HEALTH
STATISTICS
In 1993, at the time of President Clinton's
doomed health care reform proposal,
the nation's medical system made up 13.7% of its GDP and employed
11 million people. A dozen years later, in 2005, health care spending
exceeded $1.9 trillion, or $6,000 for each American, amounting to 16.0% of
the nation's GDP--compared to 9.7% in Germany and 9.5% in France (in 2001,
according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Government projections in 2003 estimate that health spending
will consume 17.7% of the GDP by 2012.
However, American life expectancy at birth ranks behind
fifteen nations, all of which spend proportionately far less on health
care (see the McKinsey Global Institute's 2007 "Accounting
for the Cost of Health Care in the United States"). Infants die at a higher rate in America each year than in 21 other
countries, including Ireland and France, with black infant mortality rates
projected to be three times greater than that of white infants in the year
2000. According to a 2004 study by the
Center for Studying Health System Change (n=25,400 families), one in seven
Americans--or 20 million families--are struggling to pay for food and shelter
because of debt problems from medical care.
-
- Achoo - Internet Healthcare
Directory
- From the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, State Health Facts Online
- NIH Home Page
- Combined Health Information Database
from NIH
- National Center for Research
Resources (NCRR)
- National Center
for Health Statistics
- Health, United States, 2004 DHHS
report (pdf format)
- VitalNet an integrated system for analyzing
health data, with free access to Texas and California birth, death, and other health data sets, as
well as link lists related to health data sets, state health agencies, and epidemiology
software
- The
Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care in the U.S. 1998
- Morbidity
& Mortality Weekly Report
- National Cancer Institute.
Check out under "What's New" the "Study to Estimate Iodine
(I-131) Doses From Nuclear Fallout.
- Cancer Statistics for
1998, from the American Cancer Society
- MEDICAL MATRIX- GUIDE TO INTERNET MEDICAL RESOURCES
- JHMI-InfoNet: Home
page
- Centers for Disease Control Home
Page
- Center for Disease Control
datasets
- The Global
Health Network
- ME
DLINE Searcher
- Medsite Navigator
- Pain Net, Inc.
- National Organization for Rare Disorders
- HealthSeek - The Internet's
Healthcare Career-Mart
- Leads to the health
care network
INTERNATIONAL
HEALTH
- Center for International Health
Information"
- From the World Health Organization, Core Health Indicators and its 2006 World Health Report
- From the Population Reference Bureau and the National Council for Science and the Environment, PopPlanet--"a resource of up-to-date country specific information on key population, environment, and health
issues"
- Global Health Council--"formerly
the National Council of International Health, is a U.S.-based, nonprofit
membership organization that was created in 1972 to identify priority world
health problems and to report on them to the U.S. public, legislators,
international and domestic government agencies, academic institutions and the
global health community."
- Researcheasy's public
health resources--newsletters, articles and links
- Check out the "Health" section in the United
Nations CyberSchoolBus: Global Trends
DISEASES
- Harvard University's Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics
- The Wonderful World of Diseases
- Disease Database from i-medicine.info
- Pandemic Influenza from the CDC
HEALTH IN SAN ANTONIO
-
Health and Demographic Statistics from the San Antonio Metropolitan
Health District--2002 profiles including maternal health indicators, school performance, housing
stock, family stability, economic conditions, crime and environmental
degradation. Analyses by zip code, council district, county precinct,
census tract and school district.
- Bexar County Community Health Collaborative
EMERGING MICROBES TO WORRY
ABOUT
- Emerging
Infectious Diseases--a peer-reviewed journal of the National Center for Infectious
Diseases
- ProMED-mail--from the International Society
For Infectious Diseases
- Antibiotic Resistance: A Growing Threat
from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
- Program for
Monitoring Emerging Diseases Electronic Conference
- CDC's
surveillance of vaccine-preventable diseases
MEDICAL JOURNALS & NEWS SITES
- Journal of
the American Medical Association
- New England Journal of Medicine
Online
- Home Page
- Health Affairs: The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere
- The Lancet
- American Journal of
Nursing
- International
Journal of Medicine
- American Medical News
- World Health News (from Harvard School of Public Health)
- Annals of Internal Medicine (news
only)
- Johns Hopkins Antibiotic Guide a peer-reviewed database
- Finally, better not forget The Merck Manual (now available in both text and interactive formats)
THE MEDICAL
PROFESSION--CAPITALISM STYLE
Click here for details on medicine's role
on the frontline in the cultural war against death.
- American Medical Association
Home Page
- Archive of articles on health care from
The Atlantic Monthly
- Modern Healthcare -
Weekly
Business News
- Telephone Nursing
Telezine--rich resource for caregivers, gerontology and geriatric medicine,
and hospice
HISTORY OF MEDICINE
- Islamic Medicine and Science During the Middle Ages
- Images from the History of Medicine
from the National Library of Medicine
MEDICAL ETHICS
-
Remembering the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro
Male"
- Canadian Bioethics
Report
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE
- Holistic Internet Resources:
Homepage
- Alternative Medicine
Homepage
- Homeopathic
Internet
Resources List
INEQUALITIES IN HEALTH INSURANCE (& VIEWS FROM THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY)
- From the Census Bureau (Aug. 2005), Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004
- Blue Cross Home Page
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Cyberspace