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$29.4 Million Grant Establishes CTSI At NYU In Partnership With Health And Hospitals Corporation
NYU and NYU School of Medicine received a $29.4 million, five-year Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a University-wide Clinical & Translational Science Institute (CTSI) in partnership with the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC). The funding is designed to train medical researchers, more rapidly advance science from the lab to the patient to the community and to allow researchers to explore mechanisms of health disparities and develop evidence-based approaches targeted at their reduction. With this grant, NYU, the NYU School of Medicine and HHC will become part of a network of 46 existing Clinical and Translational Science centers based at academic medical centers around the country.

Massachusetts, Tennessee Health Plans Might Offer Ideas On U.S. Health Care System Overhaul
Congressional lawmakers who are crafting a plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system might be able to look to state health insurance programs in Massachusetts and Tennessee for ideas, the AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. Health reform legislation modeled after Massachusetts" near-universal health insurance law "is likely to emerge" in Congress, "although details remain unsettled," the AP/Star Tribune reports. The plan also could include components of Tennessee"s CoverTN program, which charges beneficiaries who smoke or are overweight higher premiums. Lawmakers in the Senate already have discussed a lifestyle tax funding mechanism, such as taxes on alcohol and sugary beverages. According to AP/Star Tribune, Massachusetts "chose to cover virtually everyone," while Tennessee "chose to get just a few more people bare-bones insurance at a budget price with limits on how much plans would pay for hospital stays."Alan Weil of the National Academy for State Health Policy said, "The belief that we should all have health insurance coverage is broadly held," but "there are tremendous differences around the country in beliefs on how to achieve that goal." He added, "We learn from Massachusetts that a bold objective matters. If it can be sustained, that"s terrific," and "[i]t would be nice if you had a southern state that had achieved universal coverage and did it in a different way, but we don"t have that" (Johnson, AP/Minneapolis Star Tribune, 5/28).
News of the day
California Cuts Back On Kids Insurance While New Hampshire Expands
California cuts back on health insurance for children, while New Hampshire expands state insurance to young adults. Meanwhile, a regional health commission in Missouri hopes to help the uninsured, and an Iowa report concludes that minorities face discrimination in the health care system.
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Lack Of Sleep Could Be More Dangerous For Women Than Men

Women who get less than the recommended eight hours sleep a night are at higher risk of heart disease and heart-related problems than men with the same sleeping patterns. Research by the University of Warwick and University College London has found that levels of inflammatory markers vary significantly with sleep duration in women, but not men. The study, published today (Weds) in the American journal SLEEP, found levels of Interleukin-6 (IL-6), a marker related to coronary heart disease, were significantly lower in women who reported sleeping eight hours as compared with 7hours. A second marker, High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), is predictive of future cardiovascular morbidity. Levels of hs-CRP were significantly higher in women who reported sleeping five hours or less. Lead author of the study, Associate Professor of Biochemical Medicine at Warwick Medical School Michelle Miller said short-term sleep deprivation studies have shown that inflammatory markers are elevated in sleep-deprived individuals, suggesting that inflammatory mechanisms may play a role in the cardiovascular risk associated with sleep deprivation. She said: "Our study may provide some insight into a potential mechanism for the observation in previous studies which indicates an increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease in individuals who have less than five hours sleep per night and increased risk of non-cardiovascular death in long sleepers." This is the first large-scale study to describe the associations between measures of inflammation and sleep duration in both men and women. The study involved more than 4,600 white participants from the University College London-based Whitehall II cohort study; 73% were men. Participants between the ages of 35 and 55 years were recruited between 1985 and 1988 from 20 London-based civil service departments. Data for this study is from the phase 3 follow-up (1991-1993). Sleep duration was determined by subjective questionnaires, and general health was assessed during a screening examination. Dr Miller added: "These findings add to the growing body of evidence which suggests that there is a non-linear relationship between cardiovascular risk factors and duration of sleep. Furthermore, they support the idea that short sleep is associated with an increase in cardiovascular risk and that the association between sleep duration and cardiovascular risk factors is markedly different in men and women. Other related articles *What is Insomnia? "Further prospective studies are required to ascertain causality but the results also are consistent with the idea that sleeping seven or eight hours per night appears to be optimal for health." Warwick University


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