Health
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Partnership HealthPlan of California (PHC) announced that Michael Vovakes, M.D., a board certified pediatrician, has been selected as the new Regional Medical Director for Shasta, Lassen, Siskiyou, Modoc and eastern Trinity counties.
He will be working in PHC’s future Redding office, starting in August.
After working as a pediatrician in private practice in Tehama County, Dr. Vovakes has worked for the past 19 years at Shasta Community Health Center, a federally qualified health center, where he is currently the medical director of pediatrics, informatics and quality.
He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and completed his residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Letterman Army Medical Center. He has a master of science degree in medical informatics from Northwestern University.
He has served the medical community as a pediatric preceptor for the Family Medicine Residency Program at Mercy Medical Center in Redding, and is on the voluntary clinical Faculty at UC Davis School of Medicine. He is well-respected by medical colleagues and members of the community.
Dr. Vovakes’ major responsibilities will include utilization management reviews, representing PHC in the local medical community, and communication with physicians about quality improvement and utilization management activities.
Partnership HealthPlan of California is the county organized health system selected by the state of California to provide a Medi-Cal Managed Care delivery system to eight new counties starting on September 1, 2013.
The new counties include those listed above plus Humboldt, Del Norte and Lake counties.
Partnership HealthPlan of California began operating in 1994. Additional information about PHC can be found at www.partnershiphp.org .
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More than half of the countries who signed the WHO 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control have not formed plans to help tobacco users quit.
The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is a treaty developed to tackle the global tobacco epidemic that is killing five million people each year.
It came into force in 2005 and is legally binding in 175 countries.
The FCTC requires each country to develop plans to help tobacco users in their population to stop – plans that should be based on strong scientific evidence for what works.
Two surveys of 121 countries just published in the scientific journal Addiction reveal that more than half of those countries have yet to develop these plans.
Just 53 of the 121 countries surveyed (44 percent) report having treatment guidelines: 75 percent of the high-income countries; 42 percent of upper-middle-income countries, 30 percent of lower-middle-income countries and only 11 percent of low-income countries.
Only one-fifth of the countries surveyed had a dedicated budget for treating tobacco dependence.
Commenting on the findings, Professor Robert West, Editor-in-Chief of Addiction, said: “Tobacco dependence treatment is a very inexpensive way of saving lives, much cheaper and more effective than many of the clinical services routinely provided by health systems worldwide. These reports map out for the first time the work that needs to be done to make this treatment accessible to those who could benefit from it. I hope they will be a spur to action.”
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