RFF Human Health

Validity of ICD-9-CM Coding for Identifying Incident Methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) Infections: Is MRSA Coded as a Chronic Disease?

Ensuring Food Safety around the Globe: The Many Roles of Risk Analysis from Risk Ranking to Microbial Risk Assessment.

Food Safety and Risk Governance in Globalized Markets

Willpower and the Optimal Control of Visceral Urges

Adoption and Impact of Improved Groundnut Varieties on Rural Poverty: Evidence from Rural Uganda

Malaria Can Be Controlled Despite Rising Temperatures

Contrary to conventional wisdom, global warming will not cause malaria to spread or intensify according to new research by Visiting Scholar David L. Smith.

Should new antimalarial drugs be subsidized?

Attributable economic and health costs of hospital-acquired infections in the United States, 1998?2006

Watch: Stemming the Spread of Global Drug Resistance

Drugs to treat malaria, infections, and other illnesses are losing effectiveness. RFF's expert panel explains why and suggests way to reverse this troubling trend.

A New Collection of Best Thinking on Current Issues

RFF announces an anthology of thought-provoking and insightful contributions from leading researchers in key climate, environmental, and energy fields. Issues of the Day, a reference for policy practitioners, is now available for sale or download.

Did Medicare Induce Pharmaceutical Innovation?

Market Size in Innovation: Theory and Evidence from the Pharmaceutical Industry

Issues of the Day

Issues of the Day provides an easy way for students, academics, journalists, policymakers, and the public to learn about a diverse range of policy issues affecting the environment, energy, transportation, and public health. Each commentary gives a short assessment of a topic, summarizing in a non-technical way the current state of analysis or evidence on the issue, along with selected recommendations for further reading. The essays are written by world renowned scholars, mostly economists, and provide useful insights on policy problems that are often complex and poorly understood. Some of the topics covered include air pollution, hazardous waste, voluntary environmental programs, domestic (U.S.) and global climate policy design, fishery management, water quality, endangered species, forest fires, oil security, solar power, road and airport, fuel taxes and fuel economy standards, alternative fuel vehicles, health and longevity, smoking, malaria, tuberculosis, and the environment and development. The objective is to disseminate the findings of sound, objective research on the costs, benefits, and appropriate reform of public policies. The book provides a useful supplement for undergraduate- and graduate-level course reading, a reference guide for professionals, and a way for the general reader to quickly develop an informed perspective on the most important policy problems of the day.

RFF Press is now an imprint of Earthscan. Click here to buy this book.

Who Pays for Cleaner Air? Evidence from the Nitrogen Oxides Budget Trading Program

Technological Modifications in the Nitrogen Oxides Tradable Permit Program

Bush v. Gore and the Effect of New Source Review on Power Plant Emissions

Investments in Land Conservation in the Ethiopian Highlands: A Household Plot-Level Analysis of the Roles of Poverty, Tenure Security, and Market Incentives

Public Health: Adapting to Climate Change

Diversify or Focus? Spending to Combat Infectious Diseases When Budgets Are Tight

Hospital-Acquired Infections: Costly Killers

Sepsis and pneumonia ? caused by deadly microbes picked up in hospitals ? take the lives of 48,000 patients annually ? adding more than $8 billion in health care costs.

Determinants of Performance of Drinking-Water Community Organizations: A Comparative Analysis of Case Studies in Rural Costa Rica

Creating Incentives for Pharmaceutical Research on Neglected Diseases: Book Review

Fiscal and Externality Rationales for Alcohol Policies

Cost-effectiveness Projections of Single and Combination Therapies for Visceral Leishmaniasis in Bihar, India

Trends in Community-associated Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Outpatients, United States, 1999?2006.

Clinical and Economic Outcomes Attributable to Health Care-Associated Sepsis and Pneumonia

Increasing Resistance of Acinetobacter Species to Imipenem in United States Hospitals, 1999-2006

Cost Effectiveness Analysis for Treating Vitamin A Deficiency in India

Antibiotic Effectiveness: New Challenges in Natural Resource Management

Incentives for Surveillance and Reporting of Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Managing Partially Protected Resources Under Uncertainty

Measuring the Costs of Air Pollution in China

Resources Magazine: China?s booming growth has also brought rapidly rising air pollution. A new study finds that reductions in pollution could save hundreds of thousands of lives.

BioWatch and Public Health Surveillance: Evaluating Systems for Early Detection of Biological Threats

Emerging Issues in Food Safety

The Importance, and Difficulty of Knowing which Foods Are Making Us Sick

Containing Pandemics Through Better Reporting

Resources Magazine: Ramanan Laxminarayan and Anup Malani look at the incentives countries have to detect and report disease outbreaks.

The Fight to End Malaria

Resources Magazine: New techniques in modeling and mapping could be the keys to eradicating malaria in Africa for good.

New Study: MRSA Superbug Goes Public

A new study finds that the community-associated strain of the superbug known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is on the rise further burdening hospitals in the fight against antiobiotic resistance.

Is Alcohol Consumption Undertaxed?

Information Disclosure And Drinking Water Quality

Resources 173 - Fall 2009: Challenges In Global Public Health

RFF's Expanding Focus on Public Health

Goings On

RFF and Human Health

This Could Be The Last Time: The Bioeconomics of Eradicating Malaria

The Right Combination Of Carrots And Sticks: Encouraging Surveillance And Reporting Of Emerging Pandemics

Congestion And The Commons: What Happens When Some Resources Are Enclosed And Others Are Open Access?

Measuring The Costs Of Air Pollution And Health In China

How Much Should Cigarettes Cost?

Commentary: Sijbren Cnossen looks at the economics of how governments should tax tobacco, comparing policy choices in the E.U. and U.S.

Event: The Economics of Pandemics

October's First Wednesday Seminar launched RFF's new Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy (CDDEP). Speakers covered emerging issues ranging from incentives for reporting disease outbreaks to the impacts of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Video and speaker presentations available.

A Prescription for Maximizing Health and Wealth

Commentary: Discussing why the value of increased life expectancy, and health improvements more generally, has been rising over time. This trend has important policy implications, such as the amount we should be investing in medical research.

Water Supply and Poor Communities: What?s Price Got to Do with It?

Alcohol/Leisure Complementarity: Empirical Estimates and Implications for Tax Policy

Thirsty Colonias: Rate Regulation and the Provision of Water Service

Lose Some, Save Some: Obesity, Automobile Demand, and Gasoline Consumption in the U.S.

Shanxi Air Quality Improvement Project

Should Congress Reinstate the Superfund Taxes?

Commentary: With funding shortfalls decreasing site cleanups, Kate Probst analyzes whether reviving Superfund?s ?polluter pays? principle makes sense.

Attributing U.S. Foodborne Illness to Food Consumption

Resources 172 - Summer 2009

Managing Partially Protected Resources under Uncertainty

Threats to Health from Climate Change?

A warming world could trigger new perils to public health, but an RFF study finds that adaptation policies could mitigate many of the potential consequences ? including risks of illness from heat waves, allergic and infectious disease, and rising air pollution.

Fighting TB with Interventions that Work

A paper in Health Affairs by Ramanan Laxminarayan and colleagues finds that using proven treatment methods against tuberculosis not only works ? but the economic benefits also outweigh the costs of implementation.

Adapting to Climate Change: Public Health

Beyond Swine Flu: Superbugs

Five Illinois residents have died of the swine flu, raising new fears that the H1N1 virus will not be easily controlled.

A Global Subsidy: Key to Affordable Drugs for Malaria?

Global Fund Launches Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria--AMFm

New international partnership will spend over $200 million on new effort to extend the effectiveness of antimalarial drugs through the use of economic incentives.

For Malaria, We Just Can't Afford to Use Cheap Drugs

There are two ways to take anti-malarial drugs: the expensive way, which helps the world; and the cheap way, which helps only the patient. Most Africans cannot afford the expensive way and, as a result, the worlds most effective anti-malarial drug may lose its potency.

Fighting Infection

Ramanan Laxminarayan and co-author Eli Perencevich of the University of Maryland Medical Center urge regional strategies to curb infections contracted in health-care facilities.

"Like Clean Water"

The bulk of inappropriate prescriptions are for children under five years old. In hospitals, patients are treated with many antibiotics to reduce the risk of not recovering from an infection, many of which are drug resistant.

Food Safety: Challenges to the System

Experts in regulating food safety at an RFF First Wednesday Seminar discuss recent food scares and strategies to strengthen the food safety network and protect public health.

Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership Announced

RFF launches a global health initiative to explore ways to slow the spread of resistance to lifesaving antibiotics in developing nations.

Can Markets Cure Malaria?

Ramanan Laxminarayan talks about the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria program and what it might take for effective implementation.

RFF Hosts Consultative Forum on AMFm

Malaria experts from around the globe gathered to discuss the merits of the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria?AMFm, an innovative financing platform for malaria drugs.

Consultative Forum on the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm)

Join RFF on Friday, September 26, 2008 at the Jurys Hotel for a forum to discuss the rationale for AMFm, a new way to expand financial access to effective malaria treatment. Expert speakers will explore major biomedical, economic and operational challenges related to AMFm. Registration is required.

Climate Policy: Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit

A new discussion paper by Senior Fellows Dallas Burtraw and Margaret Walls and Research Assistant Richard Sweeney indicates that a national climate policy could have significant distributional effects across regions and income groups, and analyzes different approaches policymakers can use to address those impacts.

Treating Malaria

A new RFF study, published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers hope that new types of treatment therapy can extend the effectiveness of anti-malarial drugs, benefiting victims of a disease that devastates countries around the world.

Superbugs: The new generation of resistant infections is almost impossible to treat

This article includes a reference to a study conducted by Dave Smith, and his colleagues regarding the transfer of resistant bacteria from animal to human.

China's Olympian Environmental Task

Unless China moves more aggressively to curb air and water pollution, it faces severe threats to health and productivity that will undermine its economic progress.

Global Fund prepares new to plan to subsidize malaria treatment cost

Ramanan Laxminarayan is identified as participating in the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) AMFm Taskforce and notes that the purpose of the project is to undercut the monotherapies market.

Resisting Arrest

This article notes that Ramanan Laxminarayan supports the idea of utilizing multiple artemisinin combination therapies to prevent resistance to malaria drugs in the developing world and sees a role for governments and donors to subsidize their widespread use.

Extending the Cure hosts a discussion on their inaugural report.

Senior Fellow Ramanan Laxminarayan and colleagues explore antibiotic resistance and how incentive-based policies and lessons from natural resource management can illuminate potential solutions.

Conference on Anti-Malarial Drug Treatments

More than 60 experts from national malaria control programs, the World Health Organization, malaria drug development and academia were brought together by Resources for the Future in a first-of-a-kind gathering.

Neglected Disease Efforts Require Delicate Balance

Ramanan Laxminarayan encourages the use of advance market commitments to encourage the biotech and pharmaceutical industries to engage in research and development for drugs to treat neglected diseases.

Subsidize Health Tests

In this letter to the editor in response to a February 15 article about "superbugs" Ramanan Laxminarayan agrees that requiring hospitals to report MRSA infections is important but they must have an incentive to provide accurate data. He suggests that if subsidies were available for testing patients for MRSA, better infection control could be achieved.

Assessing the Cost-Effectiveness of Interventions to Combat Vitamin A Deficiency

A new RFF report examines the feasibility and relative benefits of biofortified ("golden") mustard compared to other treatments for vitamin A deficiency in India.

Malaria: It's Not Neglected Any More (But It's Not Gone, Either)

While malaria is still a global concern, RFF Researcher Hellen Gelband says that new funding, new drugs, and better use of existing treatments will go a long way toward eradication.

RFF Researchers Find Dramatic Increase in Hospitalizations Related to Superbug MRSA

A new study by researchers at RFF in the December issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases examines the recent magnitude and trends related to staph and MRSA infections.

Valuing Reductions in Mortality Risk

RFF Fellow Joe Aldy and Senior Fellow Alan Krupnick examine how the value of reducing mortality risk varies with age in a recent symposium in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy.

Uncertainty Modeling in Dose Response: Dealing with Simple Bioassay Data, and Where Do We Go from Here?

Senior Fellow Roger Cooke hosts Uncertainty Modeling in Dose Response workshop.

Mending Our Food Safety Net

RFF Fellow Sandra A. Hoffmann analyzes the food safety crises of the past year and calls for significant reform based on quality management.

RFF Awarded $4 Million In New Grants for Research On Public Health and Climate Policy

Grants totaling nearly $4 million have been awarded to Resources for the Future to support new research on public health issues and climate and energy policy.

Achieving a Safe Food Supply in Increasingly Global Markets

Panelists at an RFF First Wednesday Seminar discuss how importing fresh foods from around the world affects food safety in the United States.

RFF and the Disease Control Priorities Project (DCPP)

RFF Senior Fellow Ramanan Laxminarayan and Research Associate Jeffrey Chow contribute to six chapters in the 2nd Edition of Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, the flagship book of the DCPP.

RFF and the Disease Control Priorities Project

Malaria among African Children: Hope for Progress Against a Growing Menace

RFF Fellow Ramanan Laxminarayan argues for globally coordinated action and fiscal support to protect the effectiveness of antimalarial drugs in the Winter 2006 issue of Resources.

Taking Risks on the Space Frontier

In the new issue of Resources, Senior Fellow Molly Macauley explores how human risk in space activities should be approached and managed.

Barack Obama Suggests Strategies To Secure America's Energy Future

Senator Obama proposes the U.S. government partially finance automakers' healthcare costs in exchange for investments in fuel-saving technologies.

Antimicrobial Resistance in Developing Countries

In The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Fellow Ramanan Laxminarayan and colleagues describe recent trends and the current status of resistance to antimicrobial drugs in developing countries and address measures to counter this problem.

Tending the Fields: State & Federal Roles In the Oversight of Genetically Modified Crops

In a new report, released by the Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, RFF Researchers Michael Taylor, Jody Tick and Diane Sherman examine the issues that states are confronting in the oversight of biotech crops and foods.

Energy and Population

Senior Fellow Joel Darmstadter discusses the relationship between energy consumption and population growth in a new Issue Brief. The interplay between the two is much more complex than commonly assumed.

State of the Planet: Feed and Educate Kids First

Visiting Scholar Tom Freedman and Richard Fritz suggest that free and reduced-cost school lunch programs should be expanded beyond the U.S. to benefit world peace and development.

Valuing Health Outcomes: Policy Choices and Technical Issues

Senior Fellow Alan Krupnick examines approaches policymakers use to value health effects. Willingness-to-pay, QALY, and other valuation methods are explored in a new RFF Report.

superbug threat

Government action needed to combat threat of superbugs, say Fellow Ramanan Laxminarayan and Amazon Conservation Team President Mark Plotkin in the Washington Post.

Food Safety Research Consortium

RFF and other leading research institutions begin their efforts to develop tools for a more science- and risk-based food safety system.