HHS WEEKLY REPORT
September 19 - September 25, 2004

THIS ISSUE AVAILABLE ONLINE WITH EXPANDED INFORMATION AND PHOTOS AT:
   http://www.hhs.gov/news/newsletter/weekly

IN THIS ISSUE:
1) HHS Deploys More Than 450 Health Workers to Aid Hurricane Victims
2) Prevention: National Cancer Institute Announces Major Commitment to Nanotechnology for Cancer Research
3) Science in the News: Children Follow Same Steps To Learn Vocabulary, Regardless of Language Spoken
4) Medicare Minute: HHS Enhances Medicare Drug Card Program to Help Seniors Choose Lower-Cost, Similar Drugs
5) Secretary Thompson's Public Schedule

HHS Deploys More Than 450 Health Workers to Aid Hurricane Victims

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced on Wednesday the deployment of emergency medical personnel to the Southeastern United States to provide assistance to communities and families in Hurricane Ivan's path.

HHS is working with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal partners to send 150 public health and medical professionals to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to provide care and assistance should Hurricane Ivan hit those states. Many of these workers helped Florida residents during Hurricanes Charley and Frances.

"We are monitoring Hurricane Ivan day and night and are ready to send emergency and longer term medical assistance to any community hit by this latest storm," Secretary Thompson said. "Our 150 disaster response professionals stand ready to help these communities in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ivan."

The latest deployment to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana will include 10 teams of 12 health care professionals made up of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. In addition, the Secretary's Emergency Response Team (SERT) and other logistical support will be on site to help assess long term needs.

As part of President Bush's $3.1 million supplemental aid request for hurricane-damaged areas, HHS is seeking $50 million to provide assistance to those areas in greatest need. This supplemental funding would help provide nutritional, medical and social services to affected individuals.

Over the past month, Secretary Thompson has deployed 451 officers of U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) Commissioned Corps to support the emergency and medical needs of the victims of the storms. The Commissioned Corps is the uniformed service specifically designed to provide medical and public health care and assistance to Americans. Secretary Thompson has worked to make the 6,000-member corps more flexible and adept to handle emergency medical needs.

Also, the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) response to these natural disasters is by far the most coordinated effort in the history of the Corps. To date, 23 MRCs units, consisting of more than 400 volunteers have been activated.

"The American people recognize that natural disasters are unavoidable and that in times of need, we all pitch in," Secretary Thompson said. "I look forward to Congress approving President Bush's request so that we can continue to provide the services that the people affected by these storms need."

The $50 million will help provide nutritional, medical and social services to affected elderly individuals; provide social services support to communities most affected by the hurricane; make available counseling services; support an increase in demand for unreimbursed health care; and restore community health centers in the impacted areas.

HHS officials also are taking the following steps to respond to the hurricanes:

After Hurricane Charley last month, Secretary Thompson visited storm-damaged areas and announced that HHS was making more than $11 million available to support Florida families. That money included $1 million to assist DeSoto County Hospital and Osceola Regional Hospital; a $200,000 emergency grant to help provide meals, shelter and services to elderly residents; and up to $10 million in emergency one-time grants to Head Start and Early Head Start centers. Secretary Thompson said that HHS is working to assess damage from Hurricane Frances before announcing new grants and said that any unused money from Hurricane Charley also will be available to victims of Hurricane Frances.

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PREVENTION

National Cancer Institute Announces Major Commitment to Nanotechnology for Cancer Research

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced Monday, September 13 a new $144.3 million, five-year initiative to develop and apply nanotechnology to cancer. Nanotechnology, the development and engineering of devices so small that they are measured on a molecular scale, has already demonstrated promising results in cancer research and treatment.

"Nanotechnology has the potential to radically increase our options for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer," Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., director of the National Cancer Institute said. "NCI's commitment to this cancer initiative comes at a critical time. Nanotechnology supports and expands the scientific advances in genomics and proteomics and builds on our understanding of the molecular underpinnings of cancer. These are the pillars which will support progress in cancer."

To carry out this initiative, the NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, is forming the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a comprehensive, integrated initiative encompassing researchers, clinicians, and public and private organizations that have joined forces to develop and translate cancer-related nanotechnology research into clinical practice.

"The Alliance lays out a process to safely accelerate the application of nanotechnology to cancer research," NCI Deputy Director Anna Barker, Ph.D. said. "Central to this initiative will be multidisciplinary partnerships involving physicists, biologists, clinicians, engineers, and other experts that can translate knowledge on cancer and nanotechnology into clinically useful products."

The new NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer is one of the first steps in implementing the Cancer Nanotechnology Plan, which was developed over the past 18 months with the input of a broad cross-section of the cancer research and clinical oncology communities.

Among the key components of the Cancer Nanotechnology Plan are milestones to measure success over two time periods. Within the first three years, the plan calls for acceleration of projects that hold promise for near-term clinical application. After three years, the Alliance will focus on developing solutions to address more difficult technological and biological problems that have the potential to impact detection and treatment.

"We are already seeing how nanotechnology is transforming our ability to translate research advances into clinical advances," Samuel Wickline, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Physics and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., and NCI grantee for nanotechnology research said. "The possibilities are enormous for finding very small cancers far earlier than ever before and treating them with powerful drugs at the tumor site alone, while at the same time reducing any harmful side effects. This initiative will allow us to explore using this technology to its full potential."

Recent advances in cancer treatment involving nanotechnology include:

Other clinical applications of nanotechnology have focused on identifying cancer in its earliest stages, visualizing development of the disease, delivering improved therapy to increase the effectiveness and reduce side effects of drugs, and capturing early signals of drug efficacy. For more information on the four major program activities of the NCI Alliance, please go to: http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/sep2004/nci-13.htm

For additional information about the NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, please go to: http://nano.cancer.gov.

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Science in the News

Children Follow Same Steps To Learn Vocabulary, Regardless of Language Spoken

Regardless of the language they are learning to speak, young children learn vocabulary in fundamentally the same way, according to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

The researchers found that, for the seven languages studied, nouns comprise the greatest proportion of 20-month-old children's vocabularies, followed by verbs and then adjectives. The findings appear in the July-August issue of Child Development.

"This study shows that while languages may differ greatly, the sequence by which young children learn the parts of speech appears to be the same across different languages," Duane Alexander, M.D., Director of the NICHD said. "By learning about the normal progression of language development, we may be able obtain information that will help children who are having difficulty learning language."

For the study, Marc Bornstein and Linda Cote, researchers in NICHD's Child and Family Research Laboratory collaborated with researchers in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy and the Republic of Korea to study language development in children learning to speak Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English.

In all, 269 mothers of children age 20 months took part in the study. Of the children in the study, 117 were girls, and 152 boys. All of the children were firstborn, had been born at term and spoke only one language (the main language of the community they lived in.) The mothers filled out a standardized questionnaire designed to gauge the extent of their children's vocabularies. The questionnaire included examples of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and "closed-class" words—pronouns, question words, prepositions and articles, and quantifiers.

"Specifically, mothers in every country reported that their children said significantly more nouns than any other word class (verbs, adjectives, closed-class words)," the researchers wrote.

The researchers added that the finding held true regardless of whether the language spoken tends to emphasize nouns, as does American English, or verbs, as does Korean. "There is a universal order to how children learn language," Dr. Bornstein said. "No matter what language they speak, children are acquiring classes of words in a particular order because of what the children are bringing to the task."

Dr. Bornstein theorized that children learn nouns first because nouns are concrete things that can be seen and touched. Verbs and adjectives are more abstract, and so are more difficult concepts for children's minds to grasp.

NICHD publications, as well as information about the Institute, are available from the NICHD Web site, http://www.nichd.nih.gov, or from the NICHD Information Resource Center, 1-800-370-2943; e-mail NICHDInformationResourceCenter@mail.nih.gov.

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Medicare Minute

HHS Enhances Medicare Drug Card Program to Help Seniors Choose Lower-Cost, Similar Drugs

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced on Wednesday new measures to help seniors get the lowest price possible for their medicines by allowing them -- for the first time -- to compare prices for similar drugs used to treat common diseases such as high cholesterol or blood pressure.

Secretary Thompson said the enhancements to the Medicare-endorsed drug discount program give seniors another tool to save even more money on their prescription drugs and will create more incentives for drug companies to lower their prices as they compete for consumers.

"We are creating greater competition among drug companies and making the price of prescription drugs more transparent - giving seniors more power to compare prices and choose the lowest-cost medicine that's right for them," Secretary Thompson said. "It's another example of President Bush taking decisive action to drive down health care costs for Americans."

The "Lower Cost Rx Comparison Tool" -- accessible at www.Medicare.gov or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE -- will help consumers compare lower-cost prescription drugs by category (cholesterol lowering drugs, blood pressure medicines, allergy medications, etc.) that are similar to the drugs they currently take and are used to treat the same conditions. Secretary Thompson called for the new transparency to be added to the Medicare discount drug Web site so that seniors would have an even clearer picture of drug costs so they can make more informed choices about their medicines in consultation with their doctors.

"Many widely-used drugs for common health problems often have similar effects, but rarely do consumers have good information on how their prices compare," Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Administrator Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D. said. "Only physicians can decide what drug is best for their patient. We want to help patients and their physicians find the least costly way to get the health benefits that prescription drugs can provide -- including an informed discussion about whether a less expensive, similar drug is right for them."

Medicare beneficiaries interested in using the new comparison tool can simply go to the "prescription drug and other assistance program" section of www.medicare.gov and enter the medications they are currently taking. A customized report will be generated for each of their medications, including less expensive versions of the same drug and brand name and/ or generic versions of similar but less expensive drugs that are available to treat the same condition.

A rigorous medical review process was used to develop the new lower-cost comparison tool. Physicians and pharmacists review all medical content on a monthly basis to ensure the information is up to date. Prices quoted on the site are updated weekly. The comparison tool includes drugs in classes for which substitutions between different drugs should present the lowest number of clinical challenges to patients and providers.

The classes include:

Other enhancements to the Price Compare features of the drug card program include:

For more information, you may also go to: http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2004pres/20040915a.html

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SECRETARY THOMPSON'S PUBLIC SCHEDULE

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Last updated: September 20, 2004
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