Women can get a free mammogram tomorrow at Nyack Hospital through the Rockland County Cancer Institute.The service is being offered as part of Breast Cancer awareness month.No appointments are needed for the screening mammograms, which are available from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. at the Breast Center at the hospital at 160 North Midland Avenue.For more information call 845-369-0742 ext 1.The American Cancer Society recommends that women age 40 and over should have a mammogram every year. Women in their 20s and 30s should have a clinical breast examination as part of a regular health exam by a health professional preferably every three years. After age 40, women should have a breast exam by a health professional every year, the society recommends. The Rockland Cancer Screening Partnership program provides breast and cervical cancer screenings at no cost to women who are uninsured or cannot pay for the services. The program is run by the Rockland Department of Health and is funded by a grant from the New York state Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.It works in partnership with the American Cancer Society, Nyack Hospital, Good Samaritan Hospital and other community organizations.

Good Samaritan Hospital’s cardiac bypass surgery program scored well in a survey by a private group that rates hospitals and the procedures they perform. The Suffern hospital earned a five-star rating for its inpatient and six-month mortality rate. It received three stars for its inpatient and one-month survival.

Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, the only other hospital in the Lower Hudson Valley that offers cardiac bypass surgery, got five stars for its inpatient survival record and three stars for both its one-month and six month survival records.

These findings were included in the eleventh annual “HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study”:http://www.healthgrades.com, which analyzed more than 41 million Medicare hospitalization records from 2005 to 2007 at the nation’s approximately 5,000 hospitals.

Parents wishing to get insight into the behavior of their teenage children will have the opportunity to learn all about it from mental health experts at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s free Fall Community Lecture Series, to be presented at the White Plains campus, 21 Bloomingdale Road, White Plains.

The new series on the challenging issues in adolescents will be presented on four successive Wednesday evenings from 7 to 8:30 PM. The first is October 22, when Richard A. Friedman, M.D., a regular contributor of mental health topics to The New York Times, will kick-off the series with “Pushing the Limit: Thrill-Seeking and High-Risk Behaviors in Teenagers and Young Adults.” Dr. Friedman is a Professor of the Hospital’s Clinical Psychiatry and Director of the Psychopharmacology Unit.

On October 29, Marilyn Kotcher, LCSW, will present “Is My Kid OK? What’s Normal and What’s Not in the Adolescent Years?” Ms. Kotcher is the Hospital’s Director of the Child and Adolescent Evaluation Service.

On November 5, the topic by Amy Silverman, M.D. will be: “You Did What? Understanding and Coping with Self-Destructive Behavior in Adolescents.” Dr. Silverman is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Payne Whitney Manhattan and Westchester where she specializes in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

The last lecture on November 12 is “The Elephant in the Room: Talking to Your Teen About Drugs and Alcohol and Resources for Help,” presented by Catherine Bookless, LCSW, coordinator of the Addiction Recover Service and Jon Haber, CASCAC .

Launched four years ago, the Hospital’s Community Lecture Series has proven to be a very popular program, attracting record crowds who have learned about such topical issues as aggressive behavior and anger management.

All lectures will be held in the Auditorium located on the second floor of the Hospital’s Main Building with the clock tower. There is no fee and pre-registration is not required for any of these programs. Free parking is available and refreshments will be served.  For further information, please
call (914) 997-5779.

More walk-a-thons are scheduled in Rockland. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation  is hosting its annual Walk to Cure Diabetes at the Wyeth Pearl River site on Sunday, October 26. More than 900 walkers representing local corporations, families, schools, and other organizations are expected to participate. There will be entertainment, games for the kids, lunch and refreshments. The chapter hopes to raise more than  $245,000 for research to find a cure for Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder that occurs primarily in children and young adults.

JDRF was founded in 1970 by the parents of children with type-1 diabetes. Since then the organization  has provided more than $1.16 billion to diabetes research worldwide. 

 Check in and registration is at 9 a.m. and the walk starts at 10 a.m. Registration is also available online at www.jdrf.org. 

Organizers of a forum on bipolar disorder are expecting more than 500 people to show up for the talk tonight.”Breaking the Silence: The Ups and Downs of Bipolar Disorder,” which will be held at 7:30 tonight at Rockland Community College.

People who have been diagnosed with the disorder as well as parents who have children with the illness will be among the speakers at the forum,  which is being sponsored by the Mental Health Coalition, NAMI-FAMILYA of Rockland, the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and Rockland Community College.

Janice Pleban-Bonis, a Connecticut resident and the mother of a 12-year-old boy who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, will talk about her experiences and the difficulty she and her family had getting help for the illness.She will also talk about the stigma and misunderstanding many people have about it.

Phyllis Elliott, a Peekskill social worker, was diagnosed with the illness as an adult.She has written a book, “Thriving on the Bipolar Roller Coaster,” about her experiences.The forum will also feature an opportunity to ask experts  questions about the illness.

Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla has been named a 2008/2009 Consumer Choice Award winner for overall quality and image by the people in the New York metropolitan area, in a survey conducted by the National Research Corporation of Lincoln, NE.  This distinction makes the hospital one of only 238 facilities nationwide to receive this prestigious award in a study conducted on roughly 200,000 households.  The survey was published recently in Modern Healthcare, a healthcare industry magazine.

The award identifies hospitals which healthcare consumers have chosen as having the highest quality and image in over 250 markets throughout the U.S.  This is the thirteenth year group  has awarded hospitals whose consumers have recognized them for providing the highest quality health care.

The rating places Westchester Medical Center in the company of institutions such as Johns Hopkins Hospital, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Yale-New Haven Hospital and Duke University Medical Center. Of the 3,200 hospitals rated by consumers in the study, the winning 238 rank highest in their metropolitan areas as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Each year National Research Corporation honors the most preferred hospitals for overall health care services in metropolitan areas based on a nationally syndicated study of more than 200,000 households.  NRC is recognized as an innovative leader in the area of healthcare performance measurement and honors top-rated facilities based on consumer responses.  NRC has conducted more consumer satisfaction studies than any other firm in the healthcare industry.

Though pollsters and pundits say the economy remains the top issue in the presidential election, a recent survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that American voters still consider health care to be a highly important issue.

Roughly one in four (26%) independents rank health care as one of the top issues they would “most like to hear the presidential candidates talk about.” Health care’s importance has risen among independents by eight percentage points since April. At the same time, health care has dropped even further down Republicans’ priority list (now mentioned by 11%, a new low) and stayed roughly stable among Democrats (25%), according to information gathered in early September, (before the worst of the financial storm hit).

Track health care topics in the election by clicking HERE.

A new support group is being formed for people who have had heart attacks and other forms of heart disease.  Mended Hearts, which is affiliated with the “American Heart Association”:http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=1200000, helps people deal the emotional aspect of recovering from heart disease.

An organizational meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Good Samaritan Hospital. For more information, contact Sandi Jeanette at the hospital at 845-368-5637.

For the first time, more than 100,000 people nationwide are on a waiting list for an organ transplant, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nationwide group that facilitates transplants.The growing number reflects an increase in people who are on waiting lists for organs and highlights the need for more families to consider donation,the agency said. Kidneys are the organs most in demand, according to “UNOS”:http://www.unos.org/news/newsDetail.asp?id=1165. The kidney waiting list has increased by 42 percent since January 2004, while the liver list has decreased by four percent and the heart list has decreased by 23 percent over the same time period.For more information about donation and becoming a donor, go to the state “Department of Health”:http://www.health.state.ny.us/professionals/patients/donation/organ/frequently_asked_questions.htm Website FAQ.

Rockland doctors of Indian descent will hold a health fair Oct. 26 at the Palisades Center mall. The health fair will offer screenings for high blood pressure, blood sugar, lung function and dental disease as well as demonstrations of yoga and alternative medicine. Members of the American Association of Physicians of Indian origin, including cardiologists, oncologists  and endocrinologists, will be available to discuss health issues. The fair will be held from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. on the fourth floor of the mall.