This week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all boys 11 and 12 years old should be vaccinated against human papillomavirus (HPV) and that boys ages 13 to 21 receive “catch up” vaccinations if they haven’t already been vaccinated. This follows an action last fall when an advisory committee with the CDC recommended that 11- and 12-year-old boys receive a routine vaccine.

You might think that doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff would be among the first to get vaccinated against the flu. But too many don’t, even though hospitals can be breeding grounds for the virus and patients there are especially vulnerable to it, according to a report released today by the nonprofit National Business Group on Health. To counter that problem, a coalition of groups led by the NBGH, including the American Hospital Association and supported by Consumers Union, have started an initiative to increase flu-vaccination rates among hospital staff.

I love spicy food. Whether it’s Carribbean, southwestern U.S. or southeastern Asian cuisine, turn up the heat and you get my attention. So when I see headlines connecting heat with weight loss, my curiosity gets piqued.

For National Children’s Dental Health Month, the American Dental Association is marking the 10th anniversary of its Give Kids A Smile program, which offers free dental care and education for children in need.

Pfizer has recalled 14 lots of its birth control pills Lo/Ovral-28, and 14 lots of the generic version Norgestrel and Ethinyl Estradiol, because of a packaging error that could cause the daily regimen for these oral contraceptives to be incorrect, leaving women at risk for unintended pregnancy.

You now have access to more information about hospital safety, thanks to a step taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency released bloodstream-infection rates in intensive care units for 1,146 hospitals in Washington D.C. and all states except Wyoming. Nearly a third of the hospitals reported no infections during the reporting period. However, the release covers only the three-month period from January to March, 2011. More data, including from Wyoming, will be added later in the year.

The drug Erivedge has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat adult patients with an advanced form of the most common type of skin cancer—Basal cell carcinoma.

Under a new settlement agreement in California, the maker of Brazilian Blowout products is required to warn consumers and hair stylists that two of its popular hair-straightening products emit formaldehyde gas.

Our updated hospital Ratings show that doctors, nurses, and other clinicians often do a good job of communicating in general with patients, but struggle when it comes to information about drugs and discharge planning. Other research suggests those problems plague patients when seeing health-care providers for routine care, too. Partly in response to problems like those, the Institute of Medicine has convened a panel of experts, including Jim Guest, CEO of Consumer Reports, to come up with ways to improve doctor-patient communication. Here are some of their suggestions.

Nearly 7,000 consumers joined Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, in a recent petition supporting regulatory efforts to set national, industry-wide targets to reduce sodium in processed and restaurant foods.

Shipments of orange juice from Canada have been stopped at the border after testing by the Food and Drug Administration found low levels of the fungicide carbendazim, which is banned in the U.S. and was previously found in orange juice product shipments from Brazil.

Many hospitals have succeeded in reducing the number of babies who are delivered early without a medical reason, according to a report from the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization that collects quality and safety data from hospitals on behalf of employers. In 2010 only 30 percent of hospitals that report data to Leapfrog maintained an early elective delivery rate of 5 percent or less, which experts feel is a reasonable target for hospitals. That figure improved to 39 percent of reporting hospitals in 2011.

As part of a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission, six online marketers will permanently halt their allegedly deceptive practice of using fake news websites to sell acai berry supplements and other weight-loss products.

Infections in pediatric intensive care units put children's lives at risk and occur all too often, according to a new investigation from the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. We found that pediatric ICUs often have higher infection rates than adult ICUs, and that some hospitals do much better than others at preventing infections.

Many newer nutritional supplements are being marketed without the safety assessments required by a federal law, according to an article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine by Pieter A. Cohen, M.D., of Harvard Medical School and elsewhere.