ACEP Encourages Hospitals to Develop Child Insurance Enrollment Programs
Given that emergency departments are the only source of health care for many of the 8 million uninsured children in the United States, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) is urging hospitals and states to collaborate and initiate effective enrollment programs in hospital emergency departments as part of the Covering Kids and Families Back-to-School Campaign.

ACEP joins with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a national partner in Covering Kids and Families Campaign, a program designed to increase the number of children and adults who benefit from federal and state health care coverage programs. As part of this effort, ACEP is encouraging emergency departments throughout the country, through its 23,000 members, to conduct enrollment programs.

"We have found that not only are emergency department-based enrollment programs effective, they also can bring in enough revenue to the hospital to pay for the cost of the program," said Prashant Mahajan, MD, MPH, with Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit, who developed a pilot program last year that proved very effective in increasing State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) enrollment at his hospital.

For more information on the program, visit the ACEP Web site at http://www.acep.org

Bioterrorism Information Available
The University of Alabama in Birmingham (UAB) has launched a Web site that provides a vast array of resources on bioterrorism, including free online courses, downloadable screen savers, bioterrorism links, and information on rare infections. To visit the site, point your browser to http://www.bioterrorism.uab.edu .

NIOSH Grantee Designs Ergonomic Interventions for Fire/EMS
Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) are designing and evaluating ergonomic interventions that have the potential to reduce the high number of musculoskeletal injuries experienced by firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians (EMTs) during emergency medical service (EMS) operations. The research, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), is designed to have a very high level of participation with the fire service.

The UIC team began their project by conducting multiple rounds of focus groups with fire service personnel to generate ergonomic intervention concepts to improve the conduct of frequently performed and strenuous EMS tasks. Working with the fire service, the most highly ranked of these intervention ideas were then turned into alpha prototypes of devices. The devices were tested in their ergonomics laboratory by having firefighters and paramedics perform common patient handling tasks (e.g., carrying a patient down a flight of stairs) using the new devices and their standard equipment.

Using both the biomechanical data and evaluative feedback from the fire service personnel about the performance of the alpha prototypes, the researchers are now preparing to collect further evaluative data to facilitate the development of beta prototypes that can serve as manufacturing models. The UIC team will continue to work with the fire service to develop effective strategies for dissemination and implementation of the devices.

For additional information about this project, visit the NIOSH site at http://www.cdc.gov/niosh or contact Karen Conrad, one of the researchers at kmconrad@uic.edu.

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