By LEE BOWMAN, Scripps Howard News Service

Estimated vaccination coverage rates, by percentage, nationally and in each state, among 13-17-year-olds according to 2008 National Immunization Survey.

Certainly what we eat affects our weight.

But researchers are finding that when we eat, and with whom, can also have a major impact on our accumulation of pounds.

First there's the timing of meals.

One study, reported recently by scientists at Northwestern University in Chicago, suggests that calories consumed late at night tend to hang around as fat.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the new swine flu vaccine Tuesday. But health officials across the nation have been planning for months on how to best distribute the vaccine.

Around Louisville, Ky., public health officials have long since scoped out banks with drive-up teller stations that might be used to dispense swine flu shots instead of cash.

Patients take home a lot of things when they leave the hospital -- get-well cards, maybe a plant or stuffed animal, even the occasional disposable plastic medical device that might come in handy during recovery.

For hundreds of thousands of Americans with failed kidneys, the days and weeks revolve around dialysis.

In most patients, the process of removing waste such as phosphate and urea from the blood means spending three to five hours on a machine at a hemodialysis center at least three days a week.

Children with chronic respiratory problems and pregnant women are at the top of the government's priority list for vaccination against the new swine flu strain as it becomes available later this fall.

People who believe in astrology are convinced that constellations and other heavenly objects prominent in their birth month guide their fates.

Those systems are hardly scientific, but scientists continue to find evidence that the month, or season, that babies are born, or conceived, may have a significant effect on their lifetime health.

The markets may go back up, housing and auto sales may recover, unemployment rates may shrink, but researchers say it's almost certain that one effect of the recession will linger for many years -- poor health.

Recession ratchets up risk factors for many kinds of disease, from depression and other mental illnesses to heart disease and cancer.

Urine tests, that diagnostic standby that already reveals everything from drug use to pregnancy, are being proposed for a growing number of new medical applications.

Researchers are regularly expanding the list of telltale proteins and metabolic markers that can be detected in urine samples to help diagnose illness and even predict how different individuals may respond to treatments.

If you're not sure that the true cause of death of a loved one has been determined and properly recorded on a death certificate, what can be done?