Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco recently received a $215,000 grant from the Avon Foundation for the next two years.

The funding will be used to further enhance and expand NWH’s Breast Health Initiative, which provides accessible and timely services designed to overcome the social and economic barriers that prevent Latina immigrants and other underserved women in Westchester County from receiving optimal breast health care.

Toni Aurigemma, clinical and program coordinator of NWH’s Breast Health Initiative, said that statistics from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey showed that the lowest prevalence of mammography use within the two previous years was among uninsured women.

“Our goal at Northern Westchester Hospital is to help make an impact on that statistic. It is an honor to provide breast health care to these women and help with the process of follow-up care.”

This program was established in 2006 with an initial $180,000 grant from the Avon Foundation. That funding led to the appointment of a nurse practitioner who works directly with underserved female patients, the creation of a part-time position of a bilingual patient navigator to improve access and communication, expansion of the Hospital’s Community Outreach Program, and the creation of a transportation fund to facilitate access for breast cancer patients to and from the Hospital.

Uninsured and underinsured women living in Northern Westchester, 40 years of age or older or who have a family or personal history of breast cancer are eligible for free mammograms and clinical breast exams at NWH. For more information, call (914) 666-1840.

In observance of World AIDS Day, which is Monday, Dec. 1, all Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic Medical Centers will offer free HIV testing and condoms. Planned Parenthood offers rapid HIV testing, providing patients results within an hour.

No appointment is necessary and testing is completely confidential.

Also, the Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic Smart Wheels Mobile Education Van will also offer free testing, resources, and information at the Doles Center in Mount Vernon on Dec. 1st from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Locally, Planned Parenthood has centers in White Plains, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, Yonkers, Mount Kiscon, Spring Valley and Brewster.

Visit www.pphp.org or call 1-800-230-PLAN (7526) to be connected to the Planned Parenthood nearest you.

To learn more about HIV and AIDS, visit www.pphp.org and click on Health Topics at the top.

Westchester County and the New York Blood Center’s Hudson Valley Blood Services are sponsoring a blood drive on Dec. 2 at the Westchester County Center in White Plains.

The drive will run from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with the last donor appointment at 4:15 p.m. Anyone between the ages of 16 and 76 weighing 110 lbs. is eligible. Free cholesterol testing is available for donors.

To make an appointment for the County Center, call 995-2127. For further information  go to http://www.westchestergov.com/finance/Blood.htm.

Rockland will observe World AIDS Day with an event scheduled for Dec. 1 at Rockland Community College. The event, held from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.,  will offer information about AIDS as well as free HIV testing with results available in 20 minutes. 

From noon until 1 p.m. there will be an ecumenical service of Hope and Remembrance in which college President Cliff Wood will deliver the opening remarks. The service will also have a candlelight role call.At 1 p.m. there will be panel discussion entitled “Dispelling the Common Myths of AIDS.”

For more information contact the Rockland Department of Health at 845-364-2570.

The first flu cases have been reported this year in the Lower Hudson Valley. Patients in Rockland have had laboratory confirmed cases of influenza, according to the “New York State Department of Health”:http://www.health.state.ny.us/diseases/communicable/influenza/surveillance/map/2008-2009/2008-11-08/. No cases have been reported yet in Westchester or Putnam. The flu season lasts until March, so it’s still not too late to get a flu shot.

Dumont Masonic nursing home in New Rochelle wouldn’t let Albany cut its funding without doing something about it.

Since Thursday, when Gov. David Patterson proposed slashing Medicaid funding for hospitals and nursing homes, efforts to lobby state lawmakers have been underway at Dumont Masonic. Residents, families and staff have written more than 2,000 letters and joined a telephone campaign to urge lawmakers to oppose the governor’s proposed $572 million in cuts in health-care spending. Here’s a photo of residents Lena Rubuano, left, and Esther Zeitlan, right, as they help sort the letters.

In all the governor’s office received 10,000 letters from nursing homes across the state.

About 80 percent of the home’s revenues come from Medicaid and about 9 percent from Medicare, said administrator Judy Feinster. She had this to say:

“There’s nothing left to trim without getting to the quality of care and the quality of the services that our residents deserve. …This is their home and they require a high level of care and they should get it.”

High schools in Nyack and Peekskill will hold programs tomorrow as part of the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout.

Students at both Nyack High and Peekskill High will learn about the effect smoking has on the body, ways to deal with peer pressure and marketing tactics tobacco companies use to targets teens.

The Nyack session will feature a local physician, Jared Wasserman,  Danielle Heller of the American Cancer Society, Denise Hogan from  POW’R Against Tobacco, and members of Reality Check. 

The Peekskill session will feature physician George Pazos, Mekeda James from POW’R Against Tobacco and James Duffy from Reality Check. 

Smoking rates in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam are already on the decline. With just 11.4 percent of adults smoking, Rockland has one of the lowest rates in the state. Read more about the efforts communities are making to stop smoking in a story I wrote in “The Journal News”:http://www.lohud.com/article/20081118/NEWS03/811180381/1027/NEWS11.

Want to learn more about quitting smoking? Go to the Westchester County Department of Community Mental Health’s Yonkers clinic on Thurs., Nov. 20 and Accept the Great American SmokeOut Challenge.

As part of the American Cancer Society’s 33rd annual event, the clinic, located at 53 South Broadway, will offer free screenings to identify a person’s tobacco dependence and information on how one can quit. Pick up materials on strategies that will make stopping easier and information on where to obtain free nicotine replacement therapy.
The event, which aims to encourage people to commit to creating a long-term plan to quit for good, will take place in the lobby from 9:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. It is open to the public.

Quitting smoking is not easy, but it can be done. To have the best chance of quitting successfully,
you need to know what you’re up against, what your options are, and where to go for help.

For more information, call the Yonkers clinic at (914) 231- 2925.

People looking for additional support can also join the Department of Health’s smoking blog at www.westchestergov.com/health to connect with others attempting to kick the habit.

Babies conceived with the help of assisted reproductive technology like IVF are two to four times more likely to have certain types of birth defects than children conceived naturally, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study shows that among single-birth pregnancies resulting from assisted reproductive technology there was twice the risk of some types of heart defects, more than twice the risk of cleft lip with or without cleft palate and over four times the risk of certain gastrointestinal defects compared with babies conceived without fertility treatments. 

Despite these findings, the absolute risk of any individual birth defect remains low. In the United States, cleft lip with or without palate affects approximately 1 in every 950 births; doubling the risk among infants conceived by ART would result in approximately 1 in every 425 infants being affected by cleft lip with or without palate.

The full report can be found in the journal “Human Reproduction”:http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/den387v3.

Preliminary data from a New York State Health Department study shows a significant reduction in childhood hospitalizations for the most common cause of diarrhea since an oral rotavirus vaccine for infants was introduced in 2006.

“This is a tremendous public health success story,” said State Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines, M.D. “I urge all parents to consult with their pediatric health care providers about getting the rotavirus vaccine for their infants.”

Preliminary data presented today at a meeting of the New York State Public Health Council in Albany showed a 61 percent reduction for childhood diarrhea hospitalizations and an 85 percent reduction in childhood rotavirus hospitalizations from January through June 2008 compared with hospitalizations associated with these causes in 2003-2005.

Rotavirus infection is the most common cause of diarrhea among infants and young children. While it causes few deaths, it is responsible for an estimated 55,000 to 70,000 hospitalizations in the U.S. each year among children less than 5 years of age.

An oral rotavirus vaccine was introduced in 2006. During the study period to date, an estimated 50 percent of eligible infants in New York State received the vaccine.

“This is a dramatic demonstration of how a vaccine can make a huge difference in health outcomes,” said Dale L. Morse, M.D., Director of the State Health Department’s Office of Science and Chair of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). “Considering that this drop in hospitalizations was achieved with only about a 50 percent immunization rate, we expect the results will only get better with a higher rate of immunization.”

Dr. Morse presented the preliminary results of the study at a recent ACIP meeting at the CDC in Atlanta, Ga.

“We want to continue studying the data for another year, but there is no other explanation for this dramatic drop in hospitalizations,” said Dr. Morse.

The rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq, licensed in 2006, is recommended for infants, with a total of three doses administered orally at ages two months, four months and six months.

Another oral rotavirus vaccine, Rotarix, licensed earlier this year, calls for a two-dose series administered at two months and four months.

The reduction in hospitalizations recorded during the study period is not only linked to a reduction in preventable serious illness associated with rotavirus but also translates into health care savings. Total charges for diarrhea and rotavirus-associated childhood hospitalizations in New York State decreased by $34 million in 2008 compared to 2005.

‘This is one more example of how a relatively inexpensive investment in prevention results not only in better health but also in huge savings in health care spending,” said Guthrie S. Birkhead, M.D., M.P.H., Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Public Health.

Rotavirus activity in the United States follows a distinct winter-spring seasonal pattern. In winter months, approximately 50 percent of hospitalizations and emergency room visits and 30 percent of outpatient visits for acute gastroenteritis among children less than three years of age are caused by rotavirus. When compared with the 15 previous seasons spanning 1991 through 2006, rotavirus activity began two to four months later in the 2008 season, and at the height of the season the number of cases was 50 percent lower than in previous years.

Information on recommended infant and childhood immunizations in New York State can be found at: http://www.health.state.ny.us/prevention/immunization.

More information about rotavirus infection and health recommendations relating to the rotavirus vaccines is also available at http://www.cdc.gov/rotavirus