The Role of Incentives in Health - Closing the Gap.

Incentives motivate individuals to act in a certain way. Incentives are everywhere and in everything; they are woven into the very fabric of our lives. To address the issue of spiraling health care costs, incentive programs must be put into place to discourage the behaviors driving the growth of these costs.

Toward a Contemporary Definition of Health.

Aristotle saw that the striving of humanity was toward being well - a physical, mental and spiritual state where life flourished. A contemporary definition of health recognizes that disease and disability can and often do co-exist with wellness. In this new conception, health is transformed from a state that requires the absence of disease to a state where the central theme is the fullness of life.

Trends in Biometric Health Indices Within an Employer-Sponsored Wellness Program With Outcome-Based Incentives.

Purpose: To evaluate changes in employees' biometrics over time relative to outcome-based incentive thresholds.

Design: Retrospective cohort analysis of biometric screening participants (n = 26 388).

Setting: Large employer primarily in Western United States.

Relation between cord blood mercury levels and early child development in a World Trade Center cohort.

Objective: This study was designed to determine whether prenatal mercury exposure, including potential releases from the World Trade Center (WTC) disaster, adversely affects fetal growth and child development.

Methods: We determined maternal and umbilical cord blood total mercury of nonsmoking women who delivered at term in lower Manhattan after 11 September 2001, and measured birth outcomes and child development.

Results: Levels of total mercury in cord and maternal blood were not significantly higher for women who resided or worked within 1 or 2 miles of the WTC in the month after 11 September, compared with women who lived and worked farther away.

Children's environmental health research--highlights from the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health.

A growing body of evidence has been generated indicating that the fetus, infant, and young child are especially susceptible to environmental toxicants as diverse as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pesticides, lead, mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Exposures to these toxicants may be related to the increases in recent decades in childhood asthma, cancer, and developmental disability. The Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH), located in New York City, has developed four cohorts around the world to elucidate the relationships between these exposures and childhood illness.