Health and Welfare

April 1-7 is National Public Health Week, and the Kentucky Department for Public Health is working to raise awareness and help people live longer, healthier lives by promoting the 2013 week's theme: the return on investment of public-health services. Everyone likes sound, stable and high-return investments, and research shows that investing just $10 per person each year in proven, community-based public health efforts can save the nation more than $16 billion within five years. That’s a $5.60 return for every $1 invested.

Students with autism are more likely to go to college one year after high school than students with other disabilities, but they may be having more trouble finding work, according to research from the Kentucky Post School Outcomes Center. KyPSO--housed in the Human Development Institute and funded by the Kentucky Department of Education--researches post school data.

Typical Spring like temperatures are arriving late in the bluegrass.  That could impact the timeline for allergy sufferers this year.  Beth Miller, Chair of UK’s Division of Allergy-Immunology, says last year’s early warmth followed by a freeze cut short the tree pollen season.  She says a late start for warmer temperatures could mean a longer life for tree pollen.  “If we want a good pollen season as far as high pollen counts, better to have a late start with a continued warm trend than have a cold spell in the middle of the spring,” said Miller.

Kentucky is one of the last states to decide whether to Medicaid under federal health reform, and now that the General Assembly has gone home, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear can turn his attention to the many questions that linger. Some Republican legislators think he will expand the program, but they worry about the cost when the state would have to start helping cover the new expenses, beginning in 2017.

"Kentucky mental health centers are cutting back services and struggling to assist patients the first time they’re admitted because of ongoing struggles with Medicaid managed care," Don Weber reports for cn|2. "At the same time, they’re losing out on federal grants because of red flags caused by their administration costs being inflated by increasing contributions to the public pension system."

The state Department for Public Health has been awarded a $134,380 federal grant to help reduce high rates of prediabetes and Type 2 diabetes in Kentucky. “Diabetes is a tremendous public health concern that is both horrific for the individual, if unmanaged, and costly in terms of medications, various complications and long-term hospitalizations that are so often associated with the disease,” Audrey Haynes, secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, said in a press release.

Northern Kentucky is the state’s epicenter for heroin, straining legal and medical systems and bringing deadly consequences that are starting to spill out to the rest of the state. Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties together accounted for nearly 60 percent of Kentucky’s heroin prosecutions in 2011, even though the three counties have just 8.4 percent of the state’s population. The counties’ rate of heroin overdose deaths is more than twice that of Hamilton County or metro Louisville.

Dr. Marty Gamble treats about 2,000 local children on Medicaid, give or take a few hundred. But after next week, he won’t accept CoventryCares, which will leave about three-quarters of them without a dentist. As it is, hardly any dentists in Christian County treat adults on Medicaid. And only one besides Gamble treats children. “It’s definitely a crisis,” Gamble said.

A heated debate centers on new research showing that residents in Floyd County, where coal is stripped from the tops of mountains and ridges, report more health problems than those in two nearby communities without such mines, Elliott and Rowan.

A hunt club needs help with the aging dogs in its kennel.  The Iroquois Hunt Club, which organizes coyote and fox hunts, supports a hound welfare fund.  Without outside assistance, Organizer Glenye Oakford says the central Kentucky club cannot easily afford the care and feeding of dogs that can no longer hunt. “Whether it’s through age or injury, we take care of those hounds because they are no longer covered by the Iroquois Hunt budget, if they are not active hunting hounds. So, they get to stay in the kennel.  They get to be with all their friends.  They’re sort of a retirement pack, if you will that lives alongside the active pack,” said Oakford.

Drug overdoses, driven largely by prescription drug abuse, overtook motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of unintentional deaths in Kentucky back in 2010 and remain the state's leading cause of death. From 2000 to 2010, the number of drug-overdose deaths in Kentucky rose a staggering 296 percent, highlighting the state's drug abuse epidemic that now kills more than 1,000 Kentuckians a year. But a recent poll suggests many Kentuckians are not fully aware of the state's drug problem.

Oldham is the healthiest county in Kentucky. The least healthy? Floyd County in eastern Kentucky. The ranking of health outcomes among Kentucky's 120 counties considers tobacco use, diet and exercise, access to healthcare and other factors. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute did the analysis.

Frankfort - Oldham County has the healthiest residents in Kentucky, according to the fourth annual County Health Rankings released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

FRANKFORT - The Kentucky Department for Public Health has been awarded a federal grant to help curb rates of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes among residents of the state. The award, worth $134,380, comes from the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Similar awards will also go to seven other states.