By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Countries up and down the global economic ladder are pushing toward universal health care for their citizens even as the United States considers pulling back on its efforts to provide coverage for more people, Noam N. Levey of the Los Angeles Times reported in a fascinating story over the weekend.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Facing a rising clamor against the state’s controversial ban on bake sales in school, the Patrick administration Thursday directed pubilc health officials to do an about-face and exclude classroom and fund-raising events from the new rules that were to take effect Aug. 1.

The state’s department of public health announced Thursday afternoon that it will pass emergency amendments to its regulations last year that curtailed the sale of sweets in school cafeterias and vending machines.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Roughly 81 percent of employees at the state’s acute care hospitals received flu vaccinations during the most recent season, according to a report released Wednesday by Massachusetts public health regulators. The percentages increased from a statewide average of about 71 percent during the previous season, but is still not close to the minimum level of 90 percent regulators had hoped for, spurring renewed debate about mandating vaccines for hospital workers at a meeting of the Public Health Council.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

State health regulators Wednesday morning unanimously approved rules that define when a person is too cognitively or functionally impaired to drive safely. The state Public Health Council, an appointed panel of physicians, consumer advocates, and professors, adopted the rules after a brief discussion, to give health care providers guidance in evaluating when drivers should be required to give up their car keys. The rules make clear that age and illness are not by themselves disqualifying.

By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff

Three Boston organizations will receive $11.6 million from the federal government to expand programs focused on keeping sick seniors out of the hospital, improving the health of children with asthma, and connecting people who are homeless with better medical care. The grants announced Tuesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are among $123 million awarded under the Affordable Care Act to programs aimed at improving health care quality and lowering costs.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

A 2008 federal regulation that denied payments to hospitals if patients contracted certain infections while under their care bolstered attention to preventing those problems, but also shifted focus and resources away from halting other infections, a new study finds. The study, based on a survey of infection specialists at 317 US hospitals, found that 81 percent reported increased attention to preventing two specific infections targeted by federal regulators: catheter-associated urinary tract infections and central line-associated bloodstream infections.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Eleven Massachusetts community health centers, which serve patients in some of the state’s poorest neighborhoods, will receive a total of nearly $34 million in grants under the federal health care law, officials announced Tuesday. The money, which is estimated to help the centers provide care to roughly 42,500 new patients, is also aimed at helping the centers expand their facilities and improve existing services, officials said.