Aetna Grants $107,000 to St. Louis Area Nonprofits in 2009

June 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

CHESTERFIELD, Mo.–(Business Wire)–
Aetna (NYSE: AET) and the Aetna Foundation in 2009 awarded community grants and
sponsorships in the St. Louis area totaling $107,000, with a particular focus on
disease prevention, obesity and health screening.

The contributions support Aetna`s commitment to enhancing the quality of health
care, and promoting racial and ethnic equity in health and health care. In
total, the Aetna Foundation, Aetna and its employees awarded more than $24
million nationally in 2009.

The six St. Louis-area grant recipients were:

* Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club of St. Louis, Inc.;
* Interfaith Partnership/Faith Beyond Walls;
* Kids in the Middle, Inc.;
* Ronald McDonald House Charities of Metro St. Louis;
* St. Louis Children`s Hospital Foundation; and
* YMCA of Greater St. Louis.

“Aetna is proud to support organizations in St. Louis which are making great
strides in targeting health care issues that affect our communities,” said Scott
Nilsen, Aetna`s St. Louis-area market head. “As a responsible corporate citizen,
we recognize our obligation to help address these critical needs.”

The largest of those awards were two $30,000 gifts — one to St. Louis
Children`s Hospital Foundation for its 26th Annual St. Louis Children’s Hospital
Day at Six Flags and the other to the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Clubs of St.
Louis for its Triple Play PLUS obesity prevention program.

“Aetna and the Aetna Foundation are proud to partner with organizations across
the country in support of their good work, and we look forward to continued
relationships as we focus our giving in key areas going forward,” said Anne
Beal, MD, MPH, president of the Aetna Foundation. “For 2010 and beyond, we are
transitioning to a new approach that encompasses a more concentrated
grant-making focus on specific health issues of national concern, enhanced
communication and measurement of the impact of our grants, a more proportionate
distribution of our charitable giving across the country, and a more holistic
relationship with our community partners that capitalizes on our employee
presence and the generosity and talents of our employee volunteers.”

The Aetna Foundation has opened the call for proposals for the 2010 grant cycle.
Grant applicants should visit www.AetnaFoundation.org for more information on
how to apply for a grant and to learn more about the following Aetna Foundation
focus areas for grant making in 2010 and beyond:

* Addressing the rising incidence of obesity among U.S. residents, including
children;
* Promoting racial and ethnic equity in health and health care for common
chronic conditions and for the prevention of infant mortality; and
* Advancing integrated health care, by:

* Improving coordination and communications among health care professionals;
* Creating informed and involved patients; and
* Promoting cost-effective, affordable care.

About the Aetna Foundation

The Aetna Foundation is the independent charitable and philanthropic arm of
Aetna Inc. Since 1980, Aetna and the Aetna Foundation have contributed over $379
million in grants and sponsorships. As a national health foundation, we promote
wellness, health, and access to high-quality health care for everyone. This work
is enhanced by the time and commitment of Aetna employees, who have volunteered
nearly 2 million hours since 2003. Our current giving is focused on addressing
the rising rate of adult and childhood obesity in the U.S.; promoting racial and
ethnic equity in health and health care; and advancing integrated health care.
For more information, visit www.AetnaFoundation.org.

About Aetna

Aetna is one of the nation`s leading diversified health care benefits companies,
serving approximately 36.1 million people with information and resources to help
them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a
broad range of traditional and consumer-directed health insurance products and
related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, behavioral health, group
life and disability plans, and medical management capabilities and health care
management services for Medicaid plans. Our customers include employer groups,
individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans,
governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates.
For more information, see www.aetna.com and Aetna`s annual report at
www.aetna.com/2009annualreport

Media Contact:
Aetna
Scot Roskelley, 312-928-3034
roskelleye@aetna.com

Copyright Business Wire 2010

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Over-eating, not poor exercise, to blame for obesity

May 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 9 (ANI): Over-eating, not decreased levels of physical activity, is to be blamed of the rise of obesity in the US, claims a new study.

The research that uses an innovative approach to study the relative contributions of food and exercise habits to the development of the obesity epidemic has concluded that the rise in obesity in the United States since the 1970s was virtually all due to increased energy intake.

A study, which examined the question of the proportional contributions to the obesity epidemic by combining metabolic relationships, the laws of thermodynamics, epidemiological data and agricultural data, has been presented at the European Congress on Obesity.

“There have been a lot of assumptions that both reduced physical activity and increased energy intake have been major drivers of the obesity epidemic. Until now, nobody has proposed how to quantify their relative contributions to the rise in obesity since the 1970s. This study demonstrates that the weight gain in the American population seems to be virtually all explained by eating more calories. It appears that changes in physical activity played a minimal role,” said the study’s leader, Professor Boyd Swinburn, chair of population health and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University in Australia.

The scientists started by testing 1,399 adults and 963 children to determine how many calories their bodies burn in total under free-living conditions. The test is the most accurate measure of total calorie burning in real-life situations.

Once they had determined each person’s calorie burning rate, Swinburn and his colleagues were able to calculate how much adults needed to eat in order to maintain a stable weight and how much children needed to eat in order to maintain a normal growth curve.

They then worked out how much Americans were actually eating, using national food supply data (the amount of food produced and imported, minus the amount exported, thrown away and used for animals or other non-human uses) from the 1970s and the early 2000s.

The researchers used their findings to predict how much weight they would expect Americans to have gained over the 30-year period studied if food intake were the only influence. They used data from a nationally representative survey (NHANES) that recorded the weight of Americans in the 1970s and early 2000s to determine the actual weight gain over that period.

“If the actual weight increase was the same as what we predicted, that meant that food intake was virtually entirely responsible. If it wasn’t, that meant changes in physical activity also played a role,” Swinburn said.

“If the actual weight gain was higher than predicted, that would suggest that a decrease in physical activity played a role,” the expert added.

The researchers found that in children, the predicted and actual weight increase matched exactly, indicating that the increases in energy intake alone over the 30 years studied could explain the weight increase.

“For adults, we predicted that they would be 10.8 kg heavier, but in fact they were 8.6 kg heavier. That suggests that excess food intake still explains the weight gain, but that there may have been increases in physical activity over the 30 years that have blunted what would otherwise have been a higher weight gain,” Swinburn said. (ANI)

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Gene that turns carbs into fat identified

March 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 20 (ANI): A team of American researchers has identified a gene that plays a critical regulatory role in the process of converting dietary carbohydrates to fat.

In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, disabled this gene in mice, which consequently had lower levels of body fat than their normal counterparts, despite being fed the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat pasta buffet.

The authors of the study say that the gene, called DNA-PK, could potentially play a role in the prevention of obesity related to the over-consumption of high-carbohydrate foods, such as pasta, rice, soda and sugary snacks.

DNA-PK, which stands for DNA-dependent protein kinase, has already been the subject of much research because it helps repair breaks in the DNA.

Suppression of DNA-PK has been used as a technique by researchers to enhance the ability of cancer treatments to kill tumour cells.

Its role in fat synthesis came as a surprise to the UC Berkeley researchers.

“It turns out that DNA-PK is critical to a metabolic process we have been trying to understand for 20 years,” said Hei Sook Sul, a professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Nutritional Science and Toxicology and head of the research team behind these new findings.

“For the first time, we have connected DNA-PK to the signaling pathway involved in the formation of fat from carbohydrates in the liver. Identifying this signaling pathway involving DNA-PK brings us one step forward in understanding obesity resulting from a diet high in carbohydrates, and could possibly serve as a potential pharmacological target for obesity prevention,” Sul added.

The study is to be published in the March 20 issue of the journal Cell. (ANI)

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