PI's Weekly Media Digest: violence prevention expert proposes doctors ask about patients' gun use; Senate bill would provide consumers with information on food safety; and more.
Welcome to our media digest for the week of May 20, 2016! Below you’ll find summaries of news coverage on the issues of preventing violence, trauma, nutrition, health equity, mental health, and more. The views expressed in these articles do not reflect those of Prevention Institute.
Food and activity environments
The House version of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill continues to advance. This version of the bill would undercut the Community Eligibility Provision that automatically enrolls all students in free school lunch programs at high-poverty schools (lowering barriers to students receiving needed school meals and reducing stigma), take funds from the Summer EBT for children program, and lower nutrition standards for school meals. The American Academy of Pediatrics released a statement strongly opposing the House bill: "The bill would significantly weaken access to healthy, nutritious foods for our nation's children and now includes a deeply troubling three-state block grant proposal that compromises the integrity of the school breakfast and lunch programs and their ability to serve all children in need.”
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, representing southern US farmworkers, called for a national boycott of Wendy’s this week over the corporation’s refusal to participate in the coalition’s Fair Food Program, which was designed to prevent human rights abuses often suffered by farmworkers.
Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chellie Pingree introduced the Food Date Labeling Act, which would standardize expiration dates to provide consumers with science-based information on food safety while preventing unnecessary food waste. The bill would also ensure that food can be donated after passing its peak freshness as long as it is still safe to eat. Blumenthal said, “Items at the grocery store are stamped with a jumble of arbitrary food date labels that that are not based on safety or science. This dizzying patchwork confuses consumers, results in food waste, and prevents good food from being donated to those who need it most. By establishing a uniform national date labeling system, this commonsense legislation will provide consumers with clarity that will help them save money on their grocery bills and prevent perfectly safe food from going to waste.”
A new infographic depicts 40 years of changes in the American diet, tracking volume and types of food consumed.
The National Academies of Science released its report on the safety of GMO crops, “Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects.” The report supports mandatory GMO labeling to allow consumers to make their own risk-benefit decisions, and notes that GMO crops have not boosted crop yields overall yet, making GMOs an uncertain prospect for long-term food security. Food and Water Watch slammed NAS for drawing on industry science and accepting funds and board oversight from biotechnology companies.
State and local health departments across the country are experiencing steep funding cuts. In April, the CDC cut $44 million from its fund to help state and local governments prepare for public health emergencies to fund Zika preparedness (as of this morning, funding for Zika is still held up in Congress).
Today, Michelle Obama will announce that the new Nutrition Facts labels will feature added sugars.
Health Equity
On Sunday, the New York Times published an investigation into Donald Trump’s public and private interactions with more than 50 women, many of whom cited “unwelcome romantic advances” and “unsettling workplace conduct over decades.” Vox sums up the findings as “Trump’s long, persistent hatred and mistreatment of women,” and notes that “bigotries feed off each other… ‘Each of these intolerant belief systems was strongly correlated with the other belief systems,’ … with modern sexism and modern racism particularly closely linked.” Rewire slams the RNC’s unconcerned reaction to accusations of Trump’s misogyny: “It’s not only Donald Trump’s mistreatment of women. It’s that the GOP’s platform is based on sheer misogyny, and the leadership has to ignore it or they’d have to rethink their entire platform and start from scratch.”
Last Friday, the Obama administration issued a directive to school districts, telling them to allow transgender students to use restrooms that match their gender identity and describing what actions schools should take to ensure that students are not discriminated against. Schools that do not comply may face lawsuits or loss of funding. A new study from Georgia State University shows that being denied bathroom access is correlated with increased suicide attempts among transgender people. The author of the study says that "this suggests that there may be a distinct relationship between the stress of not being able to use bathrooms or gender-appropriate campus housing and one's mental health." The Obama administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services, also finalized regulations for Section 1557 of the ACA, which bans sex discrimination in health services and insurance. HHS clarifies that bans on sex discrimination protect transgender people. But as Rewire reports, insurance companies use many different tactics to deny claims for various medically necessary treatments to transgender patients.
Vox interviews Senator Cory Booker on his criminal justice reform bill. According to Booker, legislation highlights include reducing some mandatory minimum sentences — retroactively for nonviolent offenders; giving judges the power to downgrade 10-year mandatory minimum sentences for first-time drug offenders; and letting people currently in prison take steps to reduce the length of their sentences. Booker noted a few shortcomings as well: keeping many mandatory minimum sentences, failing to shorten sentences for violent offenders, and adding a new mandatory sentencing enhancement for fentanyl, a powerful opioid, when it's present in trafficked heroin.
Violence Prevention
A Seattle times op-ed argues that "gunshots on street corners, in cars, in homes" is not the sound of liberty, but rather an "expression of a collective willingness to tolerate needless bloodletting." ABC 8 News continues its series on gun violence by examining its prevalence in Richmond. But as BMSG notes, “While the story is rich with data and points to the role of economic struggle in high-crime areas, it misses an opportunity to explore solutions beyond law enforcement.” And in an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Dr. Wintemute, director of the violence prevention research program at UC Davis, argues that a doctor asking about gun use in the home is legal, crafts guidelines about groups who are higher risk, and contends that "the fact that we don't know everything [about how to best address gun safety] now is not a reason not to start now. We need to start now, and reserve the right to get smarter."
Cleveland may soon follow in Baltimore’s footsteps by teaming with Cure Violence to treat the city’s violence epidemic as a public health issue. The article includes a video and multiple slides.
In honor of the National Day of Action to End State Violence Against Black Women, Girls and Femmes, Colorlines published “As We #SayHerName, 7 Policy Paths to Stop Police Violence Against Black Girls and Women.” The piece was penned by lawyer, researcher and activist Andrea J. Ritchie, and presents detailed policy ideas to eliminate police sexual violence, gendered racial profiling and other ways law enforcement targets Black girls, women and gender-nonconforming people. The author concludes by noting, “Of course, changing police policies is not a panacea to police violence against Black girls, women and gender nonconforming people. In order to strike at the root of the issue, we need to transform our responses to poverty, violence and mental health crises in ways that center the safety and humanity of Black women and our communities.”
Major League Baseball handed down its strictest sanctions yet for a player accused of domestic violence—a 52-game suspension without pay and a required $100,000 donation to a domestic violence organization.
California
The California Senate approved 11 gun control bills on Thursday, including measures mandating background checks on ammunition purchases, outlawing the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic weapons, banning the possession of high-capacity magazines, requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms, and establish a Firearm Violence Research Center at a UC campus to research shooting injuries and deaths.
This week, a federal judge refused to grant a preliminary injunction against a San Francisco ordinance that requires sugary drinks ads to carry health warnings.
Thirty Bay Area news organizations, headed by the San Francisco Chronicle (and including Mother Jones, the SF Examiner and KQED), will provide coordinated coverage of SF’s homelessness crisis in the hopes of creating a “’wave’ of coverage that will force politicians to come up with solutions… you will not be able to log onto Facebook, turn on the radio, watch TV, read a newspaper, log onto Twitter without seeing a story about the causes and solutions to homelessness.”
This week, more than 170,000 undocumented children became eligible to enroll in state-funded health insurance plans in California, going beyond ACA requirements.
Mental Health
The New York Times look at how far legislators are willing to go—or not—on restricting availability of opioids: “For now, Washington appears ready to allow opioid prescriptions to remain widely accessible, a victory for pharmacies, drug makers and, lawmakers say, consumers — and instead focus on the treatment of addiction, not its source.”
Lenawee County, Michigan, is implementing the Project Lazarus prevention, intervention and treatment model to address rising opioid abuse and related deaths: “Officials from law enforcement, the courts, community resource groups, education and health-related organizations” participated in a forum to “begin to understand each other’s challenges in dealing with prescription drugs and heroin, and how they can take them on together.”
Health Systems Transformation
2015 was the first year 90% of Americans had health insurance. The survey found states that expanded their Medicaid programs saw the greatest declines in uninsured rates.
A few of the 11 surviving ACA co-ops are showing signs of financial viability. Three co-ops -- Maryland's Evergreen Health, New Mexico Health Connections and Massachusetts' Minuteman Health -- turned modest profits in the first quarter of this year.
The Senate advanced a $1.1 billion supplemental funding measure on Thursday for the Zika virus. The Senate failed earlier in the week to advance a proposal which would have used the Prevention and Public Health Fund to pay for Zika funding. But on Wednesday the House voted 241 to 184 to provide just $622 million for U.S. efforts – which The White House has threatened to veto. The House's patchwork funding deal takes money away from the ongoing fight against infectious diseases, leading the White House's “Ebola Czar” to note, "This is as crazy as saying we're going to take a fire hydrant out of the ground in one place and move it someplace else to fight a different fire.” President Obama had originally requested $1.9 billion for U.S. Zika response efforts.
The Urban Institute launched a new web feature investigating why Americans tend to die younger than residents of other developed nations, despite the US spending nearly twice as much per person on health care.
NPR’s report, “Should Pediatricians Ask Patients If They’re Poor?”, details some of the reasons why The American Academy of Pediatrics is now urging members to ask if their patients' families are struggling financially and then commit to helping them get the resources they need to thrive. The article describes a hopeful collaboration between The Center for Youth Wellness -- located in San Francisco's low-income Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood -- and pediatricians' organization on a national campaign, Children Can Thrive, to raise awareness about the impact of a range of childhood stressors.