% of U.S. residents but that it would be "too politically explosive" to provide coverage to undocumented residents (Young, The Hill, 5/21). Undocumented immigrants account for between 15% and 22% of the estimated 47 million U.S. residents who lack health insurance, according to analyses by the Center for Immigration Studies and the U.S. Census Bureau. Baucus said the finance committee has not yet discussed whether federal funding to treat low-income, uninsured patients should be expanded to treat undocumented immigrants. "I don"t have a good answer yet to undocumented workers," Baucus said, adding, "There will still be charity care." According to the Dallas Morning News, some immigration advocates have said health reform efforts will not be complete if undocumented immigrants do not have coverage. Jaime Torres, president of Latinos for National Health Insurance, said, "In light of what"s happening now with the flu pandemic, it"s pretty clear that, for any health care system to work, it has to cover everyone residing in the United States" (Landers, Dallas Morning News, 5/22). Torres added, "It"s unfortunate that Sen. Baucus and the Congress might not have the courage to include the undocumented" (Washington Times, 5/22). A podcast and video of the press conference are available online at kff.org.
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By Age 6 Parts Of Brain Involved In Social Cognition May Be In Place

Social cognition - the ability to think about the minds and mental states of others - is essential for human beings. In the last decade, a group of regions has been discovered in the human brain that are specifically used for social cognition. A new study in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal Child Development investigates these brain regions for the first time in human children. The study has implications for children with autism. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Yale University scanned the brains of 13 children ages 6 to 11 as they listened to children"s stories. At the moment the plot of the stories revealed what a character wanted, believed, or knew, or presented the mental state of the character, the researchers observed increased activity in these specific brain regions. When the story turned to other topics - such as the physical world or the visual appearance of the characters - activity in these brain regions went back down. On the whole, activity in the "social brain" of the children - the parts of their brains that are used for social cognition - looked very similar to the patterns previously observed in adults. But there was one intriguing difference: One of the brain regions, the right tempero-parietal junction, appeared to change its function between the ages of 6 and 11. At age 6, the brain region played a general role in thinking about people, but by age 11, this same brain region appeared to take on a more specialized role in thinking just about others" thoughts. "What we found - a pattern of typical development - may offer clues as we study atypical social development, as happens in autism," according to Rebecca Saxe, the Fred and Carole Middleton Career Development Professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT, who led the study. "Children with autism appear to have specific difficulties thinking about other people"s thoughts. Understanding how human brains typically learn to think about thoughts may let us detect what is going wrong in an autistic brain, and maybe even target interventions toward those neural systems, to improve chances for recovery." Summarized from Child Development, Vol. 80, Issue 4, Brain Regions for Perceiving and Reasoning About Other People in School-Aged Children by Saxe, R, Whitfield-Gabrieli, S, and Scholz, J (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Pelphrey, KA (Yale University). Copyright 2009 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc. All rights reserved. Sarah Hutcheon Society for Research in Child Development


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