African-Americans living in highly segregated counties are at significantly elevated risk of dying from lung cancer, according to the results from a new study.

African-Americans already suffer from the highest incidence of lung cancer in the United States. But as the New York Times reports, a study published in JAMA Surgery finds that black Americans in highly segregated areas are 20 percent more likely to die from the disease compared to those who live in the least segregated regions:

The study drew on federal mortality data from that period, and segregation data from about a third of United States counties that had African-American populations large enough to measure. About 28 percent of Americans live in counties with low segregation, 40 percent in counties with moderate segregation and 32 percent in counties with high segregation.

The gap in outcomes persisted even after accounting for differences in smoking rates and socio-economic status, Dr. Hayanga said.

Dr. David Chang, director of outcomes research at the University of California San Diego Department of Surgery, who wrote an accompanying editorial, said he hoped that the study would focus attention on the environmental factors involved in the stark disparities in health outcomes in the United States because they lend themselves to change through policy. Medical researchers tend to focus on factors that are harder to change, like the genetics and the behaviors of individuals.

This trend held true even when controlling for smoking rates and socioeconomic status, implying that other regional factors played into the discrepancy. While the JAMA report doesn’t delve into the causes behind the mortality rate disparity, other studies on American segregation have found that, in highly segregated locales, a larger minority population corresponded with significantly less access to surgical and emergency medical care. That data alone is not conclusive, but it does suggest that stratified access to health care remains an enormous hindrance to public health — particularly for people of color.

Anthem Blue Cross, California’s largest for-profit health insurance company, is under fire for potentially targeting HIV-positive patients with its new prescription drug policy. Blue Cross is no longer allowing patients to pick up their HIV medications at a pharmacy, requiring them to instead go through a mail-order system — even though the policy hasn’t changed for people with other chronic conditions, like diabetes.

A consumer advocacy group has filed suit against the insurance company on behalf of an HIV-positive San Diego man, going by the pseudonym Jon Jones, who says he has incurred hundreds of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses now that he is no longer able to get his medications from his regular pharmacy. Jones asked Anthem Blue Cross for an exception to their new policy, but they refused — and now his lawyers are asking for an injunction to block the change:

Consumer Watchdog claims the change in programs is discriminatory under state civil rights law and potentially devastating for HIV/AIDS patients, many of whom rely on their local pharmacist to monitor potentially life-threatening adverse drug reactions.

According to the lawsuit, Blue Cross’ change will also cause consumers to lose access to drug discounts available only at retail pharmacies.

In addition to the serious health consequences of the program, patients’ fundamental right to privacy is also threatened because HIV/AIDS medications will be delivered to homes and businesses, according to the complaint.

Blue Cross says that any patients who feel the new requirement is causing them hardship may request an exception, although it’s unclear why Jones didn’t qualify for that.

Fortunately, Obamacare could help ensure that HIV positive individuals receive the best possible care from insurance companies. When the health reform law is fully implemented in 2014, insurers will no longer be able to treat HIV like a pre-existing condition and deny Americans coverage simply for having the virus. The health law will also eliminate lifetime caps on coverage, so HIV-positive individuals will be able to afford the care they need without reaching an arbitrary cut-off set by their insurance companies.

Black youth are nearly twice as likely as their white counterparts to take in large quantities of their daily calories from sugary drinks, according to a new study examining American beverage consumption. Low-income children of all racial backgrounds also tend to drink almost twice as many sugary beverages as wealthier Americans do.

Considering the fact that sugar-filled drinks have been conclusively linked to an increased risk for obesity, the study’s results reveal some of the racial and economic disparities within the nation’s obesity epidemic. “Some groups may be more at risk for soda, others may be more at risk for fruit drinks, all of which … have the same sugar base that contributes to obesity and disease,” one of the study’s co-authors, health policy researcher Lisa Powell, explained.

This particular study didn’t try to figure out why that’s the case, although Powell did suggest to Reuters that “cultural norms” and cost could both be factors. But other studies have examined the links between race, class, and nutrition — and research has confirmed that access to healthy food is divided along racial and socioeconomic lines. Even aside from cost barriers, lower-income Americans tend to live in neighborhoods that lack healthy, high-quality food in nearby grocery stores, and they often struggle to access the transportation they need to go grocery shopping. The fast food industry also contributes to nutrition disparities by targeting its marketing to low-income communities.

It’s not clear whether the soda industry is also disproportionately targeting low-income or minority groups, but it wouldn’t be the first beverage sector to try. Alcohol advertising has been proven to particularly target black youth, even despite the fact that African-American teens tend to drink less alcohol than youths from other racial groups.

January marks Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, and one South Carolina lawmaker is taking the opportunity to revive his cervical cancer prevention efforts after Republican Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) shot him down last year. State Rep. Bakari Sellers (D-SC) is reintroducing a bill to encourage HPV vaccination among middle schoolers — the same legislation that Haley vetoed last June even though it passed both chambers of the state legislature with broad bipartisan support.

Sellers’ bill would simply require state health officials to offer the HPV vaccine and educational material to seventh graders, and it wouldn’t make it mandatory for parents to vaccinate their children. At a press conference to announce the legislation’s reintroduction, Sellers explained that he is most concerned about expanding access to the vaccine to the families that otherwise may not have heard about it or may not have been able to afford it. “There are sisters, there are daughters, there are mothers who die every day from cervical cancer,” Sellers said. “And if we can save one life, I think it’s worth fighting for.”

Seller’s announcement is particularly timely. Just last week, a joint report released by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Cancer Institute found that HPV-related cancers have been on the rise over the last two years, even as other types of cancer have declined.

Medical experts partly attribute the rising cancer rates to the fact that not enough teenagers are taking the HPV vaccine, and aim to get at least 80 percent of all pre-teens vaccinated by next decade. Even though the CDC approved the Gardasil vaccine for children above 9 years old back in 2009 — and federal guidelines urge all young women to receive Gardasil starting at the age of 11 to help mitigate their risk of developing cervical cancer — less than half of girls ages 13 to 17 got at least one dose of the three-part vaccine over the past two years.

Conservative scaremongering over the vaccine — suggesting it could somehow lead to “sexual promiscuity,” even though doctors simply consider it a preventative measure like any other type of vaccination — has successfully transformed cancer prevention into a politicized issue. South Carolina itself has one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the nation, and Sellers wants to give the governor yet another chance to decide what she wants to do about it.

This week, potential Republican presidential contender Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) rolled out one of the country’s most regressive tax proposals, a plan that would shift Louisiana’s tax burden away from the wealthy by raising taxes on the bottom 80 percent of state residents. Apparently, the “austerity” measures don’t stop there.

According to New Orleans CBS affiliate WWLTV, Louisiana residents over the age of 21 who are on Medicaid — the public insurance program for disabled and poor Americans — will stop receiving hospice care benefits at the end of this month. That means that low-income Louisianans with terminal illnesses, debilitating disabilities, and chronic long-term medical problems will no longer have access to the essential home and medical care that they need.

And while the cuts are intended to help the state balance its budget, critics point out that it is more likely to increase health care costs by pushing previously-insured Americans with costly medical conditions into private hospitals and emergency rooms where they will not be able to afford their treatments:

The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals say the elimination of hospice care for Medicaid patients will mean nearly $3.3 million in savings this year alone. In 2014, it’ll mean $8.3 million in savings.

However, Burns believes the state will end up paying much more with terminally ill patients forced to turn to local hospitals.

“They’ll just go in and out of the hospitals, maybe go to ICUs, and they won’t be able to have their family around them with hospice care,” said Burns. [...]

DHH says there were 5,819 recipients of hospice services through Louisiana Medicaid in the previous fiscal year.

By the Louisiana DHH’s own estimates, the cuts to Medicaid hospice-care beneficiaries are only expected to reduce the state’s projected $900 million budget deficit by 0.92 percent in 2014. These cuts will be imposed on top of the already draconian cutbacks to public education and health care programs that Jindal has in the pipeline.

Battles over Medicaid funding, particularly for those in need of long-term, specialized care, are nothing new. State budget cuts to the Medicaid program have long left disabled and special-needs Americans by the wayside, even in progressive states such as California. But one of the easiest ways for states to address their perennial public health funding issues is for them to participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, which the federal government will fund for the first several years.

Jindal, however, has refused to participate in the expansion, calling it a “bad idea” that is “expensive for taxpayers.” Ironically, Louisiana already takes in considerably more tax revenue from the federal government than it pays out, and Jindal’s Medicaid cuts — coupled with his refusal to expand Medicaid — will likely exacerbate that dynamic by forcing Americans across the country to subsidize care for Louisianans who have fallen through the safety net.

As the 40th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision approaches, new polling finds that — despite the GOP’s best efforts to use religion as a wedge in the abortion rights debate — most religious groups don’t actually support overturning the court decision.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life finds that a slight majority of white evangelicals, 54 percent, report they would like to see Roe v. Wade overturned. But that’s the only religious group that remains largely opposed to legal abortion access. Strong majorities of the other religious groups sampled would rather leave Roe in place — 76 percent of white Protestants, 65 percent of black Protestants, and 63 percent of white Catholics all support maintaining women’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

Pew’s poll also confirms that even when religious Americans are personally opposed to abortion, they don’t favor making the medical procedure unavailable to other women who may choose it for themselves. This attitude is reflected in Planned Parenthood’s recent branding, as the women’s health group suggests they may move away from the “pro-choice” and “pro-life” labels. “A majority of Americans believe abortion should remain safe and legal. Many just don’t use the words pro-choice,” the group’s latest video asserts.

Although the anti-choice community attempts to brand women’s health issues as if they are always in opposition to religion, reproductive rights are not actually incompatible with faith communities. Just as most people of faith support maintaining women’s right to a legal abortion, religious people also support women’s access to affordable contraception. The GOP’s politicized effort to chip away at Catholic support for Obamacare’s birth control provision ended up falling flat, since a full 82 percent of Catholics believe birth control is morally acceptable. Even conservative evangelicals — the religious group that tends to be most hostile to reproductive rights — are slowly beginning to start supporting contraception and family planning services.

As Republicans rushed to oppose President Obama’s gun violence prevention proposals on Wednesday, several lawmakers released statements echoing the National Rifle Association’s suggestion that “fixing our broken mental health system” is actually the best way to prevent future gun crimes. But when Congress considered a landmark mental health access bill in 2008, many of the same Republicans voted against it.

Accessing mental health services in the United States is harder than accessing a gun. In 2008, Congress took a step toward addressing that issue by passing the long-delayed Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which required most health insurance plans to start treating mental health services in the same way they treat all other medical care. The bill included exemptions for small businesses and those who opted not to cover mental health coverage at all, but House Republicans still overwhelmingly opposed the effort, 145 to 47.

Now, several of those opponents are criticizing President Obama, who co-sponsored the Wellstone Act, for not doing enough to address mental health in his gun violence proposals — even though several of the executive orders in the package do just that. They include:

• SEN. JOHN BOOZMAN (R-AR): (voted no as a then-Representative): “Firearms are the tools, not the cause. If we are serious about reducing gun crimes, we need to get to the root cause which includes addressing mental health issues in our country. That is where we need to focus on finding a solution.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. JOE BARTON (R-TX): “The gun control movement hurts honest citizens and businesses, not the criminals who care nothing for the law. I believe we can better reduce the misuse of firearms by strongly enforcing laws already on the books. We also need to improve our mental health screening system so troubled, violent individuals can be identified and treated more quickly.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R-TN): “We need to have a serious conversation about mental health, psychiatric drugs, and the potential impact violent video games and movies have on our kids. I will closely review the President’s proposals, however I am concerned his approach is a pre-determined attempt to redefine our Constitution. I am not going to allow this administration to trample on the Second Amendment or put new restrictions on the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms and ammunition.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. HOWARD COBLE (R-NC): “Mental illness is an enormous factor in most of these tragedies, including the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Federal and state governments must address the issue of gun access by those who are mentally ill and find ways to curtail violence in our culture.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. ANDER CRENSHAW (R-FL): “I think we can all agree: no one wants to see another needless, senseless death committed in this country with a firearm. Along the road to that goal, a complex and multi-layered debate over firearms, education, mental health, Second Amendment rights, and more is unfolding.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. LOUIE GOHMERT (R-TX): “Mental health issues that have languished for decades may be a fertile ground for bipartisan efforts to make a true difference. Perhaps, a good first step toward curbing gun violence may well be rebuilding the sanctity and importance of the family and the home where there can be education, training and an honest conversation about guns, without treading on the Constitutional protections from criminals intent on invading the home.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. TOM LATHAM (R-IA): “In upholding our Second Amendment rights, we must also be mindful not to diminish the tragedy of recent events and the work to find sensible ways to prevent such horrors from occurring in the future. No person of sound mind could commit mass gun violence, and it is important that we consider mental health and other root causes that contribute to these terrible crimes as we move forward with this debate.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. TOM PRICE (R-GA): ‪“All Americans want our communities to be safe places to live, learn, work and play. As we review how best to prevent mass shootings and the loss of innocent lives we should make a robust analysis of America’s mental health system a priority. A proper diagnosis and comprehensive treatment are critical to ensure we are identifying indicators of violent behavior that may lead to horrific crimes. To do otherwise would mean we continue to fail not only those afflicted with mental illness, but also their families, our communities and our nation.” [1/16/2013]
• REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX): “I believe a more responsible approach is to take significant steps to address mental illness and the root causes of such violence in our society.” [1/16/2013]

Obamacare also expanded the mental health parity rules — though these nine lawmakers joined every other Republican in Congress in opposing the health care reform law.