By Lois Privor-Dumm. We’ve all heard these words: “There is tremendous need here at home,” or “money in Africa has been wasted for so long.”   This is why this simple video from the ONE campaign struck me. Through a public health lens it is a no-brainer: of course you want to spend on cost–effective interventions that will save lives.  For others, while they admit that it is an admirable goal, the connection is not made.  In times of financial uncertainty, we have to be more careful with our money, don’t we?

One of the best and prudent ways to invest though, is in future generations.  In the US, we provide all of our children the best chance at life, with fewer worries about preventable, devastating disease.  Imagine what that kind of security could do for a family in Africa.  Healthier children in Africa would be able to stay in school.  Families would worry less about the all too common diseases of pneumonia and diarrhea, and their devastating costs.  Rather than accepting the fate that their children may fall ill, they would be thankful that new vaccines are being made available.  Throughout the years, as healthcare improves because of our investment, so would income and productivity. Our investment would return to us through a country’s improved stability, better governance, and more – and all directly relate to our own security. 

The introduction of a new vaccine is not something taken for granted in the developing world.  Up-to-date immunization cards of young children are among a family’s prize possessions.  Throughout Africa, pneumococcal vaccines, once deemed far from the reality of any African village are now being introduced and are offering hope.  Rotavirus vaccines, helping prevent one of the most deadly forms of diarrhea in young children, may soon also be a reality across Africa -  all for a relatively small fraction of the US budget.  How often do we have a chance to save so many lives with such an effective and minimal financial commitment?  Four million lives over a five-year period is a pretty good return on investment!

Let’s make wise investments

Next month, the GAVI Alliance will be holding their pledging conference to encourage donor countries like ours to contribute to providing the most basic and effective prevention.  Please tell President Obama and your local leaders that you care.  Sign the ONE petition, and tell your friends and family to do so. The more they hear from you, the more they know this is an investment we as Americans care about.  Do it for their future – and ours.

Photo credit: Adrian Brooks, Imagewis

The following is a guest post by Jenni Sunde. Jenni is a freelance fashion writer and pop culture junkie. She specializes in all things lifestyle-related. From home and design to health and beauty. With her love of art and all things beautiful, she delights in sharing her sense of style from her life to your computer monitor. Her title pegs her as an editor at a website that specializes in providing people with car insurance quotes, but her passion leads her into writing with a little more substance and a lot more heart.

By Jenni Sunde. The benefits of a sound mind and body can be traced all the way back to ancient Greco-Roman cultures.  Despite how long the concepts behind mind and body connection have been around, they are frequently overlooked in our modern society.  The connection between mind and body is particularly impactful for adolescents; studies have shown that happier youths are indeed, healthier youths.

Emily Shaffer Hudkins and her team of researchers at the University of South Florida conducted a study that focused on the impact that positive emotions, moods and overall satisfaction with life has on the health of teens.  Her research shows that these positive feelings, also known as subjective well-being are more significant than depression and anxiety when it comes to physical health.  Psychopathology has long been where the emphasis is placed when it comes to determining how the mind and body are connected. 

Hudkins conducted an experiment with 401 students, grades 6-8 from a suburban southeastern middle school in the US.  She monitored both their subjective well-being and psychopathological tendencies.  The study asked questions about the teens’ satisfaction with life; whether they were strong, proud and excited, and whether they felt lonely, guilty, or sad.  What Hudkins founds is that good mental health most often is linked to good physical health.  Mental health indicators explain roughly 30 percent of the difference in physical health ratings.  The findings show that subjective well-being has a significant, unique and primary affect on predicting important physical health outcomes in youth.  In other words, subjective well-being is more strongly associated with physical functioning than psychopathology.

What Emily proposes is that we change our wellness models to ones that are more holistic, so as to incorporate the entire spectrum.  With current standards, the subjective well-being is often overlooked in terms of its impact on physical health when it actually is more prominent than poor mental health in terms of how much it can affect the body.

In the recent CNN article “Parents, don’t dress your girls like tramps” author LZ Granderson discusses what for some might be an uncomfortable topic. Some of the main points in his article are:

• Some parents dress their young girls in provocative outfits
• Retailers have encouraged this behavior by marketing inappropriate clothing
• It’s OK to blame retailers, but it’s parents who are ultimately responsible
• Children need parents who will set rules, not be their friends

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The following was originally posted on James’s Project by Mary Ellen Mannix, MRPE. The mission of James’s Project is to find, support, and help work that protects infants in their first year of life. James’s Project aims to reduce infant mortality by focusing on patient safety isssues that affect the start of life. Our tools are education, communication, and collaboration.

Rainy days and Saturdays get me down. (Sounds like a good song lyric.) Rainy days force a quiet among the constant buzz of activity. Saturdays are the closest thing to a once a week siesta. Nearly ten years ago, on a Saturday morning I had to to reflect on the beliefs I had held dear all my life as I was holding my newborn son who had just died. It took more than five years before I could wake up on a Saturday without feeling a desire to go back to sleep.

Today the rains came and brought with them memories of a Saturday past. Tears and frustration and disappointment rallied. Those feelings don’t make me feel very peaceful. Taking the analytical approach learned in grad school, I identified five causes for a peace builder in health care to have anger, frustration and the occasional tears.

Poor communication. This is a well-documented root cause for most every medical error. Earlier this week Kathleen Sebelius of the Dept of Health and Human Services and Don Berwick, MD of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare announced the creation of a $500 billion initiative to encourage more collaboration between hospitals, health care providers, community organizations, and employers, etc to improve care and lower costs. James’s Project was among the first ten organizations to make the public pledge for the Partnership for Patients: Better Care, Lower Costs in the greater Philadelphia area. Through this website consumer and clinical organizations can seek out others with similar values for collaboration. When a cancer patient called me this week sharing she had left the hospital without discharge instructions together we took a look at this website. The large teaching hospital had not yet pledged. By the end of the week, the institution had taken the pledge but the patient is still waiting for her discharge instructions. This is new resource where patients can grab the wheels and drive change by asking their hospital, health care system, insurer and or doctor if they have signed the pledge. Also ask – what community or patients group are you collaborating with?

Gag Clauses. As a rule, people love to hate the plaintiff in a medmal case. If you actually disagree with me, think of before you knew a loved one who died from medical errors. Americans love to love the whitecoats. Anyone associated with a trial lawyer automatically becomes a blackhat.
I believe in the judicial system our forefathers created. Everything breaks down at times. As a teacher, I hope that learning happens from mistakes. With James’s case, it was clear the physicians had as much of a right to a fair trial as my son did. It could have all been spared if open communication between us had been allowed. I was offered $750K to not go to trial and to not speak of my son’s whole life. All I wanted was to cover my attorney’s fees (about 45K at that point) and a 5 minute conversation with one of the defendants. It was not an acceptable counter offer evidently.
I can reflect now that I did get that conversation (and much more than 5 minutes) with two doctors (not just the one) and I did that all on my own.
Despite the tremendous pain of our shared trauma we have been able to heal by restoring a relationship. Our story and how we did it is how money in health care conflicts can be saved. More importantly, it teaches so many what not to do when they may find themselves in a similarly shared event. I have spent years and dollars investing in formal education to share this. (more…)

By Hope Ditto. It’s the morning after the Academy Awards, barely twelve hours after the last little golden Oscar statue was presented, and your eyes are still burning with images of what our society conventionally considers “beauty” . The Oscars are essentially a parade of broadly accepted beautiful people with beautiful hair and beautiful figures in beautiful clothing adorned with beautiful accessories and beautiful shoes. Between last night’s red carpet glam-fest, that certain day of the year devoted solely to love and beauty two weeks ago and the annual release of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue last week, you’re probably feeling like February’s dished out all the beauty you can handle in a measly 28 days. In reality, it isn’t beauty you’re fed up with — rather it’s the media’s perception of what should constitute beauty that has got you so fed up. So if you’re at your wit’s end with the notion that a toned bikini bod and/or a pair of really expensive shoes are the be all and end all when it comes to appearances, keep reading, because our February Man of the Month – photographer Rick Guidotti – has devoted his career to capturing beauty of a different sort. And we could find no better way to celebrate our favorite February holiday (my apologies to GW and Abe) – Rare Disease Day – than by honoring Rick’s work.

Rick Guidotti

Rick Guidotti began his career focusing, like most fashion and portraiture photographers, on capturing traditional beauty. Educated at New York’s School of Visual Arts and based in Manhattan, Guidotti enjoyed the glamorous life of a successful high fashion photographer – snapping shots of conventional beauties for clients like Yves Saint Laurent, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar in traditionally beautiful places like Milan, Paris and London.

But all of that changed in 1997, when Guidotti was drawn to focus his work on a different type of beauty – the “beauty of genetic diversity.” Seeking to gain attention for this beauty he had discovered, Guidotti joined forces with Diane McLean, MD, PhD, MPH and together, the pair founded Positive Exposure (PE) – “a nonprofit organization that challenges stigma associated with difference by pioneering a new vision of the beauty and richness of genetic diversity.” The organization “utilizes the visual arts to significantly impact the fields of genetics, mental health and human rights” by forging “cross-sector partnerships with health advocacy organizations, governmental agencies and educational institutions.” 

PE does not just display Rick’s photos, though. They sponsor a number of initiatives and programs aimed at concurrently capturing the beauty of those suffering from genetic conditions and educating the broader public about them.

Still, they’re known best for their flagship undertaking – the Spirit of Difference gallery, which is a collection of images and video interviews of people, particularly children, living with various genetic conditions. PE has an online version of the Spirit of Difference gallery that you can check out here.

That’s not all PE does to impact and improve the lives of those living with these conditions, though. The organization sponsors and puts on “Self-Esteem/Self-Advocacy photographic and interview workshops” and “diversity workshops” and conducts “portable, sustainable educational and human rights programs and multi media exhibitions for physicians, nurses, genetic counselors, health care professionals-in-training, universities, elementary and secondary schools, legislators and the general public” around the country and the world. Using the photos and video interviews that Rick has taken, presenters (oftentimes Rick himself) shed light on not only the beauty but the unique spirit of his subjects, helping people to look past the differences created by their conditions and see that special, indescribable quality that so captivated Rick some 14 years ago.

But don’t just take my word for it. Check out one of Rick’s presentations, entitled “Redefining Beauty”.  I know I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the holiday than by checking it out! And, for more information about Positive Exposure and its undertakings, you can visit their website.

By Lois Privor-Dumm. A decade can make a difference.  Eleven years ago this month, I had the privilege of launching pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV) here in the US.  It was a vaccine that I knew would have a profound impact on children and families all over the country, Protection against severe meningitis and other infections allowed American children to move along the path of their lives –with a low risk of this potentially life-changing catastrophic disease.

Children in developing countries though faced a different picture over the past decade. Pneumococcus in the developing world not only causes severe meningitis, but is a leading cause of pneumonia.  Without access to PCV, 3 month-old Dominic Mwangi, found himself in the district hospital undergoing antibiotic treatment for life-threatening pneumonia.  His mother was away from home and family for 3 days.  Dominic was lucky and recovered; An astonishing 1.5 million children, mainly in Africa and Asia, are not so lucky.  Almost half of all severe pneumonias and meningitis deaths are thought to be caused by bacteria that can be prevented by the use of vaccine. Much more disease could be prevented with better nutrition and access to care.   Dominic, because he was born in Kenya, was 112 times more likely to die of pneumonia than an American child.  In Afghanistan, that number is 400. 

2011 paints a more promising picture.   A new generation of vaccines from Pfizer and GSK providing the broader protection needed to fight pneumonia and meningitis in developing countries has been made available in Nicaragua, Yemen and now Kenya within a year of launching in the industrialized world.  By 2015 more than 40 countries will do the same. 

What changed?  It was a convergence of factors – pharmaceutical companies, seeing a greater likelihood of demand with secured financing, were willing to offer low prices to those most in need, supplying at prices of less than 90% of those in industrialized countries.  Low-income countries wanted the vaccine because they saw the potential impact and a plan again for financing.  Financing was needed – and eventually made possible by Italy, UK, Canada, Russia, Norway and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who donated $1.5B to the Pneumococcal AMC, an innovative financing mechanism and the GAVI Alliance who is making up the price differentials that low-income countries cannot manage as yet.   

It took a lot of effort to see these pieces fall into place, but one that can’t stop with just this example.   In a time where all of us are paying attention to how to do more with less, efforts like this one provide an important lesson of what is possible. Investing in health, individual countries have made dramatic economic progress and this will help all of us.  Take a look at this Hans Rosling video and you’ll see why investments in health are, well, a good investment.   Children of all nations deserve a solid foundation to become healthy adults. We have more to do, we need to keep going.

By Glenna Crooks. Sorry, this blog is not about sexy new vaccines – you know, ones that will prevent smoking, cure all cancers, stop obesity or eliminate wrinkles. This is about more ‘here and now’ matters. It addresses vaccines, vaccinators and non-vaccinators, contains a proposal for moving forward on immunizations and some folks – including my friends – are not going to like it. But then, they don’t call this a ‘disruptive’ site for nothin’.

It comes from my attendance at a CME course on vaccines held by Philly’s Children’s Hospital last weekend. I was privileged to hear great presentations and meet fantasic folks. Despite my work in vaccines over several decades in both government and industry, some information was ‘new’ for me, crystallizing issues and controversies in vaccines.   

 Here’s the good news:

Pediatric vaccines continue to prevent suffering, save lives and money. CDC studies show 14 million cases of disease prevented, 33,000 deaths, $9.9 Billion in direct medical costs and $43.4 Billion in savings to society. New vaccines have been added to the schedule. Is that cool or what? When I was in government, companies were leaving vaccines in droves. They’re coming back. Good news.

Rates of underinsurance for children’s vaccines have not increased, despite the new numbers of vaccines (and therefore additional cost for fully immunizing a child). Insurance and Vaccines for Children (VFC) funding is covering kids pretty well.

Pediatricians and their nurses remain unsung heroes, not getting nearly enough credit for the complexity they manage in the number of vaccines and the cost of the inventories they carry, despite the reality that they’re not adequately compensated. They could have long ago abdicated this aspect of a child’s good health. They haven’t. That’s very good news.

Kids aren’t traumatized by having many vaccines administered at once. In fact, research has demonstrated that only the first shot creates the ‘cortisol-raising’ indication of a stress reaction, subsequent shots (sometimes 3-4 others) administered at the same time, don’t.

We’re actually putting fewer antigens into kids today than at any time in history, even though we give many more vaccines! Wow, who knew?! In 1900, the smallpox vaccine had 198 antigens. In 1960, with DTP and polio added, that totaled 3,200 antigens. Today, it’s only 166-169 antigens, in part because we’ve eradicated smallpox and in part because vaccines have been improved. 

Kids – even babies – can handle those vaccines immunologically. Humans develop the capacity to respond to foreign antigens at 14 weeks gestation. There are few foreign antigens present in utero, but babies’ immune systems are challenged right from the moment of birth and have enormous immunologic capacity. And, right from the moment of birth babies can be exposed to the diseases that vaccines prevent. They’re at risk and we need to protect them, when they can be immunized they need to be and when they can’t herd immunity is needed to protect them. (more…)

Every three seconds, a child somewhere in the world dies due to the lack of basic health care. Of those children under the age of five, almost two-thirds could be saved with simple low-cost health interventions, if only they had access to basic health care.

Save the Children is addressing this with their “See where the good goes” campaign. Launched in partnership with the Ad Council, the Good Goes campaign aims to mobilize citizen action in the U.S. to help local health workers save more children worldwide by using social media strategies to raise awareness about the importance of local health workers in developing countries.

Every four seconds, a child survives thanks to the basic health care provided by local health workers – such as the ones Save the Children helps train and supply in villages around the world. Frontline local health workers can help children survive threats like newborn complications, pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition every day. Global estimates suggest that we need more than four million more local health care workers in order to save the children – the education and supplies for which quickly add up.

To highlight both the need and benefits of local health workers, the Good Goes campaign provides participants with a chance to actually “See where the good goes” – to see exactly what Save the Children funds provide – as a means of encouraging donations. Save the Children and the Ad Council show  rather than tell website visitors how their donations will improve the condition and quality of life of millions of children, weaving together various social media platforms to paint a more comprehensive picture of how funding improves the living conditions and daily lives of children at all corners of the globe.

The campaign’s website serves as a portal ready to transport visitors to remote corners of the world and allow them to experience firsthand the horrors and hardships of daily life. Personal blogs from local health care workers not only contextualize the experience, but add a visual element as well. The Great Wall of Good Facebook app  demonstrates how many have already pledged their support, and how many more it will take in order to save the children. The Action Center offers additional ways to get involved and make a difference beyond monetary donations. Each different social media platform provides a different viewpoint, a different insight and a different way to get involved. Put them all together and you get a very different kind of awareness/advocacy campaign.

By Santi Bhagat. We all know how hard it is to advocate for ourselves, our spouses and our parents.  But can you imagine having to advocate for your child day in and day out for the rest of your life?  This is the harsh reality faced by many parents of children with childhood-onset health conditions and disabilities.  And believe me, it is hard!  When my perfectly healthy child became critically ill at the age of 8 years, I went from being a medical fellow to a life-long, full-time parent advocate. 

I learned everything I didn’t want to know about the health care system, but I eventually realized that the knowledge I acquired as an advocate is equally critical to health care practitioners if they are to provide quality health care, i.e., the right care the right way at the right time.  Adding the dimension of patient-centered care means care is delivered the way patients need and want it. 

Right now, we are still learning how to advocate for the right care the right way at the right time.  It looks like we’ll have to wait a while to get care the way we need and want it.   

As a parent and a physician, I had to be extra careful in the pediatric health care world.  If I came across as too demanding, I would have been dismissed as a neurotic or helicopter parent.  (I know a couple of physician-parents who were erroneously said to have Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy.)  If I didn’t advocate, I risked danger.  In every situation, I had to find the fine line between objectivity and subjectivity, to assure myself that I truly was balanced in my approach. 

The problem is that even though most of us know what to advocate for, we are still dealing with human beings in the health care system.  They have pressures and barriers, they have egos, they have feelings – and they have the knowledge.  The art of advocacy is getting health care providers to do the following:

• Provide the best care so the patient achieves and maintains optimal health, and
• Empower patients with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions and self-manage their health and health care. 

The art of advocacy should empower health care providers to practice the art of medicine.

Parent advocates have another equally complex system to tackle: the education system.  After learning about all the various laws, e.g., American with Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, parents have to learn about the culture of their child’s school as well as the county and state educational systems.  Then, parents have to advocate with human beings in the educational system to practice the art of education.

When our children grow up and enter adulthood, all the rules change and we are back at square one again.  The only consistency is that the systems are devoid of supports, and as parents, it is up to us to start over and learn from scratch on how to advocate for young adults with childhood-onset conditions and disabilities.

By Diana Long.  At the end of May I participated in Disruptive Women’s  Breakfast Series, Childhood Obesity:  A Big Fat National Challenge.  We were supporting the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign. 

Don Mathis, a fellow panel member, and CEO Community Action Partnership provided an interesting perspective.  “We’ve watched the obesity numbers for adults more than double over the last three decades.  Why didn’t we realize that it was just a matter of time before we saw the same trend in our children?”  Childhood obesity has tripled over the last 30 years and now stands at 17% of children and adolescents (ages 2-19); the percentage of overweight children is at, or above, 30 percent in 30 states.  Obese children and adolescents are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes and are more likely to have learning problems.

At the end of last month the CDC released a new report on adult obesity.  The news is “America’s waistline is still growing, or holding steady in some states, but not shrinking at all.”  In other words, we’re still fat.  Thirty-four percent (34%) of us are overweight and another 31% are obese.  If you’re wondering if this includes you, according to the National Institutes of Health “anyone with a body mass index (a ratio between your height and weight) of 25 or above – that’s someone, for example, who is 5-foot-4 and 145 pounds — is considered overweight.  Anyone with a body mass index of 30 or above — such as someone who is 5-foot-6 and 186 pounds — is considered obese.”  You can check out your own BMI using the quick calculators on the CDC or WebMD websites. 

So who’s the fattest?  The CDC Report states “In 2007-2008, the prevalence of obesity was 32.2% among adult men and 35.5% among adult women”.  Some good news, however, “The increases in the prevalence of obesity previously observed do not appear to be continuing at the same rate over the past 10 years, particularly for women and possibly for men.”  A 2009 analysis commissioned by Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that “the Baby Boomer generation has a higher rate of obesity compared with previous generations.  As the Baby Boomer generation ages, obesity-related costs to Medicare and Medicaid are likely to grow significantly because of the large number of people in this population and its high rate of obesity.  And, as Baby Boomers become Medicare-eligible, the percentage of obese adults age 65 and older could increase significantly.”

In her June 6, 2010 DW blog Fox TV’s Dr. Archelle Georgiou shared questions from her viewing audience that were especially interesting to her.  Charles, a 5’8” gentleman weighing in at 215 lbs., wrote in for help with his weight problem.  When he received Dr. Georgious’ advice, however, he seemingly took offense (or had a good sense of humor) and asked “So what you’re saying is I’m fat?”  “Yup!”, she replied, then editorialized “I’m amazed at how often people convince themselves that the BMI definitions of overweight and obesity don’t apply to them.” (more…)

By Santi Bhagat, MD.  It seems that children with chronic medical conditions and disabilities (CMCD) just disappear into thin air when they grow up.  No-one tracks these young people, so we have no idea what happens to them.  We don’t know if they have insurance and doctors; are sick and in emergency rooms; go to school and have jobs; and/or live independently and have social lives. It is estimated that 600,000 young people with CMCD enter adulthood every year, into a system devoid of any supports and services, a system that is completely unprepared for them.  

To help improve things for children with CMCD as they transition into young adults , Physician-Parent Caregivers (PPC), is launching EMERGE–a new campaign  next week…stay tuned…I will be blogging more about that in the coming weeks.  

In the meantime, I would like to introduce a special PPC young adult leader, Amy Long.  Amy is one of America’s 8.2 million amazing young adults with CMCD who push through barrier after barrier and never give up on their dreams.  Amy gave me permission to share her first person account of what it is like to be a young adult with a chronic medical condition.  She calls it, the Google Circus.

GOOGLE Circus

Five years ago, I aged out of my pediatric skeletal dysplasia clinic (a place for kids with bone diseases).   I will never forget my first two adult medicine experiences….The first happened late one Fall evening. 

I was in college dorm my senior year and I woke up  from a late afternoon nap with a terrible headache, flashes of light and floating dots in my vision. I have a rare connective tissue disorder and form of arthritis called Kniest Syndrome that puts me at risk for a detached retina.  The flashes of light and floaters are common symptoms of retina disease.  Retina detachment is only fixable in the first 24 hours. I immediately called Student Health who told me they could get me into see an eye doctor next week.  I tried to explain that I couldn’t wait that long but no one seemed to take me seriously. All the doctors had left for the day. I called a friend and we drove the Emergency department.

We arrive. I spell Kniest no less than 3 times for the tirage nurses. They lead me back to the eye exam room and leave the door open with my chart hanging there. The doctor grabs my chart, starts to come in, looks at my file. His eyes widen and he backs out of the room. Through the open door I watch him try to Google Kiiest Syndrome.  He flips through the links and then finally after five minutes comes back in and sheepishly asks me, “So what exactly is going on?” I tell him, yeah I have a migraine-like headache, and I am seeing stars. I have a collagen disorder that causes high myopia and thus very fragile retinas. “Yes, yes, how exactly do you spell your condition?” I spell Kniest 2 more times.  I then watch him turn around and type Kniest Syndrome into Google. (more…)

By Joy Burwell. Thanks to this morning’s panelists Gwen Tolbart, Don Mathis, Diana Long, Aimee Smith and Rainey Friedman for their insights. This event would not have been possible without our sponsors The Hill and Candace Littell, so thanks to them as well. If you weren’t able to attend, you’ll want to read this summary post. And stay tuned for the video; we should have that edited and posted next week.

Childhood obesity was the subject of today’s Disruptive Women in Health Care’s Monthly Breakfast Series Childhood Obesity: A Big Fat National Challenge. Childhood obesity has received a great deal of media attention with First Lady Michelle Obama making it one of her platforms. As noted by all of this morning’s speakers her “Let’s Move!” campaign is well laid out and has the potential for success if we all take a role in its implementation.

Gwen Tolbart a Professional Speaker, award winning television broadcaster and moderator of this morning’s event opened with a vibrant description of a disruptive woman in her life who helped shape her views, including ones on childhood obesity.

Don Mathis, President & CEO of the Community Action Partnership discussed the issue on the federal level. He made three important points: obese kids do not do well in school, they have numerous health problems throughout their lives and they cause a national security problem by decreasing the number of individuals physically able to serve in the military. Additionally, he discussed the issue children in low-income areas have accessing healthy food, commonly referred to as food insecurity or more recently, food deserts.

Next, we took the discussion to more of a local level hearing from Diana Long and Aimee Smith, both of whom have been or are involved in the Philadelphia YMCA. The key to solving childhood obesity from their perspective, is small concrete steps. The ultimate goal is to build social values that will create the necessary behavioral changes. One way the Philadelphia Y is doing its part is by giving all seventh graders in Philadelphia a free YMCA membership. By doing this they are trying to catch kids at a point in time when they are impressionable and need the support to make healthy decisions.

Last but most certainly not least, Rainey Friedman discussed the importance of meeting kids where they are, which today is online. She also stressed the importance of making physical activities fun (and subliminally educational). As founder and executive director of the DreamDog Foundation, an organization that targets childhood development through preschool education and literacy, she had great experiences to share on how to accomplish this. One example she offered was when she developed and taught kids a song about the negative consequences of drinking soda. When she went back to meet with those same kids they had mastered the song and a vast majority of them had cut out sodas. Her final message and a good one to close with was: we need less talk and more action to address childhood obesity in the US…LET’S MOVE!

We hope you will join us for the next breakfast meeting, “HEALTH 2.0: User-Generated Health Care,” June 8, 2010 from 7:30 a.m.-9 a.m. in the Rayburn House Office Building. If you are interested in attending, please register here: www.disruptivewomen.net/breakfastseries. Men are welcome, encouraged even, to attend. We doubled the number of men, so come on, you know you want to.

Don Mathis put it this way: would you rather be in a room with boring men pontificating or in a room full of Disruptive Women in Health Care.

Zoe, our first grader, had a homework assignment this week for her class unit on families. Each child was asked to bring in pictures showing the holidays they celebrate at home. Independent as usual, Zoe ruffled through a series of albums and selected four photos that she wanted to take to school. “These are pictures from our holidays,” she announced. “Here’s us lighting the menorah for Hanukkah; this was Rosh Hashanah dinner; here’s a picture of me with the Passover Seder plate; and here we are on our cruise!”

“Zoe, WHAT are you talking about?” I asked. “Cruises aren’t a holiday.”
“Yes they are mom. We do it every year. It’s a tradition!”

The reflex was to correct her. But, I realized that I was the one who had literally and figuratively missed the boat. I was boxed in to the traditional definition of “holiday” as a religious, cultural or national event. However, Zoe, with her seven years of wisdom, freely interpreted “holidays” as those times when we predictably spend dedicated time together as a family. To her, it is about the experience…not the calendar. Needless to say, she turned in her homework assignment with the pictures she originally selected.

The interaction was an important reminder: words take on the meaning we assign to them.

So, I started thinking about other words that are chock full of boundaries like…”family.”

What is family? The Latin term “familia” means household. The first entry in Webster’s Dictionary says family is “a group of individuals living under one roof and usually under one head.”  The Census Bureau defines family as “two or more persons, including the householder, who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption, and who live together as one household.”

Until we leave home in early adulthood, our family–particularly parents and siblings–is our most important and reliable source of guidance, love, and protection.  Ideally, our birth family continues to be a source of strength and support for us even as we marry, have our own children, and live under a different roof with our new family.  Unfortunately, all too often, the dynamics with our parents are stressful and sibling rivalry re-surfaces. Nevertheless, we generally make great efforts and sacrifices to maintain a connection with the family we grew up with.  We forgive, we tolerate, we turn the other cheek, and we try hard to make it work. It’s important.

But why? Why is it important to maintain relationships with parents and siblings? I have asked this question of others and myself over the last year. I couldn’t arrive at a logical answer on my own and kept getting answers from others that seemed superficial:
“Because they are family!” Circular logic. Doesn’t fly.
“Because blood is thicker than water.” Sorry. Last I checked, parents and siblings don’t share a common vascular system.
“Because you can’t divorce your family.” A bit irrelevant. You can’t get divorced if you never married them.

It was Laura Engler’s response that finally made sense to me:
“Archelle, staying connected to family is important because you have shared history. They are the only people who don’t need an explanation for a quirk, a family ritual, or an inside joke. They just know.”

I got it. Family = those individuals with whom we grow, develop memories, and have trust.  If we give ourselves the freedom to transcend the boundaries of the etymologic or legal definitions of “family,” then we realize that our dearest friends…are truly family. What a gift! At the same time, blood relatives with whom we no longer have memories, trust, or love…are not. While this perspective may be hard to swallow, accepting and understanding it offers peace and consolation when lifelong bonds are permanently fractured.

This of course leads to more questions: What are the definitions of friend, trust, and love. What about hope, peace, and life? Their meaning is important and very personal to you. Don’t  passively rely on traditional norms or Webster’s Dictionary. Take the time to remember your experiences around these words. Then, give yourself permission to think and act like a 7 year old who is old enough to be observant and thoughtful while young enough to see the world through a fresh new lens.

Create Health,
Archelle

This blog entry was originally posted in Archelle On Health on May 21, 2010.

Earlier this week Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the World Health Organization, addressed the World Health Assembly in Geneva and brought up the topic of vaccines. She noted some of the successes in addressing the world’s health and development issues and stated that “vaccines are among the best life-saving buys on offer, preventing an estimated 2-3 million deaths per year.” In the next minutes, however, she also addressed the setbacks – occurring when people decide that vaccines are too risky. She counted the problems with measles, pandemic vaccines and polio.

In fact, I just finished reading a unique recount of the measles vaccine controversy. Something that wasn’t a paper at all, but a comic strip type account that said it all. I highly you encourage to read this. For those of you not familiar with the Andrew Wakefield measles saga, the British doctor claimed the administration of MMR vaccine was linked to autism.

The media was all over this and picked it up everywhere. Unfortunately, despite a lack of evidence to support his claims, co-authors who later removed their names claiming the study was flawed and a retraction from the Lancet in Feb 2010 after the General Medical Council in the UK found his conduct “dishonest and irresponsible” (more than a decade later), the damage was done and continues to be felt. Fueled by sensationalist media reports, many parents in the UK and around the world chose not to vaccinate their children and outbreaks of measles began to occur. The misinformation was further propagated by celebrities who get more TV coverage than the scientists who have shown through studies that there is no link between autism and vaccines.

Every adult has the right to consider what is best for themselves or their child. But shouldn’t more be done to consider the impact of disregarding the evidence has on others? There will always be risks with vaccines and science can’t always find or predict every risk. The experience with measles vaccines and the supposed link with autism shows that there also health consequences when individuals refuse to accept the findings of rigorous research.

By Lois Privor-Dumm. How many times have you seen a single photograph that has caused you to stop what you’re doing and find out more, tell a friend or donate money?  We read so much about the problems of the world today and, if you’re like me, unless the issue is already close to your heart, words alone may not be enough to register.

Salim Khan, 3 year old pneumonia survivor from Bijnor, India by Ándre J. Fanthome

A photo contest seems like such a simple thing, but it’s a way to enable a problem to reach into our hearts and minds.  Pneumonia is a leading killer of the world’s young children, but the disease has very real and practical solutions.  Although I see the statistics and understand the scientific pathways, nothing impacts me more than seeing how the disease affects families and children or reaches the heart of a pediatrician.  These moments are often captured powerfully with the click of a camera.  While one child with pneumonia may seem just like a number to many, it is these stories and images that can make a difference.

Photoshare, Kids 4, Health, the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia are sponsoring a photo contest to find the image that will make a difference in our minds.  Nikon will award digital cameras to category winners.  And, if you’re fans of Ann Curry of the Today Show and Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, you’re in luck.  They, along with a professional photographer, are the judges.   Submitting a photo that jumps off the page and tells an important story would be a great way to get your experience and talent, or that of a friend, family or colleague in front of our celebrity panel.  For more information, click here.  Details on the time and place of the photo exhibit to unveil contest winners and finalists will be announced shortly. (more…)