If you were one of the estimated 108.4 million Americans who watched this year’s Super Bowl game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens, you may have caught a glimpse of this advertisement for “Blu Cigs,” one of the most popular new “electronic cigarette” products out on the market:

The ad raised eyebrows in the public health and anti-smoking communities, as federal law has prohibited — or strictly limited — the marketing of tobacco-related products on television since the 1970s. President Obama even signed legislation during his first term to further limit the auditory and visual prerogatives of tobacco-related advertising. But electronic cigarettes — or “e-cigs,” as they are commonly referred to — aren’t technically the same kind of tobacco product, presenting a dilemma for those seeking to curb smoking rates among America’s youth.

E-cig advertisements tend to emphasize the fact that they do not contain the tar and other poisonous elements of cigarettes that lead to concerns over second-hand smoke — rather, they are simply mixtures of water vapor and pure nicotine (and, occasionally, some added flavors), making them more akin to nicotine gums and other smoking cessation products.

Public health advocates are a bit more skeptical. Organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have been ramping up efforts to determine how, exactly, e-cigs could impact public health:

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Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe (D) has vetoed a “fetal heartbeat” bill that would have outlawed abortion services at just 12 weeks of pregnancy, the point when a fetal heartbeat can be detected with an abdominal ultrasound. Because a 12-week ban would go too far to circumvent women’s right to legal abortion services under Roe v. Wade — which protects women’s right to choose until around 24 weeks of pregnancy — Beebe explained that the bill “blatantly contradicts the United States Constitution.”

Nevertheless, the GOP-controlled legislature in the state could override the governor’s veto to enact the unconstitutional law anyway. After Beebe vetoed a 20-week abortion ban last month, state lawmakers used a simple majority to override his veto and ensure that the stringent ban would immediately take effect.

And anti-choice Republicans, who won majorities in both of Arkansas’ chambers in 2012, aren’t stopping there. If they successfully push the heartbeat ban past the governor, the 20-week ban will seem tame in comparison. In that case, Arkansas would earn the unfortunate distinction of having most restrictive abortion ban in the nation.

Inspired by a student who was murdered by her stalker, a Colorado lawmaker has introduced a bill banning gun possession by anyone who has been convicted of domestic violence or has been the subject of a restraining order.

Senate Bill 197 is the first of four gun violence prevention measures being considered in Colorado’s Senate Judiciary Committee today. The bill would also require an individual with a restraining order against them to relinquish any guns in their possession within 24 hours. State Sen. Evie Hudak (D-CO), the legislation’s sponsor, was a teacher at the school where the student was shot after filing a restraining order against her killer:

Hudak said the student who was killed at the private business college where she was teaching had taken out a restraining order against her stalker, and “we were all told to keep an eye on her.”

“She appeared to have dropped out of school,” Hudak said. “A few weeks later they found her body.”

This unnamed student is hardly an unusual case. American women are at a higher risk to be homicide victims than women in any other high-income country. Over 90 percent of female homicide victims are killed by someone they know, and 76 percent of these victims were stalked before their deaths. Guns are the most common weapon used in these murders.

Pro-gun advocates have tried to frame gun rights as an issue of women’s safety, claiming that gun-free zones disarm women who need to protect themselves from sexual assault. Since an estimated two-thirds of sexual assaults are perpetrated by someone the victim knows, a gun would probably not help a woman defend herself.

In reality, women are much more likely to be on the other end of the barrel. Nearly 6 times more women were shot by a husband, boyfriend or ex than by a male stranger in 2010. Purchasing a handgun, according to some analyses, provides no protection against homicide and actually increases the risk of being murdered by a partner. Abusers who have access to firearms are over 7 times more likely to kill their partners. Even women who simply live in states with higher gun ownership are 4.9 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women who live in lower gun ownership rates.

According to SB 197, Colorado is home to 41,244 domestic violence victims. The number of victims in the state rose dramatically by 11.6 percent between 2011 and 2012, compared to the 3.6 percent the year before.

When the bipartisan Wellstone-Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) was signed into law in 2008, mental health advocates hoped it would begin bridging the gap between the way that mental health treatments and more “traditional” medical services are provided — particularly by prohibiting different standards for one type of care over the other. Unfortunately, the evidence shows there’s still a long way to go when it comes to making the dream of medical parity a reality.

Time’s new Mayo clinic-sponsored report points out that ADHD, while being increasingly diagnosed and treated in children, has lingering long-term effects on adults and is a strong indicator of co-occurring mental illnesses for both children and adults. But lax insurance requirements, as well as a lack of awareness about the long-term effects of mental illness, have led to a dearth of research regarding the comprehensive effects of what medical professionals tend to dismiss as a childhood behavioral disorder:

It’s not that the condition isn’t being addressed adequately, or that doctors, parents and teachers are not aware of the condition: they certainly are, since education and awareness about ADHD has increased in recent decades, even contributing to a rise in diagnoses… [Dr. Barbaresi of Boston Children’s Hospital and Mayo Clinic] argues, however, that the legacy and long term implications of an ADHD diagnosis haven’t really been considered and studied adequately, since most doctors tend to think of the condition as one that primarily affects children that they tend to outgrow once they reach adulthood. The need for attention is even greater considering that the study also found a connection between ADHD and suicide. While the absolute number of deaths in the adults who still have ADHD is low, the statistical difference is significant: children with ADHD were nearly five times more likely to die from suicide than other people in the study group. [...]

In addition, data from this same group of study participants showed that more than 60% of kids with ADHD have a learning disability and develop at least one additional mental-health problem while they’re still children. Yet insurance companies are reluctant to authorize additional assessments that may detect and treat these conditions. “If a child gets diagnosed with ADHD, we want to do a comprehensive psychological assessment to see if the child has undiagnosed disorders because we know these kids are at risk,” says Barbaresi. “But insurance won’t pay.”

That’s in stark contrast to the way that children are evaluated for other medical conditions, such as diabetes. “We know they’re at risk for developing kidney and eye problems so they’re regularly assessed for those issues. We don’t wait until a child has renal failure or loses his eyesight,” says Barbaresi. “But with childhood ADHD, we can’t get authorization to do these assessments until it’s already happened.”

The Mayo study on ADHD underscores the practical hurdles of enacting true parity between the ways that mental health disorders and more “traditional” medical problems are diagnosed, treated, and even researched. Societal stigmas and decades of traditional medical practice have perpetuated a system in which mental health disorders are considered to be unique, individualistic medical problems — they are not — that ignores the interplay that mental disorders have with other medical conditions, not to mention the physical manifestations of such disorders.

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So far, New York City’s campaign to prevent unintended teen pregnancy has been extremely successful. The public schools in the city have instituted a mandatory comprehensive sex ed curriculum, as well as a program to help expand teen’s access to contraception — both of which have directly contributed to the fact that the teen pregnancy rate in New York City has plummeted by 27 percent over the past decade.

The city’s Human Resources Administration is now expanding those efforts to a broader marketing campaign, rolling out a series of advertisements that intend to communicate the “real cost of teen pregnancy.” The ads, which will appear on subways and bus shelters across the city, are an attempt to frighten teens out of having a child at a young age:

This strategy may not be totally without precedent. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff points out that a similar type of advertising campaign in Milwaukee helped contribute to a drop in teen pregnancies. But the huge drop that New York City has already seen over the past 10 years belies a simple fact: edgy advertising isn’t nearly as important as actually equipping young people with the resources they need to understand their bodies and mitigate their sexual risk.

In fact, a recent study demonstrates that providing young adults with the support they need can be a more effective method of preventing unwanted pregnancies than shaming teens about their sexuality. Throughout the course of the study, the teens that participated in a program tailored to help young people make good sexual choices — including providing providing personal case management, youth leadership opportunities, and specialized counseling — were much more likely to make safe sexual choices, like using condoms, than the teens who weren’t in that program. And the healthy sexual behavior extended beyond simply using protection. The teens who received support and counseling were also more likely to be able to recognize unwanted sexual attention, and refute those type of advances — in other words, they became better aware of their physical boundaries and their ability to withhold consent.

Ultimately, the United States needs a huge overhaul when it comes to society’s approach to teen sexuality. Too often, teens aren’t given accurate information about their bodies, aren’t empowered to make their own decisions, don’t know what “consent” is and how to navigate it, and are ultimately too ashamed to ask for the resources they need. Young adults need to be trusted with information about sexuality — and those who are at a higher risk for unintended pregnancy need to be supported, not stigmatized for the “failures” that result from their sexual behavior.

In the months since the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, what used to be a relatively hush-hush topic in American health care policy has become an open secret: the U.S. mental health care system is littered with serious coverage gaps. The stigma associated with receiving such care, a lack of readily-available access, and high out-of-pocket costs all contribute to the fact that millions of Americans aren’t getting the mental health treatment they need.

Newtown forced mental health care into the national spotlight, and both states and the federal government have proposed reform proposals — some of which are worse than others — to increase funding for mental health programs and strengthen community resources for treating mental illnesses at an early stage. For instance, Obamacare requires private insurance plans on its statewide marketplaces to cover mental services as part of its “essential health benefits,” and early results indicate that a 2008 law mandating that large insurers treat mental health benefits in the same manner as more traditional care may be working.

But as Politico reports, the biggest challenge facing Americans seeking mental health care therapy is the exorbitant out-of-pocket costs associated with such care, since many psychiatric practices still refuse to accept private insurance coverage:

Andrew Sperling, a lobbyist for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said, “There are a lot of private practice psychiatrists who refuse to accept the lower rates offered by a plan, particularly for outpatient services, so that can create an access problem.”

A 2008 survey by the American Psychological Association found that 85 percent of licensed psychologists reported receiving some third-party payments. But a majority of those claims were paid by federal, state and local government programs.

That means that many Americans struggling with mental illnesses must pay out of their own pocket for talk therapy — which can run a couple of hundred dollars for a session — and other treatments. [...]

Those findings are even more worrisome considering the disproportionate effect that a lack of mental health care has on children enrolled in private health plans, where “there’s a tremendous dearth of practitioners… and of the few who are there, many, many of them don’t take insurance plans,” according to Debbie Plotnick, senior director of state policy for the advocacy group Mental Health America.

Surprisingly, government programs such as Medicaid offer fairly strong benefits for mental health patients, as Politico’s report shows. But the limited number of providers who accept private insurance for therapeutic care — and the high per-visit out-of-pocket costs such providers charge — lend some context to the 2011 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) finding that over half of Americans simply cannot afford the cost of mental health care. Unlike more traditional medical problems, mental health care treatment often requires ongoing therapy and outpatient treatments for which Americans are charged for every visit, making them less likely to purse essential care — and for children, the problem is even worse, seeing as 70 percent of children in need of mental care do not receive it.

Congress has recently introduced two separate bills to bring more integration between physical and mental care, as well as to provide schools and communities resources for early identification and treatment of mental health issues in America’s youth. But until steps are taken to encourage outpatient mental health providers to accept private insurance, Americans — and particularly American children — may still be unable to afford the coverage they need.

Even though the copper intrauterine device (IUD) — a long-lasting, hormone-free form of birth control — is the most effective form of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy after an unprotected sexual encounter, doctors typically don’t mention it to their patients.

When most women choose to take emergency contraception, they opt for what is commonly down as “Plan B,” a pill that acts much like daily birth control pills do to prevent ovulation and fertilization. Plan B is safe and effective, and leading physicians’ groups are calling for the Obama administration to change their current policy and make it available over the counter to young women of all ages. But copper IUDs are even more effective than the morning after pill.

Unfortunately, the fact that 85 percent of doctors never recommend copper IUDs as a form of emergency contraception falls in line with broader trends. Even though both copper and hormonal IUDs are the most effective type of birth control currently available — and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology now encourages doctors to give them to their young female patients — lingering stigma surrounding IUDs still prevents doctors from talking about them and women from using them. Despite all evidence to the contrary, parents still remain largely uncomfortable with the idea of doctors offering IUDs to their daughters.

The most effective forms of birth control are slowly gaining ground. IUD use in the U.S. jumped from 0.8 percent in 1995 to 5.6 percent a decade later. And IUDs — which can cost women as much as a thousand dollars upon insertion — are now covered under Obamacare, which could encourage more widespread use by eliminating potential cost prohibitions. But the education process is slow, and doctors may need to do more to make sure they’re effectively conveying their patients’ full range of contraceptive options.

(HT: RH Reality Check)

On Sunday, doctors announced they have apparently cured a two-and-a-half child of an HIV infection, marking the first time that medical professionals have successfully eliminated the virus in a child’s system.

The baby was born in rural Mississippi to an HIV-positive mother who was unaware she had the virus. Within the first 30 hours of her life, doctors began treating the child for the virus without waiting for the test results to confirm that the baby girl was HIV-positive. The doctors believe that their early intervention — as well as their decision to use an aggressive three-drug treatment, rather than the two-drug regimen typically used to treat babies — contributed to the fact that the child tested negative for HIV after about a year and a half. The baby hasn’t required HIV drugs for the past year, and doctors believe she is “functionally cured.”

The report has yet to be confirmed, and outside experts are waiting for the researchers to publish their full findings to verify all of the details. Scientists caution that the young girl’s story is unique, and her cure won’t immediately signal a cure for the 34 million people living with HIV worldwide. The type of treatment that eliminated the virus in this child may not actually be relevant for HIV-positive adults — especially since largely successful drug therapies already help prevent mothers from passing the virus onto their child during pregnancy, delivery, or breastfeeding.

But although infected mothers in the U.S. can typically receive that type of preventative treatment, ensuring mother-to-child HIV transmission now only rarely occurs in this country, that’s not true everywhere — particularly in developing nations, where women may not have access to prenatal care. Globally, the UN estimates that about 330,000 babies were newly infected with the virus in 2011. That’s why researchers are hailing the case as a potential breakthrough for developing nations, especially if doctors around the world begin administering more aggressive treatments to babies as a standard practice.

According to Rowena Johnston, the vice president and director of research at amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, this case “underscores the importance of identifying HIV-positive pregnant women.” Doctors need to be focused on expanding access for treatment to pregnant women around the world, and be willing to immediately put infants on medication, she explained.

“It is also imperative that we learn more about a newborn’s immune system, how it differs from an adult’s, and what factors made it possible for the child to be cured,” Johnston told USA Today in a statement.