Briefs

Medication workshop available

A free workshop on medication management, "Roadblocks to Pharmacy Services and Tools and Strategies for Keeping Safe," is scheduled April 11 at Area Agency on Aging of North Idaho.

Lynn Johnson, registered nurse with Gentiva Home Health, and James Sharp, pharmacist with Interlake Pharmacy, will speak on tracking medications, knowing what you're taking, safely using prescription and over the counter medications and the importance of taking medications at the appropriate times.

There are one-hour sessions at 1:30 and 3 p.m. Both are at 2120 Lakewood Drive, Suite B; Coeur d'Alene.

Reservations are encouraged as seating is limited to 40 people per session. Beverages and snacks will be provided.

Info: 667-3179

Insurance costs Idaho women more than men

(AP) - Women in Idaho pay hundreds of dollars more a year for health insurance, and the pattern applies across age groups, according to a national report. But many insurance plans in the Gem State do often include maternity coverage, which isn't the norm in the U.S.

Idaho's best-selling insurance plans add more, on average, to a 40-year-old woman's insurance premiums than anywhere else in the country, the National Women's Law Center found. The gap costs women enrolled in two of the top health plans $684 and $722 more each year.

The group looked at advertised premiums for top-selling plans through eHealthInsurance.com. It also looked at the number of women buying health insurance in Idaho. The NWLC concluded that price disparities were so prevalent and unpredictable that "it is difficult to see how actuarial justifications could explain the difference."

Childhood obesity rates in California are slowing down

(AP) - A UC Davis study has found that the rise in childhood obesity rates in California is slowing, which researchers think may be the outcome of improved nutrition and physical fitness programs in the state's public schools.

In their February report, "Obesity and Physical Fitness in California School Children," published in the American Heart Journal, the researchers found that between 2003 and 2008, the rate increased by a mere 0.33 percent per year among the California students in their study. National studies in prior decades, based on surveys, had shown childhood obesity climbing at somewhere between 0.8 percent and 1.7 percent per year.

The study examined 6.3 million student records provided by the California Department of Education for 5th, 7th, and 9th graders in each year between 2003 and 2008.

The students' names were masked so the researchers tracked each class from 5th to 7th to 9th grade rather than each individual student.

The researchers found obesity levels were stable and fitness levels improved in students in grades 7 and 9, said Dr. William Bommer, professor of cardiovascular medicine at UC Davis and co-author of the study along with Dr. Melanie Aryana and Zhongmin Li. Bommer credits state regulations implemented during the past decade that promote better nutritional standards and establish fitness requirements for school children.

Bommer was involved in creating California's new fitness requirements, established in 1999, which require an average of 20 minutes of exercise a day for K-6 children and 40 minutes for students in grades 7 through 12. Before the standards were created, there were no requirements for physical exercise in school, he said. He was also active in the state's new nutritional standards, which include banning sodas and candy bars from vending machines.

"Weight gain can be entirely explained by 200 extra calories a day (from a large soft drink), five days a week," he said.