Insights

<p>Radio reporter and freelance writer Nathanael Johnson followed <a href="http://californiawatch.org/health-and-welfare/more-women-dying-pregnanc… fascinating story</a> on maternal mortality for <em>California Watch</em> with <a href="http://californiawatch.org/watchblog/after-death-childbirth-family-woun… piece about a few of the families</a> left behind when women died from pregnancy-related causes.</p>

<p>The CDC today released <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5912a2.htm">some surprising MMWR statistics</a> on H1N1/swine flu vaccination rates around the United States today. The regional variation, especially for children under 17, is striking, particularly amid news that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/31/AR20100… than half of the nearly 230 million vaccine doses</a> available to Americans have been used, leaving a staggering surplus that's soon to expire.</p>

<p>Luckily for Dr. Dan Stephen Hollis, an Alabama ophthalmologist, medical boards rarely see selling drugs over the Internet in the same way that police officers see selling drugs in the street.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>My Dennis Hunt grant story, <a href="http://www.reportingonhealth.org/fellowships/projects/hivaids-among-asi… Racial Boundary for HIV</a>, was published in <em>Sing Tao Daily</em> on the World AIDS Day in 2009. It was the only feature story published in any publications in New York, if not in the nation, that focused on the AIDS/HIV issue in the Asian community.</p>

<p><em>This article was first&nbsp;published by <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2010/03/29/can-the-go… Public Square</a>, and is reposted here with the author's permission.</em></p>

<p>This probably sounds familiar to most local health reporters.</p><p>A public health department puts out a press release about someone in their county catching a communicable disease like West Nile virus, meningitis or H1N1. The press release doesn't provide a person's age or hometown. If you're lucky, it might provide the patient's gender. A little digging reveals that the person was sickened so long ago that the news seems stale at best.</p>

<p>Low on cash, his reputation shredded by <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/shadow-practice-part-4-doc-who-couldn%E2%80%99t-stitch-straight-begs-patients-loans">patient complaints</a> about botched plastic surgeries, <a href="http://licenselookup.mbc.ca.gov/licenselookup/lookup.php?LicenseType=G&…. Harrell Robinson</a> must have felt he had a guardian angel when Magdalena Annan approached him.</p> <p>Annan ran the beatific sounding Madre Maria Ines Teresa Health Center at 1523 Broadway Street in Santa Ana, which targeted Southern California immigrants.</p>

<p><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XlcK5GI3K0A/S6zjiNDPJSI/AAAAAAAAAXo/FojDKCPba…; style="margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px; float: left;" />I was honored to have a wide ranging conversation with Dr. David Blumenthal today.

<p><a href="http://theheidihypothesis.blogspot.com/">Nathanael Johnson</a>, a Bay Area radio reporter and freelance writer, has made a nice career examining the many ways Americans go overboard – from the food that we eat to the health treatments that we seek. He has written about the Orwellian world of <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2006/05/0081030">pork farming</a> and the <a href="http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/0081992">radical raw milk movement</a> for Harper's magazine.

<p>Psychiatrist Frank Joseph Ilardi knows something about <a href="http://www.healthyplace.com/sex/articles/psychology-of-compartmentalizi…;