TURNERSVILLE – Senator Fred H. Madden received the 2007 Institute for Nursing’s Exceptional People Impacting the Community (E.P.I.C.) Award during this year’s E.P.I.C Awards Luncheon, which was held on Wednesday, July 10 at the Marriott Princeton Hotel and Conference Center.
Funded through the New Jersey State Nurses Association, the Institute for Nursing provides scholarships and promotes continuing education and research to support nurses in New Jersey.
“I am truly honored to receive this award from the Institute for Nursing,” said Senator Madden, D-Camden and Gloucester, who is a member of the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee. “During my time in the Legislature, I’ve made it a point to focus my legislation on helping to increase health care quality and availability for all New Jerseyans. I will continue to advance my efforts and work to keep the people of New Jersey healthy and safe.”
This legislative session, Senator Madden sponsored S-332, a measure to require schools to provide information on sudden cardiac death to parents of students who participate in interscholastic sports.
The American Academy of Pediatrics defines cardiac death as a nonviolent occurrence when a seemingly healthy person’s heart stops unexpectedly, with no health warning signs. In children, sudden cardiac death usually occurs as a result of an underlying cardiac condition like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition which causes a thickening of the heart wall, Senator Madden said.
The bill received final legislative approval on June 18, 2007, and it now awaits the Governor’s signature, which would make it State law.
In September of 2005, a Madden-sponsored bill to require clinical laboratories to calculate a patient’s glomerular filtration rate (GFR) once a blood sample already has been taken to determine serum creatinine levels became State law. GFR is a measure of how well the kidneys are filtering wastes from the blood.
The law is designed to use early detection to help lower the number of Kidney disease fatalities.
In July of 2004, another measure authored by Senator Madden, which requires medical insurers to cover the cost of mammograms for women under age 40, became law.
“Studies have shown that early detection greatly improves chances of breast cancer survival,” said Senator Madden. “This law takes the price tag off of the lives of women who are at high risk for breast cancer and shows them that New Jersey is working to drastically reduce the number of women who succumb to the disease.”