Nobel peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus is no stranger to innovative ideas. He’s the founder of the Grameen bank, a bank in Bangladesh that won the 2006 Peace Prize for helping to reduce poverty. He joins Erin Burnett OutFront with a new idea and he says it will fix the American health care system.

Click here to watch the video directly from CNN’s website.

News release

20 JUNE 2013 | GENEVA - Physical or sexual violence is a public health problem that affects more than one third of all women globally, according to a new report released by WHO in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council.

The report, Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, represents the first systematic study of global data on the prevalence of violence against women – both by partners and non-partners. Some 35% of all women will experience either intimate partner or non-partner violence. The study finds that intimate partner violence is the most common type of violence against women, affecting 30% of women worldwide.

The study highlights the need for all sectors to engage in eliminating tolerance for violence against women and better support for women who experience it. New WHO guidelines, launched with the report, aim to help countries improve their health sector’s capacity to respond to violence against women. Click here to read more

In its “Heart Disease and Stroke Statistical Update 2013,” the AHA reported that between 1999 and 2009, the rate of deaths from cardiovascular disease (CVD) fell 32.7 percent, but still accounted for nearly one in three deaths in the U.S.  However, the organization estimates that heart health will only improve another 6 percent if current trends continue.

“Americans need to move a lot more, eat healthier and less, and manage risk factors as soon as they develop,” said Alan S. Go, M.D., chairman of the report’s writing committee and chief of the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Conditions Section of the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research, Oakland, Ca.  “If not, we’ll quickly lose the momentum we’ve gained in reducing heart attack and stroke rates and improving survival over the last few decades.”

The data show that 68.2 percent of adults age 20 and over and 31.8 percent of children are overweight or obese. Meanwhile, 32% of adults, 17.7% of girls and 10 % of boys report fewer than an hour of aerobic activity in the past week.

The AHA is calling for healthcare systems to support and reward providers who help patients improve their health behaviors, insurers to cover preventive health services and reward positive health behaviors, and the education community to support healthy diets and physical activity for children among other interventions.

The crackdown on readmissions is at the vanguard of the Affordable Care Act’s effort to eliminate unnecessary care and curb Medicare’s growing spending, which reached $556 billion this year. Hospital inpatient costs make up a quarter of that spending and are projected to grow by more than 4 percent annually in coming years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The readmission penalties will recoup about $300 million this year. But the goal is to pressure hospitals to pay attention to what happens to their patients after they walk out the door. The penalties have captured the attention of hospitals, and many are trying to improve their supervision of discharged patients’ recoveries. Click here to read the full New York Times article from November 26,2012.

“I thought I was going to see a regular doctor,” she said, but instead she saw “this giant screen.”

Suddenly, two doctors appeared on the video screen: dermatologists in Boston. A nurse in the room with Ms. Cohen held a magnifying camera to her face, and suggested she close her eyes.

Why? she wondered — then understood. The camera transmitted images of her face on screen, so the doctors could eyeball every bump and crater. “Oh my God, I thought I was going to cry,” Ms. Cohen recalled. “Even if you’ve never seen that pimple before, it’s there.”

That, she realized, was the point. Technology, like these cameras and screens, is making it affordable and effective for doctors to examine patients without actually being there.

More hospitals and medical practices are adopting these techniques, finding they save money and for some patients work as well as flesh-and-blood visits. Click here to read the full New York Times article.

The proliferation of gadgets, apps and Web-based information has given clinicians — especially young ones like Dr. Rajkomar, who is 28 — a black bag of new tools: new ways to diagnose symptoms and treat patients, to obtain and share information, to think about what it means to be both a doctor and a patient.

And it has created something of a generational divide. Older doctors admire, even envy, their young colleagues’ ease with new technology. But they worry that the human connections that lie at the core of medical practice are at risk of being lost. Click here to read the rest of the New York Times article.