Preventive Medicine

"Is there an app for that?" When it comes to consumer healthcare applications for smart phones, the answer, increasingly, is yes. There are now close to 6,000 consumer health apps, according to a review published in March by mobihealthnews, which reports on the mobile health industry, and more are being added every day. Many are free, or cost $1 to $10 to download. Some physicians are concerned about the reliability of the medical information provided by many of these apps, which offer advice and information on a wide array of health topics, including how to find a doctor, first aid for an emergency and exercise instructions.

Americans eat too damn much. And we all pay a rising cost for this gluttony in the form of higher insurance premiums and lost productivity. A study last year by the Society of Actuaries calculated the total economic cost of an overweight and obese population in the United States and Canada at about $300 billion a year (with 90% of that figure attributable to America's dietary issues). Now comes word from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine that, if current trends continue, about 42% of the U.S. population will be obese by 2030.

A USC study of male patients at a Los Angeles clinic for people infected with the AIDS virus found that nearly half continued to have sex after their diagnosis, and more than half of those kept their infection secret from one or more sexual partners.

It was with considerable interest and nostalgia that I read your article (March 28) on health care in Rochester, N.Y., and its possible role as a model for national health-care reform. Having spent eight years at the University of Rochester as an undergraduate and medical student, I feel that I can cast some additional perspective on that community and its health-care system. There are multiple reasons why such a system may be difficult to emulate. The University of Rochester has among the finest medical and nursing schools in the nation, and ones in which the community medicine department has had an unusually long, special and active role in the community.

In response to "Vigilantes String Up the Marlboro Man," by Bruce Fein and Edwin Meese, Commentary, Aug. 19: I have not read such arrogant, overblown hogwash since Spiro Agnew was attacking "nattering nabobs." Their column contains so many errors of fact and unfair innuendoes that it is hard to know where to begin in making a response. I will limit myself to just one issue. The authors state: "Wilfred Dewey smoked cigarettes for four decades before his 1980 death . . . (and)

Re "French unveil 75% supertax," Sept. 29 The article forgets to mention what the French get in return for their high tax rates. All French citizens have access to nearly free medical care, and in emergencies, doctors make house calls. The French get paid maternity leave for 16 weeks and free medical leave to take care of a sick relative. Nurses visit homes for free, private day care is heavily subsidized and parents receive a subsidy for every child born. Single parents get an additional allowance.

Setting the pace Getting 10,000 steps per day roughly coincides with the latest U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommendation that adults get a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week. The key word here is "moderate" -- not all steps meet that requirement. Shuffling around the kitchen making dinner is hardly equivalent to racing to catch a bus or walking an energetic dog. Any movement is good, of course, but to make the steps count as beneficial as possible, they should be fairly sustained.

The public health physician and the brothel-keeper were destined to hook up. Dr. Gary Richwald, a former UCLA professor who directs Los Angeles County's sexually transmitted disease program, had spent much of the last decade studying what he calls "sex industry workers." Russ Reade, a longtime Northern California high school biology and sex-education teacher, had left the classroom in search of riches 10 years ago, buying and managing one of Nevada's most famed houses of legal prostitution.

Americans will go to great lengths to protect themselves from medical risks -- even when the level of risk is unclear or unproven. The threat of mad cow disease drives some people to boycott beef, pesticide concerns lead others to eat only organic foods, and fears about vaccine safety prevent some parents from immunizing their children. Ironically, some of these same people fail to act against serious, and well-documented, medical risks.