Every day they help feed, bathe and care for the frailest Americans. But female health care workers in the United States often get shortchanged on wages and health insurance, a new study finds. In fact, about one-third of female health care workers made less than $15 an hour, and that number rose to half when these workers were black or Hispanic. The study authors estimated that about 5 percent of all female health care workers live in poverty, including nearly 11 percent of black women and 9 percent of Hispanic women. “Our findings were really quite striking. Overall, 1.7 million women health care workers and their families are living in poverty,” said study author Dr. Kathryn Himmelstein. She is a resident at Massachusetts General Hospital and a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Himmelstein began this research as a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. The report also showed that about 7 percent of female health care workers didn’t have health insurance. Additionally, many had to rely on government programs, such as Medicaid, food stamps and public housing. About 20 percent of women in the United States are employed in the health care industry, according to background information in the study. Women hold more than 85 percent of health care positions, such as nursing, home health, and personal…  read on >

It’s a novel idea, but joining a choir at work might lower your stress levels while on the job, a new British study suggests. It included 58 people who were part of workplace choirs in different organizations. They completed questionnaires that assessed their work-related demands, control and support. Being part of a workplace choir was associated with lower levels of work-related stress and a feeling of having more support from co-workers, according to researchers from the University of Leicester. “Previous research has found that group singing can improve physical and mental health. Our study investigated whether singing with colleagues in a workplace choir can reduce workplace stress and enhance feelings of support,” said study co-author Joanna Foster. “We found that participants felt less stressed about their work and more socially connected after singing,” Foster said in a news release from the British Psychological Society. The findings were to be presented Wednesday at the society’s Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference, in Chester, England. “In fact, they gained more support from the choir than from other social interactions at work, Foster said. “Overall, there was a 96 percent reduction in work-related stress and an 86 percent reduction in feelings of social isolation.” However, the study only saw an association between singing and stress levels, rather than a cause-and-effect link. “Singing in groups is known to have…  read on >

Add another danger that e-cigarettes pose to teenagers: A new study finds secondhand exposure to vaping may raise the chances of asthma attacks in adolescents with the respiratory condition. Middle school and high school students with asthma were 27 percent more likely to have suffered an asthma attack if they’d been exposed to vapor from someone else’s e-cigarette use, the researchers found. “While we cannot definitively say these products worsen asthma, I think if I was a parent, I wouldn’t want to risk my kids being around people using these products,” said lead researcher Jennifer Bayly. She is a student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J. These findings and others belie the general perception that e-cigarette emissions carry no risk, said Dr. Karen Wilson, chief of general pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “Contrary to the idea that it’s a harmless water vapor, it actually contains some of the same chemicals that we find in tobacco smoke, along with particulate matter that can be very irritating to people with asthma,” Wilson said. There is moderate scientific evidence that e-cigarette use causes increased cough and wheeze in teenagers, and an increase in asthma symptoms, according to a recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report cited by the study authors. For their…  read on >