Friday News Roundup: Our 15 minutes!

Okay, yes, there will be news – it’s a ‘bit of all that’ kind of week – but first I need to tell you about our 15 minutes of fame last night.

Actually, it was more like 27 minutes, as our own EVP & CEO Joyce Dubensky went on Jus Punjabi’s (the first Punjabi-American television station) American Visions along with EmblemHealth Chief Medical Officer Dr. Bill Gillespie.

They spent the time talking about The Medical Manual for Religio-Cultural Competency and how it will transform health care delivery. It was a great interview, and anyone with Time Warner, DISH Network of Verizon FiOS should hie to their televisions sets!  We hope this will just be one of many appearances to come.

Also, there’s been some news.

• There’s been a lot of debate over new NIH head Francis Collins, and whether his religious leanings would play a role in decisions he’d made as NIH Chief. He tried putting those to bed by resigning from the institute he founded a few months ago “aimed at nurturing the coexistence of science and religion, announced Monday he had resigned from his foundation to focus on his research chief duties. ‘I want to reassure everyone I am here to lead the NIH as best I can, as a scientist,'” he says in USA Today. “I won’t inject my religious convictions into care,” he reports to the Associated Press.

• On another health care front, President Obama is “Preach[ing] his health care message to religious leaders,” according to the Los Angeles Times, hoping they will see reform as a moral imperative.

• In decidedly non-health care news, a Conservative Rabbi in Georgie is suing the state. Under Georgia law,  kosher food must  meet Orthodox Hebrew religious rules – meaning that a Conservative doesn’t have the authority to certify kosher restaurants despite his 21 years of services as as rabbi.  More at the Baltimore Jewish Times.

• Meanwhile, in Baltimore, after months of claims of First Amendment violations, “the board of Strathmore Tower voted to install a Shabbat elevator in the 56-unit, nine-story condominium on Park Heights Avenue,” reports the Baltimore Jewish Times. A shabbat elevator stops automatically at every floor of the building, allowing Orthodox Jewish residents to use the elevators on the Sabbath.

• Finally, a blessed Ramadan to all those who observe.  Unfortunately, not everyone is able to observe freely and openly, as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia know all too well.

Blessed Ramadan to all Muslims, with special thoughts going to those who can’t celebrate they way they would like – or we would like them to.