In a nearly 3,000-word article, the AP (4/4, Crary) reports on the “Gun Shop Project, a state-funded pilot program in which gun sellers and range operators in five western Colorado counties were invited to help raise awareness about suicide.” The effort is needed, because “in several western Colorado counties, and in some other Rocky Mountain states with high gun-ownership rates, more than 60 percent of suicides involve firearms.” Suicide prevention expert Catherine Barber, of the Harvard School of Public Health, “says numerous studies show that residents of gun-owning homes are at substantially higher risk of suicide than other people – simply because a suicide attempt is more likely to involve a gun and thus prove fatal.”

Related Links:

— “IN WEST, REGION OF GUNS AND SUICIDE, OUTREACH TO CURB DEATHS,” David Crary, Associated Press, April 4, 2016.

The AP (3/31, Stobbe) reports that on Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a surveillance summary showing “no change in how common autism is among US children.” Currently, approximately one “in 68 school-aged children” appears to “have autism or related disorders,” the same figure “as it was when health officials checked two years earlier,” the report published April 1 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reveals. It is “too soon,” however, to determine if “the number is stabilizing, said Daisy Christensen,” PhD, the report’s lead author.

According to CNN (3/31, Manella), data for the report were “collected from the CDC’s Autism and Development Disabilities Monitoring Network, which is a tracking system that provides estimates of the prevalence and characteristics of autism among eight-year-old children in 11 communities” across the US.

Related Links:

— “NO CHANGE IN HOW COMMON AUTISM IS IN US KIDS: ABOUT 1 IN 68,” Mike Stobbe, Associated Press, March 31, 2016.

The AP (3/31, Stobbe) reports that on Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a surveillance summary showing “no change in how common autism is among US children.” Currently, approximately one “in 68 school-aged children” appears to “have autism or related disorders,” the same figure “as it was when health officials checked two years earlier,” the report published April 1 in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report reveals. It is “too soon,” however, to determine if “the number is stabilizing, said Daisy Christensen,” PhD, the report’s lead author.
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In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (3/30, A13, Wen, Subscription Publication), emergency physician Leana S. Wen, MD, MSc, FAEEM, health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, MD, writes about the dangers of prescribing opioid medications simultaneously with benzodiazepines. Dr. Wen, along with more than 40 other city and state public health directors, has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration for a required boxed warning detailing the dangers of taking benzodiazepines and opioids at the same time.
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In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal (3/30, A13, Wen, Subscription Publication), emergency physician Leana S. Wen, MD, MSc, FAEEM, health commissioner for the city of Baltimore, MD, writes about the dangers of prescribing opioid medications simultaneously with benzodiazepines. Dr. Wen, along with more than 40 other city and state public health directors, has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration for a required boxed warning detailing the dangers of taking benzodiazepines and opioids at the same time.

Related Links:

— “The Accidental Deadly Drug Prescription,” Leana S. Wen, Wall Street Journal, March 30, 2016.