AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
Former Executive Director of the National Basketball Players Association Billy Hunter and NBA Commissioner David Stern announcing a tentative labor agreement on Nov. 26.

The NBA is set to return — on Christmas Day — after its well-chronicled labor dispute.

Will that lead to a rash of player injuries in a shortened training camp? (The same issue came up after the football lockout ended.)

Ralph Reiff, executive director and athletic trainer at St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indianapolis, says there’s some reason to be concerned. The type of good, hard physical conditioning that can help players get used to changes in direction and speed can be tough to get outside an official training camp, he says.

And that kind of conditioning can help prevent soft-tissue injuries such as those to the Achilles tendon, says Reiff, whose facility provides medical and performance service for athletes at all levels, including professional athletes. While some players likely maintained a high level of fitness during their extended break, others probably weren’t so diligent, he says.

Aerobic conditioning is essential, Reiff says. “Can I go up and down the floor at a high level for an extended period of time?” he says. Some players will have “underestimated” the preparation needed and will be deconditioned compared to the rest of the group — and when they tire and strain to keep up, they may be at risk of injury, he says. He adds that based on anecdotal observations and discussions, NFL players who were in lesser shape when they reported to camp were at greater risk of a soft-tissue injury.

But while it sounds logical that an extended layoff and shortened training camp equal trouble, one sports-injury expert isn’t convinced. Will Carroll, of SportsIllustrated.com, wrote yesterday that a lot of NBA injuries will be unfairly blamed on the lockout. He mentions a proprietary study he did for an NBA team two years ago, saying that “certain events [he cites jumping as an example] make a player more likely to be injured traumatically and that traumatic injuries predict chronic ones.”

There’s no evidence, he writes, “that the lockout or even just a time away from the paternalistic embrace of a team increase the risk of injury.” And he says, in fact, the general injury numbers for the NFL have been in “the normal range” from camp through the season, despite the lockout.

Besides the risk of fresh injuries, Reiff is also concerned that athletes may not have had contact with their usual medical support staff during the lockout. “Athletes develop a trust,” and that history has been disrupted, he says. That may mean “some players will be slow to return to basketball if they’ve had a previous injury.”

Tim Frank, senior vice president for basketball communications at the NBA, had no comment.

Photo: Getty Images

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AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

California children’s hospitals aren’t dishing up particularly healthful fare, a new study shows.

Researchers from UCLA and the Rand Corp. report in the journal Academic Pediatrics that of the 16? food venues serving 14 hospitals studied in July 2010, 81% offered unhealthful “impulse items” — think freezers stocked with ice-cream treats — near the cash register. Only 31% offered nutrition information at the point of purchase, while just 25% sold whole-wheat bread.

Half the hospital cafeterias offered no healthful entrees? — defined as having no more than 800 calories (650 for sandwiches), no more than 30% of calories from fat and 10% from saturated fat. In fact, of the 384 entrees or sandwiches served by the hospitals, only 7% were categorized as healthful, the study says.

There was some good news: all the cafeterias studied offered low-fat or skim milk and diet soda, while 94% offered fruit without added sugar. Three-quarters had a salad bar and non-fried veggies, and more than half offered low-fat or fat-free salad dressing.

The cafeterias aren’t directly serving the young hospital patients, though, so why does it matter whether they’re selling cookies and fried foods?

Two reasons, says Lenard Lesser, primary investigator of the study and a family-medicine physician at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. First, he says, there’s an educational piece. “Hospitals should be exemplars of healthy eating because they’re places of health,” he tells the Health Blog. (Previous research cited by the study authors found that families surveyed at a children’s hospital with an on-site McDonald’s were twice as likely to think the restaurant’s food was healthful than families surveyed at hospitals without a McDonald’s.)

Second, “lots of people come through the hospital to see a pediatrician or another doctor, and they may eat at the hospital’s food venue,” says Lesser. And “besides patients and visitors there are thousands of staff who eat their meals there,” he says. “Hospitals have a vested interest in getting their employees” to eat healthfully, he says.

Lesser says some of the hospitals studied have already made changes — things like lowering the price of salad-bar items and eliminating sugary beverages.

The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Image: iStockphoto

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AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Once again, the health-care sector was one of the bright spots in the monthly employment report.

As the WSJ reports, nonfarm payrolls rose by 120,000 people in November as the unemployment rate, calculated using a separate survey, fell to 8.6% from 9.0% in October.

Here’s the full report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Private employers added jobs even as all levels of government shed them. And while health care couldn’t match the strength of the retail sector, which added 50,000 jobs, it posted a gain of 17,200 jobs.

Data from the BLS show the type of facilities that are hiring, but not the specific types of jobs being added. For example, the report shows that hospitals added 8,700 jobs, but doesn’t reveal whether those are staff physicians, IT support staff or custodians.

Ambulatory health-care services added a net 4,700 jobs as doctors’ offices and outpatient care centers each added 2,700 jobs. Home health-care services lost 1,800 jobs.

Also subtracting jobs were nursing-care facilities, which shed 1,200 positions. But the broader category of nursing and residential-care facilities overall gained a net 3,800 jobs in November.

In October, the health-care sector added 25,500 jobs.

Image: iStockphoto

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