Insights

<p>Does our drinking water have too much fluoride in it? Answers and more in our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>When I wrote in 2009 about <a href="../../../../../../../../blogs/doctors-addictions-left-hanging-diversion-program-dies" target="_blank">the death of the Medical Board of California’s diversion program</a>, some medical board staffers expressed disbelief that I would say anything nice about a program that had been so controversial.</p>

<p>The Health IT track at OSCON this week brought together three of the thought leaders working to create a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).</p>

<p>Disgraced British doctor Andrew Wakefield faked his research data when linking the MMR vaccine to autism, according to a BMJ investigation. Plus more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>Many celebrity health tips are a bunch of bollocks, according to a new British list debunnking them. Plus more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>Medicare’s new consumer information site, <a href="http://www.medicare.gov/find-a-doctor/provider-search.aspx?AspxAutoDete… Compare</a>, promises the same gold mine of data patients find when they use <a href="http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/hospital-search.aspx?loc=98115&amp;l… Compare</a> or <a href="http://www.medicare.gov/NHCompare/Include/DataSection/Questions/SearchC… Home Compare</a>. But, unlike those sites, Physician Compare does not keep its promises.</p>

<p>Americans may think they eat healthfully, but rising obesity rates prove otherwise. Plus more from today's Daily Briefing.</p>

<p><p><em>This is one in a series of articles, running between Thanksgiving and January, examining the relationship between housing loss and death in San Francisco. Check out the previous articles in the series,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=77054&quot; target="_blank">Looking for death</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=77250&quot; target="_blank">Gunpowder on the streets</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=77641&quot; target="_blank">Will losing your home kill you?</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=77908&quot; target="_blank">Hidden in plain sight: dying and homelessness</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=78376#commen…; target="_blank">Be selfish: Give a gift to a homeless person</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=78423&quot; target="_blank">The Tenderloin: substance abuse and Nate</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?entry_id=78591&quot; target="_blank">Starving in the Financial District: Ken and food insecurity</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gurley/detail?blogid=114&amp;entry_…; target="_blank">The Sixth and Mission Death Corridor: Assaults, brain trauma and homicide</a>.</em></p><p>If you're like me, you probably like to tell yourself that we don't actually need to&nbsp;<em>read&nbsp;</em>Oliver Twist to know that it's bad for children to grow up on the street. Especially since Dickens discreetly omitted the worst sexual predations that can happen to a child behind a dumpster. As a developed society, we're way beyond needing to revisit that lesson, right?</p></p>

<p>California’s long-awaited hospital infection data isn’t ready for prime-time.</p> <p>Last month, journalist <a href="../../../../../../../../users/dschoch">Deborah Shoch</a> of our sister program <a href="http://www.centerforhealthreporting.org/">California HealthCare Foundation Center for Health Reporting</a> detailed one woman’s battle to get state officials <a href="http://www.centerforhealthreporting.org/article/california-fight-infect… release individual hospital infection data</a>.</p>

<p>Promises, threats and predictions about health care fill our first Daily Briefing of 2011!</p>