“Study maps need for kids' doctors in rural areas - YAHOO!” plus 1 more |
| Study maps need for kids' doctors in rural areas - YAHOO! Posted: 20 Dec 2010 04:47 AM PST CHICAGO – There are enough children's doctors in the United States, they just work in the wrong places, a new study finds. Some wealthy areas are oversaturated with pediatricians and family doctors. Other parts of the nation have few or none. Nearly 1 million kids live in areas with no local children's doctor. By moving doctors, the study suggests, it would be possible for every child to have a pediatrician or family physician nearby. There should be more focus on evening out the distribution than on increasing the overall supply of doctors for children, said lead author Dr. Scott Shipman of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Lebanon, N.H. "I worry that it could get worse," Shipman said. He said medical schools are graduating more students, but the result will be more doctors in places where there's already an over-supply. Indeed, previous studies have shown that doctors locate where supply is already high, rather than in areas with greater need. Growth in the number of pediatricians and family physicians has outpaced increases in the U.S. child population, Shipman and his colleagues found. Yet the study's analysis shows nearly all 50 states have extremely uneven distribution of primary care doctors for children. Mississippi had the highest proportion of children (42 percent) in low-supply regions, defined as areas with more than 3,000 children per children's doctor. Next were Arkansas, Oklahoma, Maine and Idaho. Areas with an abundance of children's doctors were Washington, D.C., and Delaware, which had no children living in low-supply regions. Maryland, Washington and Wisconsin also had very few children living in low-supply areas. The study used national data to calculate the per-child supply of working pediatricians and family physicians in geographic regions. Regions with many children's doctors were wealthier. Low-supply regions were mostly rural. The study appears Monday in the journal Pediatrics. The number of pediatricians has been on the rise, increasing by 51 percent from 1996 to 2006. The supply of family doctors grew by 35 percent in the same years. The population of children grew by only 9 percent during those years. Federal funding has expanded in recent years for the National Health Service Corps, which offers loan forgiveness for doctors and other practitioners who locate in underserved areas. That may help, Shipman said. Uninsured patients and the low payments from Medicaid keep doctors out of poor, rural areas, said Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer of the University of California, San Francisco, who wasn't involved in the new research but studies work force issues in primary care. Don't look for help from state governments, said Dr. Roland Goertz, a family physician in Waco, Texas, and president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, who wasn't involved in the new study. "Most states are in fiscal crisis. Without resources, it's going to be tough to turn it around," Goertz said. Nurse practitioners can help, said Kristy Martyn, a pediatric nurse practitioner and researcher at University of Michigan's nursing school. "The limiting factor is the numbers," Martyn said. "We need more pediatric nurse practitioners and nurse practitioners trained to provide care to children." Some communities help a hometown student go to med school with the understanding the student will return home. Dr. Katie Dias, 27, a third-year family practice resident in Kansas City, Mo., will begin her career in the rural northwest Missouri town where she grew up. With stipends from the state and the community hospital in tiny Albany, Mo., she'll start practicing with only $50,000 in student loans, much less than many other young doctors. "I am definitely a small town girl," Dias said. "I feel very passionately about the community I grew up in. This is not a short-term commitment for me." ___ Online: American Academy of Pediatrics: http://www.aap.org This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Author of pedophilia guide to face charges in Fla. - San Francisco Gate Posted: 20 Dec 2010 01:15 PM PST This photo provided by Pueblo County Sheriff's Office shows Phillip Ray Greaves II. Florida officials filed an obscenity charge Monday, Dec. 20, 2010 against the author of a self-published how-to guide for pedophiles that was yanked from Amazon.com last month after it generated online outrage. (12-20) 17:24 PST Pueblo, Colo. (AP) -- A Colorado man who wrote a how-to guide for pedophiles was arrested Monday and sent to Florida to face obscenity charges, after deputies there ordered a copy of the book that has generated online outrage. Officers arrested Phillip R. Greaves at his home in Pueblo on a warrant that charges him with violating Florida's obscenity law. During a brief court appearance, Greaves waived his right to fight extradition and was transferred to Polk County, Fla. The Pueblo County Sheriff's Department declined to release any details of Greaves' transfer. Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said he claimed jurisdiction because Greaves sold and mailed his book directly to undercover deputies, who had written the author a letter requesting a copy. Judd said Greaves even signed the book. "I was outraged by the content," Judd told The Associated Press. "It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children ... You just can't believe how absolutely disgusting it was." The self-published book — "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" — caused a flap when it showed up on Amazon in November. The book was later removed from the site. Greaves, who has no criminal record, writes in the book that pedophiles are misunderstood, as the word literally means to love a child. He adds it is only a crime to act on sexual impulses toward children, and offers advice that purportedly allows pedophiles to abide by the law. Judd said he was incensed when he heard about the book and that no one had arrested Greaves for selling it. The book, Judd said, included first-person descriptions of sexual encounters, purportedly written from a child's point of view. "What's wrong with a society that has gotten to the point that we can't arrest child pornographers and child molesters who write a book about how to rape a child?" said Judd, who keeps a Bible on his desk and is known throughout Florida as a crusader against child predators. Florida' obscenity law — a third-degree felony — prohibits the "distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors." Pueblo County sheriff's spokeswoman Laurie Kilpatrick said Greaves would leave for Polk County later in the day. Legal experts questioned whether Greaves' right to free speech would come into play if there's a trial. If prosecutors can charge Greaves for shipping his book, they ask, what would prevent booksellers from facing prosecution for selling Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," a novel about a pedophile? "As bad as this book may be, the charge opens a very big Pandora's box," said Dennis J. Kenney, a former police officer in Polk County and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. "The charge sounds to me like a significant overreach." Greaves was among a group of prisoners who made brief appearances before District Court Judge David Crockenberg in Pueblo on Monday, all of them represented by the same public defender. He was the only one not wearing a striped prison uniform although his wrists were handcuffed in front of him. Dressed in a cream colored T-shirt and khaki pants, Greaves said he understood the extradition process. When Crockenberg asked him if he understood he would be taken to Florida, Greaves responded, "That is correct, your honor." Judd said his undercover detectives got Greaves to mail the book to them for $50; he told officers it was his last copy. "If we can get jurisdiction ... we're coming after you," Judd said. "There's nothing in the world more important than our children." ___ Lush reported from St. Petersburg, Fla. Associated Press Writer P. Solomon Banda in Denver contributed to this report. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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