Journalist | Author | Speaker

Blog, Health disparities

Type in a ZIP code in this new atlas, and see how place shapes health

by Suzanne Bohan
July 18, 2018

For years, Dr. Amy Kind has been keenly aware that the neighborhoods in which her patients live often hinder their recovery. She described, for example, how worries over neighborhood safety deter home health care staff from visiting some of her low-income patients to check on their recovery. In one case, that lack of follow-up care meant a 78-year-old patient with mild dementia forgot to take his antibiotics to treat his pneumonia, and was readmitted three days after leaving the hospital.

Kind, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, also described the futility of, say, diabetes education for patients who live in substandard housing that lacks adequate refrigeration in which to store insulin. Or how some people are too embarrassed to tell their doctors that they often can’t afford to heat their homes….

To read the rest of the column, visit its original posting site at the Center for Health Journalism.

Blog, Health disparities, Health equity

Access to credit and savings plays a key role in promoting health

by Suzanne Bohan
July 18, 2018

When Jennifer Bui, a resident of the low-income San Diego neighborhood of City Heights, turned 18, she started concentrating on her financial future.

“I was really interested in building my credit and building my financial power, in a way,” said Bui, now 19 and studying engineering and physics at Brown University in Rhode Island.

After watching her mother struggle with debt, she was determined take control of her finances. “It’s so heartbreaking to see my mom paying all of this interest,” Bui said. Her mother opened department store credit cards, but didn’t understand that the high interest rate accrues on the entire amount, if not paid in full. Occasionally she also forgot the due date, and got hit with late fees.

“It definitely stresses her out. She worries about it all the time, like how to pay them off,” Bui said.

Bui was leery of opening a credit card account, in part because of her mother’s experience. Then she learned of a new credit union in City Heights — a rare offering in an area with far more payday lenders, pawn shops and check-cashing outlets than bank branches.

It’s called Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and it opened in April 2017, largely through a $3 million loan and with $400,000 in grants from the California Endowment, the state’s largest health foundation…

To read the rest of the column, visit its original posting site at the Center for Health Journalism.

Blog

Childhood hunger linked to violent behavior later in life

by Suzanne Bohan
June 21, 2018

New research from the University of Texas shows that children who often go hungry have a greater risk of developing impulse control problems and engaging in violence.

Dr. Alex Piquero with University of Texas.

Dr. Alex Piquero with University of Texas.

Those who experienced frequent hunger as kids were more than twice as likely to exhibit impulsivity and injure others intentionally as adolescents and adults, according to the study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The findings were strongest among whites, Hispanics and males.

Many other studies link food insecurity to other adverse outcomes, like poor academic performance and of course health issues. But this is the first to connect it to violent behavior. It simply makes ending the reality of poor access to healthy foods – and enough of it – to all kids an imperative.

“Good nutrition is not only critical for academic success, but now we’re showing that it links to behavioral patterns. When kids start to fail in school, they start to fail in other domains of life,” said Dr. Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Texas.

Read the full article at: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/uota-rlc062016.php

""/
Health, Health disparities

Dishing out nutrition lessons during soccer practice

by Suzanne Bohan
February 24, 2018
A group of kids in South Los Angeles is getting a lesson in nutrition during a break in their "Soccer for Success" practice session.

A group of kids in South Los Angeles is getting a lesson in nutrition during a break in their “Soccer for Success” practice session.

“Who can tell me what is a grain?” asked a coach at a “Soccer for Success” session with young children last summer on a South Los Angeles playing field. “Wheat!” a young boy called out.

“Who knows the difference between a good wheat and a bad wheat?” she asked next. “One is a brown one and one is a white one.”

Several of the kids, mostly five- and six-year olds, called out white and then one said brown.

“You get a high five for that one,” the coach said. “The brown one is better. If you eat bread, if you eat pasta, if you want to eat anything the brown grain is better, OK?”

This young boy was sure he had the answer to a nutrition question asked during the "Soccer for Success" practice.

This young boy was sure he had the answer to a nutrition question asked during the “Soccer for Success” practice.

“So let’s recap, guys. Which one’s better, brown or white?” All the kids shouted “Brown!” in unison.

Not long after the grain training session was over, the youngsters got a snack that underscored the lesson.

The nutrition session was all part of the “Soccer for Success” program, which in South Los Angeles is run by the Brotherhood Crusade. It’s a sports-based child and youth development initiative, largely funded by foundations, with the goals of combating obesity, reducing youth violence, promoting healthier lifestyles and increasing family and youth engagement in the community.

But rather than just focus on physical activity – soccer – for losing weight, it also stresses eating fresh, quality foods instead of high-calorie, high-fat processed foods. Experts know that weight loss takes both increased activity and cutting back on rich foods with little nutritional value.

The nutrition segment I witnessed has a significant effect on the kids, said George Weaver, administrator with the Brotherhood Crusade. During the 90-minute soccer workout sessions, the coaches take two breaks to teach the children and youth about healthy eating. The topics change each week, covering nuts, grains, fruits, vegetables, etc.

The kids become inspired by what they learn, said Weaver. “In a lot of cases, our parents are participating in buying fresh fruits because their kids are saying, ‘No, no, no, we’ve got to buy this!’” and pushing their parents to make healthier purchases.

“They’re relaying this information to their parents,” he said.

George Weaver, with the Brotherhood Crusade, and I on a South LA soccer field during a "Soccer for Success" session.

George Weaver, with the Brotherhood Crusade, and me on a South LA soccer field during a “Soccer for Success” session.

Each year, about 1,500 South Los Angeles children and youth will participate in the free soccer/healthy lifestyle program. And the fact that it’s free is essential, as few of the parents could afford to pay for it.

In addition to raising awareness among the young about healthful eating choices – lessons they’ll retain their entire lives – kids are also losing weight, Weaver said. One girl lost 13 pounds, he said, and a boy 10 pounds.

This two-minute video, called “How Celeste Amaya Lost Weight….While Having Fun!” tells the story of one girl’s weight loss after she joined the “Soccer for Success” program. That weight loss allayed her mother’s fear that she would develop diabetes.

And “Soccer for Success” goes even beyond the important goals of physical fitness and healthy eating, said Weaver. It’s also about building self-confidence, acquiring life skills and turning South LA schools and recreational centers into true community hubs.

The program is funded by the U.S. Soccer Foundation, the California Endowment and other foundations, as well as city and corporate donors.  For more information visit www.ussoccerfoundation.org/our-programs/soccer-for-success.

""/
Health, Health disparities

A new community garden springs up after land group adopts health perspective

by Suzanne Bohan
October 24, 2017
Alina Bokde, executive director of the LA Neighborhood Land Trust, stands in a community garden that's the result of new thinking about the health aspect of her organization's work.

Alina Bokde, executive director of the LA Neighborhood Land Trust, stands in a community garden that’s the result of new thinking about the health aspect of her organization’s work.

Alina Bokde, executive director the Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust, wasn’t quite sure how a new push to view her organization’s work through a public health lens would work.

She’s been acquiring open space in urban areas for years, with an eye toward conserving land, providing recreation and helping to mitigate climate change. But having a direct and significant effect human health? That was harder to envision achieving with small plots of land.

But her group had joined with dozens of other nonprofits in a bold effort to finally lift South Los Angeles, a poor neighborhood with familiar urban social ills – crime, poverty, high disease rates – onto a new trajectory that results in longer, healthier lives for residents.

The organization funding this major South LA project, which is called “Building Healthy Communities” and will run tens of millions of dollars over a decade, asked the community’s nonprofits to agree on common goals and best practices to increase the odds of achieving real success. The request of the funder, the California Endowment, reflects an emerging practice in philanthropy called “collective impact.” It asks that the many nonprofits tackling social ills in a community join together more tightly to achieve lasting change.

The nation’s 1.4 million nonprofits typically develop independent approaches to solving major social problems. But they’re “often working at odds with each other and exponentially increasing the … resources required to make meaningful progress,” wrote two authors in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.1

The newly-shared objective around health led to a surprising outcome for the LA Neighborhood Land Trust after it began looking for the human health potential of its work as well.

Armed with this  new way of viewing the organization’s work, one of Bokde’s staff approached an LA community health clinic, Clinica Romero, and asked the director – who hadn’t worked before with the land trust – if the clinic would develop a curriculum and nutritional guide for its diabetic patients, using a wished-for community garden at a nearby park to teach these lessons. The clinic director said yes, and Bokde then went to the Kaiser Family Foundation, asking if it would award a $50,000 grant to build the garden and help fund the development of the material to teach the patients more healthful living habits. It also said yes.

In the spring of 2012 the new community garden opened, with 19 raised plots – nine of which are reserved for clinic patients and the rest set aside for the community. The plots were awarded by lottery and there’s a wait list. Gardeners pay $35 a year. The fenced-in area, with a shed and its thickly-growing gardens, is a peaceful oasis off a busy LA thoroughfare. The clinic patients attend classes there, where they learn ways to cook the fresh produce. They also learn the most nutritious ways to shop for food and to cook it.

Bokde is thrilled with the outcome. “I’ve become a convert,” she said.  And at no point did she feel the collaboration toward improving community health was forced. “It was very natural.” Her organization is also working with another clinic to build and run a community garden at a South LA high school.

The Los Angeles Neighborhood Land Trust even changed its tagline to “Growing Healthier Communities Through Urban Parks & Gardens.” And the Land Trust Alliance, a national group, asked Bokde to speak at its October 2012 annual conference in Salt Lake City on the intersection between public health and open space acquisition. She got an enthusiastic response and the national group invited her back to speak on the topic this year.

A woman named Imelda leisurely watered her garden plot one evening last summer in a busy LA neighborhood.

A woman named Imelda leisurely watered her garden plot one evening last summer in a busy LA neighborhood.

At the one-third acre garden site in Los Angeles one August evening last summer, a woman named Imelda was calmly watering the tomatoes, carrots and chilies she grows for her family. (Gardeners with extra can sell at a farm stand at the garden on weekends.)

Her family loves the fresh produce, but she’s also enriched by the experience. Tending her garden “takes a little of the stress away,” Imelda said.

TAKEAWAY: When nonprofits working in the same community set shared overarching outcomes, such as reducing violence, improving health or economic revitalization, they can produce outstanding results. 

—

  1. John Kania and Mark Kramer. “Collective Impact.” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011.   www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact
Blog

Study finds health drawbacks in blatantly biased communities

by Suzanne Bohan
September 8, 2016

A new UC Berkeley study reports this about the health consequences of explicit racism:

Living in unabashedly racist communities can shorten the lives of both blacks and whites, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley.

Researchers compared the racial biases of nearly 1.4 million people nationwide to death rates in more than 1,700 U.S. counties. Their findings suggest that blacks and, to a lesser degree, whites who reside in overtly racist communities are more prone to dying from heart disease and other circulatory diseases.

“This suggests that living in a racially hostile environment might be detrimental to both the group targeted by this bias, in this case blacks, as well as the group that harbors the bias, in this case whites,” said study lead author Jordan Leitner, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at UC Berkeley. The findings were just published in the online edition of the journal Psychological Science.

What’s interesting is the study’s look at the toll on both races. While they’re still exploring the reasons, one idea is that whites holding more explicit racial biases bond less with others in their community, reducing the social supports that are known to lengthen lives. For blacks, the researchers are assessing whether those in communities with higher levels of racial bias experience less access to health care or may even avoid seeking it out of fear of unfair treatment. I’ll also propose one idea: Blacks too in these communities experience lower levels of social supports.

To view the study, visit:

www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-09/uoc–wrt090616.php

Blog

ACA in Kentucky and Arkansas expands preventive and medical services

by Suzanne Bohan
August 9, 2016

Two years after Medicaid coverage was expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in their states, the uninsured rate among low-income residents in Arkansas dropped from 42% in 2013 to 14% in 2015, and in Kentucky it dropped from 40% to 9% during the same time frame. (In comparison, in Texas, which didn’t opt to expand Medicaid coverage under ACA, the uninsured rate went from 39% to 32% during those years.) As a result, “low-income adults in Kentucky and Arkansas received more primary and preventive care, made fewer emergency department visits, and reported higher quality care and improved health compared with low-income adults in Texas,” the study stated.

To read the study, called, “Changes in Utilization and Health Among Low-Income Adults After Medicaid Expansion or Expanded Private Insurance,” Benjamin D. Sommers, Robert J. Blendon, E. John Orav, Arnold M. Epstein, JAMA Internal Medicine, online August 8, 2016, visit:

doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2016:4419

Blog

Housing Demand Threatens Local Food Supply in Hudson Valley

by Suzanne Bohan
June 2, 2016

This New York Times article describes a familiar dilemma for farming regions near booming urban areas. Marin County – immediately north of San Francisco – dealt with this threat in part by forming the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. The Trust helped keep two-thirds of the county open space and in agriculture such as ranching, dairy, wine and some crop production. (It was so successful that it recently disbanded, as its mission was accomplished.) Activists are gearing up to do the same in the Hudson River area. I’m betting they’ll have success, as people treasure that beautiful region. I visited it two years ago, and loved the local farmers markets.

Here is the first graph of the article – click the link above to read it in full:

Elizabeth Ryan, the owner of Stone Ridge Orchard. Preston Schlebusch for The New York Times

Elizabeth Ryan, the owner of Stone Ridge Orchard.
Preston Schlebusch for The New York Times

STONE RIDGE, N.Y. — Apple trees have blossomed, and soon fruit will begin emerging at Elizabeth Ryan’s orchard in the Hudson Valley. Before long, her harvest will head south to Manhattan, where Miro Uskokovic, the pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern, will use it to create an apple and carob cake, while Michael Anthony, the executive chef at the Studio Cafe inside the Whitney Museum of American Art, will turn it into an apple compote spread over pie dough and covered with a streusel.

""/
Health, Health disparities

Controlled burns spark hope on Yurok reservation

by Suzanne Bohan
August 24, 2015
This photo, taken in Feb. 2013, shows the thick undergrowth that's blocking healthy growth of hazel on Yurok tribal lands in Northern California.

This photo, taken in Feb. 2013, shows the thick undergrowth that’s blocking healthy growth of hazel on Yurok tribal lands in Northern California.

The forests on the Yurok tribal lands in Northern California look like weed-choked, overgrown gardens, as one tribal member described it.1

After years of fire suppression – in an ecosystem that needs fire to regenerate – the forest is filled with underbrush that crowds out desirable plants used for basket making, medicines and food. And many of the vast meadows that once blanketed the hills are gone.

Before European contact, the Yurok’s forests were cleared of underbrush by periodic fires, allowing elk and other animals to move freely, and the Yurok used controlled burns to keep trees and bushes from encroaching into meadows, where important plants grew and animals grazed.

But over the past century timber companies began planting monocultures of conifers not only on clearcut forests but on former prairies.1 The rest of the meadowland was lost and the forests became overrun with undergrowth due to state and federal government fire suppression policies.

The result: A reduction in game and in many plants species critical to the preservation of Yurok culture.

But Del Norte County and its adjacent tribal lands in 2010 joined a statewide, $1 billion community transformation initiative funded by the California Endowment, which seeks to leave 14 California communities far healthier in 10 years. One key lever of change in this initiative is to ask community members what they most want to change, rather than the outside funder dictating terms. And then organizing members into a strong force for change.

Skip Lowry, whose mother is Yurok, led a nine-month “listening campaign” among Yuroks and non-Indians living in and around the tribal lands, which surround the Klamath and Trinity rivers. At the end, the community chose prescribed burns as the chief priority for restoring peoples’ health.

That’s not surprising to Dr. Susan Cameron, a Navajo/Hispanic scholar who works in the education department at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. She said Native Americans’ sense of well being is intrinsically linked to the preservation of their culture and community.

“Health can only be rooted in your community. There’s no other way it can be,” Cameron said. And much of what children need to learn to keep the Yurok culture alive, she noted, comes from a healthy forest.

“Since time immemorial the Yurok community honored and obeyed natural rights, true ‘laws of the land,’ which our culture depended on for the continuation of the blood of our people,” noted Lowry in a July 2012 article in Yurok Today. “And only within that culture will we find the balance and harmony once again.”  

The largest bushes are cut and hauled away in preparation for a controlled burn on five acres of Yurok tribal land.

The largest bushes are cut in preparation for a controlled burn on five acres of Yurok tribal land.

The organizing campaign, funded by the California Endowment, led to the creation of the Klamath-river Local Organizing Committee, or KLOC, in April 2012. In April 2013, the Yurok tribe will start a managed burn on five acres where overgrown

These hazel shoots are twisted and bent from too much nearby plant growth. They need to grow straight for basket making and many other uses. The controlled fire will clear out the unwanted bushes.

These hazel shoots are twisted and bent from too much nearby plant growth. They need to grow straight for basket making and many other uses. The controlled fire will clear out the unwanted bushes and allow the hazel shoots to grow unimpeded.

bushes have caused prized hazel plants to send out twisted and bent shoots in order to avoid other plants. The Yurok need straight shoots for a variety of ancient uses, including making baskets, baby rattles and eel traps.

In a few weeks, I’ll post photos of the burn in progress. Photos taken by Melissa Darnell, the lead community organizer for the initiative in Del Norte County and the Yurok tribal lands, in this post show the site before and after preparation for the burn.

TAKEAWAY: Native American cultures have always known that health is intrinsically linked to your community and surroundings, a reality gradually coming to light in Western cultures.

—

1. Community plan catches fire: KLOC, Tribe partner to come up with 10-year cultural burn program. Yurok Today, July 2012. www.yuroktribe.org/documents/2012_july.pdf

Blog, Health, Sugar consumption

Mexico tax drives down soda purchases, as hoped

by Suzanne Bohan
June 30, 2015
Courtesy of University of North Carolina

Courtesy of University of North Carolina

So far, only Mexico, France, the City of Berkeley and the Navajo Nation have succeeded in passing a “sin tax” on soda or junk food, despite many attempts among various governments over the years. So there has been virtually no way to know if these taxes would actually to cut soda consumption – which nutritionists say is a critical factor behind high obesity rates and all its attendant ills.

In January 2014 in Mexico, the price of sodas and other sugary drinks went up by about 10 percent due to the new tax. (It’s generated $1.3 billion in revenue since then, which the Mexican government is using for health promotion campaigns such as adding more fresh water stations in schools.)

Now a new study, from the Mexican National Institute of Public Health and the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina, suggests that the tax is dampening enthusiasm for sugary drinks.

According to the study, during the first year of the tax, sugary beverage purchases dropped nearly 12 percent, compared with previous years. And, in news that uplifted health advocates, people drank more water as well. The drop was even steeper among poorer Mexicans, who bought 17 percent fewer sugary beverages in 2014.

To read the full story on NPR’s food blog, “The Salt”, visit www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/06/19/415741354/mexicos-sugary-drink-tax-makes-a-dent-in-consumption-study-claims

1 2 3 4 5
Recent Posts
Categories
Archives