Local boy does, uh, maybe not so good...

washingtonpost.com: By Christopher Lee and Marc Kaufman

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate....

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services. ...

Carmona told lawmakers that, as he fought to release the document, he was "called in and again admonished . . . via a senior official who said, 'You don't get it.' " He said a senior official told him that "this will be a political document, or it will not be released." ...

n 65 pages, the report charts trends in infectious and chronic disease; reviews efforts to curb AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; calls for the careful monitoring of public health to safeguard against bioterrorism; and explains the importance of proper nutrition, childhood immunizations and clean air and water, among other topics. Its underlying message is that disease and suffering do not respect political boundaries in an era of globalization and mass population movements.

The report was compiled by government and private public-health experts from various organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, the Catholic Medical Mission Board and several universities. Steiger's global health office provided the funding and staff to lead the effort because the surgeon general's office has no budget and few staff members of its own. ...

Richard Walling, a former career official in the HHS global health office who oversaw the draft, said Steiger was the official who blocked its release. "Steiger always had his political hat on," he said. "I don't think public health was what his vision was. As far as the international office was concerned, it was a political office of the secretary. . . . What he was looking for, and in general what he was always looking for, was, 'How do we promote the policies and the programs of the administration?' This report didn't focus on that." ...

Steiger, 37, is a godson of former president George H.W. Bush and the son of a moderate Republican who represented Wisconsin in the House and hired a young Dick Cheney as an intern. The elder Bush appointed Steiger's mother to the Federal Trade Commission in 1989. A biographical sketch of her on the American Bar Association's Web site states that Steiger's parents, now deceased, were "lifelong friends" of many members of the same congressional class, including the Rumsfelds and the Bushes.

Public-Health School at Emory Receives $50-Million Pledge

The Chronicle: :

Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health has received a $50-million pledge from a family with a long record of generosity to Emory in general and the 17-year-old school in particular. The pledge, from the O. Wayne Rollins Foundation and Grace Crum Rollins, will be used to build a public-health complex that will more than double the school’s size and enhance collaboration with academic, research, and other institutions in and around Atlanta, according to a news release issued this morning by Emory.

Money helps, and Emory seems to have lots of it, much of it (I don't know about this family*) from a local soda company done good (or, perhaps better if less idiomatically, well).

Not sure Coca-Cola is America's greatest contribution to public health--maybe one should think of this as like a high fructose carbon-credit.

[*O. Wayne Rollins was a self-made business entrepreneur and innovator. In 1964 he orchestrated the purchase of Orkin Inc., often recognized as the first leveraged buyout. With his brother, John, Mr. Rollins participated in numerous successful business ventures including radio and television stations, pest control, oil field services, truck leasing, boat manufacturing and real estate. Following his death in 1991, his sons, Randall and Gary Rollins, have continued to build the Rollins companies. Four generations of the Rollins family have been involved in philanthropy, setting a remarkable example for this generation and generations to come.]

Study of Human Papillomavirus and Oropharyngeal Cancer

From The NEJM :

The public health implications of our findings are underscored by the annual increases in the incidence of tonsillar and base-of-tongue cancers in the United States since 1973.36,37 The widespread oral sexual practices among adolescents may be a contributing factor in this increase.38 Our results and those of other studies provide a rationale for HPV vaccination in both boys and girls — since oropharyngeal cancers occur in men and women. If vaccination is as effective in preventing oral HPV-16 infection as it is in preventing cervical infection,39 a substantial reduction in the incidence of oropharyngeal cancer in vaccinated populations would provide the ultimate evidence of causality.