Marriage and weight gain

Do people gain weight after marriage?  A paper by Jeffrey and Rick (2002) says yes.  Using data collected from 2528 workers over a 2 year period, the authors estimated the effect of marriage and divorce on weight gain.  They found the following: Getting married increases BMI by 0.70 for men and 0.96 for women.  For…

Flu Surveillance

Google searches as a public health resource: Google.org has released Flu Trends, an online reporting tool for flu-related search activity. It’s long been theorized that Google’s search data would be useful to predict epidemics. This is the first time they’ve released a tool like this to the public. As they say on the main page: We have found a…

Slowing medical CPI may not last

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Medical CPI is only 3.2%.  This is less than the 4.1% average inflation rate over the past ten years and the 6.0% average medical inflation rate over the past 30 years.  In most markets, a slowing economy reduces demand and reduces prices (see the recent decline in oil…

Obama likes condoms

The Think Progress Wonk Room says that President-elect Obama will reverse the Bush-era rule that NGOs must refrain from promoting family planning measures if they wish to receive federal funding: “…While the policy was “purportedly designed to reduce abortion by limiting a woman’s access to abortion services, and to ensure that U.S. funding for family…