News in brief - Aug. 25, 2003

GAO lists federal programs to address health disparities - Ebola vaccine effective in monkeys - Bioterror preparedness might detract from core public health goals

GAO lists federal programs to address health disparities

A new General Accounting Office report identifies a few large federal programs as showing the most promise for addressing existing racial and ethnic disparities in health care.

The report, requested by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's multiyear demonstration project called REACH 2010 is one promising approach. The project currently supports 42 community-based coalitions that target cardiovascular disease and diabetes among African-American women and cervical cancer among Vietnamese women.

The report also singles out Community Health Collaboratives, a Heath Resources and Services Administration project that provides disease management and education to a largely minority population for diabetes, asthma and cardiovascular disease, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's EXCEED Program, in which nine centers bring together teams of researchers to address projects organized around such themes as cultural competency.

Ebola vaccine effective in monkeys

A single shot of fast-acting, experimental Ebola vaccine successfully protects monkeys from the deadly Ebola virus in only one month from the time of vaccination. If the vaccine proves similarly effective in humans, it could allow scientists to quickly contain Ebola outbreaks with the ring vaccination strategy.

The finding was published in the Aug. 7 Nature and is the result of collaboration between scientists at the Vaccine Research Center, part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.

The research has enormous public health implications because it also could be used against other highly lethal viruses, said NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, MD. Scientists at the vaccine research center have been pursuing the so-called "prime-boost" vaccine strategy against a variety of infectious diseases. Given the rapid-acting nature of the Ebola virus, scientists decided to try immunizing eight monkeys with a single boost injection of attenuated carrier viruses containing genes for important Ebola antigens. None of the eight monkeys in the test who were injected with the Ebola virus contracted the disease.

Bioterror preparedness might detract from core public health goals

The national push to prepare for terrorist attacks has bolstered communities' public health readiness, but concerns are growing that the national smallpox vaccination campaign could detract from traditional core public-health activities such as immunization and health screening, according to a recent study by the Center for Studying Health System Change.

Although the federal government has authorized more than $2 billion for public-health bioterrorism preparedness efforts, local officials are worried about looming state and local budget cuts, the center found.