Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Texting May Be Taking a Toll

The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects. But Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who is director of the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who has studied texting among teenagers in the Boston area for three years, said it might be causing a shift in the way adolescents develop...Read more...

Thursday, May 7, 2009

New Healthcare Disparities Report

"For the sixth year in a row, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality AHRQ) has produced the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR). These reports measure trends in effectiveness of care, patient safety, timeliness of care, patient centeredness, and efficiency of care. The reports present, in chart form, the latest available findings on quality of and access to health care. The National Healthcare Quality Report tracks the health care system through quality measures, such as the percentage of heart attack patients who received recommended care when they reached the hospital or the percentage of children who received recommended vaccinations. The National Healthcare Disparities Report summarizes health care quality and access among various racial, ethnic, and income groups and other priority populations, such as children and older adults."

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

NASW Publishes Peace Policy Toolkit

With the publication of this Peace Policy Toolkit, NASW continues an important component of social work practice, since it directly addresses the need for social workers to be involved in the public discourse about current wars, advocating for policies that build a more peaceful world. See the entire publication.