Archive for the ‘Publc Health’ Category

Food is inextricably bound up with health whether we are well or not. Several key areas of the Food = Health ecosystem made the news this week which, together, will impact public and personal health.

On the employer health benefits front, more media are covering the story on CVS strongly incentivizing employees to drop body mass index (BMI) through behavioral economics-inspired health plan design of a $50 peer month penalty. (more…)

On Friday, January 18th the EPA, Amplify Public Affairs and Green for All co-hosted a panel discussion at EPA Headquarters which marked the launch of the BeGreen2013 movement (check out DW’s summary blog post of the launch here).  The BeGreen2013 movement is predicated on the idea that the actions of individuals can be a significant factor in moving towards a healthier environment, and the panelists shared stories about how they have worked to make a difference in their communities by shifting to more sustainable practices and motivating others to do the same. With Earth Day right around the corner celebrate by joining the movement, go to www.BeGreen2013.com! (more…)

In a grassland wildfire, when the fire is spreading so quickly that there’s no way to run away from it, there’s one last solution to save yourself: an escape fire. In this technique, you light a ring of fire around you, using up the fuel that is feeding the wildfire so that it has nothing to burn when it reaches you. The problem is, when you’re running for your life, the most effective solution is also the least obvious – stopping in your tracks to light a fire is the last thing a panicked person would think to do. You could die from your inability to face and accept the choice that is right in front of you.

That’s the idea behind the title of the film Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare. I had a chance to see it this weekend on CNN (it’s available now online and on DVD), and it makes a compelling argument that our current system for dealing with rising health care costs and falling positive health outcomes is akin to running away from a seemingly insurmountable problem when there are solutions right in front of us. In example after example, patients dealing with chronic illness, which is the main driver of skyrocketing health care costs, are dealt with by disease management that does nothing in the way of future prevention. (more…)

If all women around the world breastfed their babies immediately after birth, the lives of 830,000 babies a year could be saved, Save the Children estimates in a new report released today. 

In “Superfood for Babies,” the international humanitarian and development agency identified four significant barriers that prevent more women from successfully breastfeeding, including during the critical “power hour” after birth.  They are: cultural and community pressures, the health worker shortage, lack of maternity legislation, and aggressive marketing of breast-milk substitutes. 

“Last year, we saw a lot of handwringing in this country over how long is too long for moms to breastfeed.  But the real scandal is that many moms around the world don’t get the support they need to start breastfeeding early – or even at all.  It’s a choice all moms should have, and in the developing world it can literally be a matter of life and death for their babies,” said Carolyn Miles, President & CEO of Save the Children.

Breastfeeding in the “power hour” after birth saves lives

The colostrum, as the first milk is called, jump starts a baby’s immune system.  Earlier breastfeeding also leads to higher rates of exclusive breastfeeding for six months, which further reduces vulnerability to malnutrition and deadly disease, Save the Children’s new report explains.  (more…)

This Friday, January 18, Disruptive Women will be at an exciting event in Washington, DC: The National Summit on Environmental Education and Sustainability. Presented by the Environmental Protection Agency, Green for All and Amplify Public Affairs, the summit is a national dialogue on how individual environmental actions can make a positive impact on the environment. (more…)

What is more disruptive than changing the law so that you can run for a third term as mayor of New York City? Not much… except that our December Man of the Month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, used his third term to take on some of the most controversial issues of our time.

Mayor Bloomberg made headlines earlier this year with his soda ban. In an effort to curb the rising rate of obesity he put in motion a ban on the sale of sodas and other sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces at restaurants and concession stands. While this was not his first anti-obesity effort — he is well known for requiring fast-food and chain restaurants to label their menus with calorie information — the soda ban was particularly disruptive, causing both outrage and praise in New Yorke and across the country. Whether or not you agree with this ban, one thing is for sure: the entire country will be watching to see what impact it has on obesity rates. (more…)

Yesterday the Atlantic held the second of three events in its Community Health Tour, in which leaders on the frontlines of community health join panelists in a conversation to identify and solve problems. Yesterday’s conversation in St. Louis, MO featured panelists Robert Fruend, CEO of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission; Joy Krieger, Executive Director of the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, St. Louis Chapter; Melba Moore, Health Commissioner for the City of St. Louis; and Dr. Jason Purnell, Assistant Professor at the Brown School of Social Work and Public Health at Washington University.

The panelists weighed in on the progress being made and challenges to be reckoned with in St. Louis. Socioeconomic disparities remain one of the toughest hurdles to overcome in creating healthier communities. Low incomes and lack of education and information tend to be indicators of other health factors such as smoking and poor diet. Add this to a general lack of access to health services and you begin to see a population that is becoming sicker over time, unable to tackle either disease management or prevention. (more…)

Earlier this year, Disruptive Women in Health Care launched a partnership with the EPA where we will be examining issues of health and the environment as they relate to women and children. The primary focus of this partnership will be a series of ebooks that looks at topics where women’s health and the environment intersect, and these will be accompanied by special events co-hosted by Disruptive Women and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. (more…)

When it comes to maintaining respiratory health, living in an environment with good air quality is clearly an important factor. In many urban areas inhabited by low-income populations, this clean air is nowhere to be found. Having green space within a city can play a significant role in reducing air pollution as well as mitigating the dangerous urban heat island effect. The need for green space is often recognized in more affluent parts of a city, while low-income areas are neglected. When these less affluent communities are overlooked, there can be serious health consequences such as the extreme disparity in negative asthma outcomes in the black and Hispanic children who inhabit these neglected areas.  In this article, Planet Forward and the National Society of Landscape Architects examine the benefits that parks can have for the health and prosperity of low-income urban communities. (more…)

Jovante Woods

By Chandra Baldwin-Woods. An asthma attack turned my world upside just less than two years ago, and it has never been the same since. After returning home from football practice on a typical hot, muggy August day, my 16-year-old son Jovante suffered an asthma attack that rendered him unconscious from anoxic brain injury. Jovante’s father and I spent the next four days by his side in the hospital praying for his recovery, which was not to be.

I do not have adequate words to describe the pain of losing a child. It’s something no parent should ever have to experience. Knowing that we will never watch Jovante graduate high school, attend college or experience the joy of starting a family is a pain we must live with every day. (more…)

Children living in urban centers have a much higher prevalence of food allergies than those living in rural areas, according to a new study, which is the first to map children’s food allergies by geographical location in the United States. In particular, kids in big cities are more than twice as likely to have peanut and shellfish allergies compared to rural communities.

The study, which was funded by the Food Allergy Initiative (FAI), will be published in the July issue of Clinical Pediatrics.

“We have found for the first time that higher population density corresponds with a greater likelihood of food allergies in children,” said lead author Ruchi Gupta, M.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago (formerly Children’s Memorial). “This shows that environment has an impact on developing food allergies.  Similar trends have been seen for related conditions like asthma. The big question is – what in the environment is triggering them? A better understanding of environmental factors will help us with prevention efforts.”

Gupta, also a researcher at the Institute for Healthcare Studies at the Feinberg School, said some of her future research will focus on trying to identify the environmental causes.

The study included 38,465 children, 18 years and under, who comprised a representative sample of U.S. households. Their food allergies were mapped by ZIP code.

Here are the key findings:

• In urban centers, 9.8 percent of children have food allergies, compared to 6.2 percent in rural communities, almost a 3.5 percent difference. (more…)

By Andre Blackman. Remember when we said that you shouldn’t miss 2012 DC Health Data + Innovation Week? Well, we weren’t playing around! The past several days at the “epicenter of health innovation” as our friend Ted Eytan would put it, will go down in the history books. With data scientists, health/medical professionals and technologists literally coming from different parts of the globe to tackle health innovation, the movement began to feel even more real.

Kicking off the week was the Health 2.0 Code-A-Thon at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health, which brought together coders to make an impact in the fight against obesity in the country. With great discussions led by local visionaries including Alisa Hughley of enBloom Media, the teams got to work to build meaningful platforms to address issues around food and physical activity. The best thing about the code-a-thon event is that something is actually built and ready to be used right afterward! Here’s some thoughts on the weekend from the Center for Total Health’s blog:

While the judging was close, the Healthy Plate team came in second (for a prize of $3,000), and the School Fit team took top honors—and $4,000—for its app that addressed the childhood obesity epidemic by building transparency.  School Fit’s app combined ranking school fitness levels with location information, really targeting the issue of obesity via civic, educational, social and family connections.  Check out photos from the two-day event here, and for a thoughtful perspective on the Code-a-Thon process, take a look at these two blog posts from Ted Eytan, MD.  Alex Howard Storified the weekend, too—you can see a social media snapshot of the event right here.

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By Elliot Patton. Close to 26 million Americans suffer from asthma, including 1 out of every 10 children, and asthma costs our economy about $56 billion per year.  The condition affects racial and ethnic minorities at a dramatically disproportionate rate; African American and Puerto Rican children under the age of 17 are twice as likely as their Caucasian counterparts to be affected by this respiratory condition.  Asthma rates are also correlated with income, with lower income individuals having a significantly higher chance of affliction.  In addition to increased prevalence of asthma in minority populations, minority individuals with asthma are much more likely to have a serious asthma-related health event; black asthmatic children are twice as likely as white children to be hospitalized and four times more likely to die as a result of their condition.

In an event that marked the beginning of a push to end the suffering of these underserved populations, government leaders met yesterday at the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington for the official release of the Coordinated Federal Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Asthma Disparities.  White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Shaun Donovan, and Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius discussed the significance of the action plan, and a 10 member panel delved deeper into the details of the coordinated effort to reduce racial and ethnic asthma disparities.

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By Andre Blackman

I was recently on a call with the AIDS.gov team and a group of other noted leaders in the health field. The call event was aimed at developing smarter ways to reach and engage communities of color around HIV/AIDS prevention and education. Each of us had great case studies, resources and personal stories to share about how to make a positive impact in the ongoing battle of the disease in these communities.

One thing we all need to keep in mind: this fight is still very real, still claiming lives and there are still many areas that need change. Sometimes, no amount of technology or marketing can help until the people change. Stigma, oppression and often times misinformation still causes a large amount of the disease’s reach. That needs to change in order for the larger impact to begin.
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