Project Will Create Brain Trauma Site

On Health

By E.B. SOLOMONT, Special to the Sun
October 23, 2007

The parents of a girl who suffered a brain injury after being shaken as an infant have launched a foundation to connect doctors and parents of other brain-injured children.

The Sarah Jane Brain Project aims to become a repository of information on pediatric brain trauma. A central component of the foundation is a Web site, TheBrainProject.org, which contains the girl's medical records and other information to educate families and medical professionals.

Sarah Jane Donohue, now 2, was five days old when her nurse shook her, causing severe brain injury. Last year, the nurse was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Sarah Jane's father, Patrick, yesterday said the Web site would become a central location for sharing information about brain injuries. "My goal with this is to create more of a standard of protocols and procedures so that families don't have to reinvent the wheel," he said. He said his daughter is walking and babbling. "She's making slow but steady progress."

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MOMA TO EXPAND PROGRAM FOR ALZHEIMER'S PATIENTS

The Museum of Modern Art is expanding a program aimed at people with Alzheimer's disease.

With a $450,000 grant from the MetLife Foundation, the museum hopes to create a model of its "Meet Me at MoMA" program, to be used by other institutions nationwide.

Launched in 2006, "Meet Me at MoMA" invites Alzheimer's and dementia sufferers to the museum each month for guided tours.

"We have seen through the museum's 'Meet Me at MoMA' program how visual art offers people who have Alzheimer's or other dementia an entry for communication and an opportunity for engagement," the museum's director of community and access programs, Francesca Rosenberg, said.

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FUNDS TO STUDY IMPACT OF HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

The Primary Care Development Corp. has received a $1.1 million federal grant to study the impact of health information technology in treating patients with hypertension.

With funding from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, PCDC will focus on office-based electronic health records that have decision support systems. One goal is to evaluate how such systems can improve health outcomes for patients with high blood pressure.

Three in 10 New Yorkers have high blood pressure, according to city health officials.

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CAMPAIGN TARGETS SECONDHAND SMOKE

The city's health department has launched an antismoking campaign in Harlem focused on reducing children's exposure to secondhand smoke in their homes. The campaign, which runs until December 15, features ads in Harlem subway stations and radio promotions.

Health officials reported that the smoking rate in East Harlem is 31%, compared to 17.5% citywide. In a 2005 study, 32% of children enrolled in an asthma initiative reported that they lived with a smoker.

"When parents smoke at home, they put their children's health at risk," the department's assistant commissioner for tobacco control, Sarah Perl, said.

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DOCTORS BACK ATTORNEY GENERAL'S INQUIRY INTO RANKINGS

A physician membership organization has endorsed an investigation by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into the physician ranking programs of several New York health insurance companies. The Medical Society of the State of New York praised Mr. Cuomo's campaign, which has described the ranking programs as financially motivated as well as potentially deceptive.

Last week, Mr. Cuomo's office sent letters to Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, Preferred Care, and HIP Health Plan/GHI, requesting information about their ranking programs. Previously, his office sent letters to UnitedHealthcare, Aetna Health Plan, and Cigna.

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KASS DELIVERS WRISTON LECTURE

A former chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, Dr. Leon Kass, delivered the Manhattan Institute's annual Wriston Lecture last week.

Dr. Kass, a professor at the University of Chicago and the Hertog Fellow in Social Thought at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the intersection of spirituality and medical advances in the October 18 talk. "Among the contemporary challenges to our humanity, the deepest ones come from a most unlikely quarter: our wonderful and humane biomedical science and technology," Dr. Kass said. "The threat to our humanity today comes not from the transmigration of souls into the next life, but from the denial of soul in this one," he said.

esolomont@nysun.com