A funeral can teach you a lot about yourself, especially a family funeral where you see the toll of time on a room full of relatives you haven't seen in years.

It's resolution time again, and as usual, getting in shape and losing weight are likely to be near the top of most lists. However, one often overlooked health habit could make many of the others easier to achieve, and could have a positive influence on health for a lifetime.

Increasingly, healthcare providers are expanding their focus beyond physical wellness to take a more holistic view of well-being.

A new law enacted by Congress as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 was created for the purpose of advancing care for adults with complex needs.

The Abdominal Aortic Junctional Tourniquet™ (AAJT) that treats both pelvic hemorrhage and severe bilateral lower junctional hemorrhage has been approved for use by paramedics and other first-responders in Alabama.

More than 500 million men worldwide suffer from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), or enlarged prostate.

Birmingham can be proud of having some of the most advanced health care resources on the planet. But for patients who are house-bound, those resources can be as inaccessible as if they were a world away.

In improving cognition and functional outcomes in hospitalized geriatric patients, the Acute Care for the Elderly (ACE) model has proven its value. The difficulty is that there are so few ACE units and so many patients who could benefit but don't have access.

When a patient presents to the emergency room with cellulitis--a soft tissue infection--they often end up admitted to the hospital for an average stay of around 3.8 days.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among American men outside of skin cancers and is the most common solid organ malignancy in American men. UAB Hospital has developed a program for personalized prostate care and advanced state-of-the-art imaging tools that is helping doctors detect and fight this disease.

Knowledge is power ... Healthgrades has recently released the 20^th annual hospital quality rankings and 2^nd annual National Health Index, looking at the strengths and challenges city's face in creating a healthy community.

Following a recent reorganization and move to Birmingham, the Epilepsy Foundation of Alabama kicked off Epilepsy Awareness Month with their Annual Purple Pumpkin Walk.

Noted immunologists joined forces at the recent International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference to discuss the importance of fostering and funding basic science.

"The perception is that a Do Not Resuscitate order--at least for families and patients--translates as do not treat. That's a communication hurdle we have to overcome regularly," says Greg Ayers, MD, director of palliative medicine at Princeton and Brookwood Baptist Medical Centers.

A new radiotherapy option, developed by UAB in collaboration with Varian Medical Systems, is delivering high-quality treatments to patients with brain cancer.

"Everyone has hemorrhoids," said Rajat Parikh, MD, president of Birmingham Gastroenterology Associates. "That's a common misconception among patients and many physicians."

When it comes to gastroenterological issues, the first line of attack is to look at diet. But discovering what foods a given patient is sensitive to is a lengthy process that physicians don't have time to do.

Eight years ago, Ashley Tamucci, MD, an OBGYN at Brookwood Baptist Medical Center, was talking with an expectant mother who wanted to donate her umbilical cord blood (UCB) to a donor bank. This was new territory for Tamucci.

Scalpel, stethoscope, antibiotics--as each landmark tool earned its place in the physician's bag, it brought a leap forward in patient care. Perhaps today's most anticipated new tools are those growing out of the mapping of the human genome.

It began in 2008 with two Chinese cardiologists--a man and a woman. They were the first to participate in a cardiovascular fellowship program between Chinese physicians and Princeton Baptist Medical Center. They stayed six months and the program took off.

Need far outstrips capacity when it comes to treating substance abuse disorders. American Addiction Centers CMO Dr. Lawrence Weinstein discusses barriers to care and possible solutions.

Medications form the main modality of treatment for diseases. Medications are efficacious in most but not all patients. Moreover, adverse effects are common.

In the past, tumors were often treated based on where they first presented. In the lung, they were treated as lung cancer. In the prostate, odds were that a prostate cancer protocol would offer the greatest hope for a cure.

Nowhere is efficiency more important than in the practice of medicine. Orthopaedists at the Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopaedic Center have embraced that philosophy through specialty care in its Hip Center.