PI's Weekly Media Digest: Bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities spike, new documentary tracks history of policing in schools, water conservation declines in CA, study shows the lasting effects of childhood trauma
Welcome to our media digest for the week of October 7, 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.
Health Equity
Ryan Turk, 14, who is enrolled in his Virginia school's free lunch program, was arrested and charged with larceny and disorderly conduct when he was believed to have cut in line to steal a carton of milk. The article further discusses the "school-to-prison-pipeline" and the fact that so-called “zero-tolerance” policies can have lifelong impacts on young people, especially young people of color. Meanwhile, a new documentary traces the controversial history of policing in schools. The Center for American Progress offers five policy solutions that schools and districts should implement to address the history of inequity that underlies the U.S. public education system and how to ensure that all kids—including students of color—receive the tools, support, and encouragement they need, including training all teachers in effective cultural competency and ending the use of excessive discipline measures against students of color.
The Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI) and New York University Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic released a groundbreaking two-part report shedding light on an often overlooked community: the nation’s 3.7 million Black immigrants. The author notes, “Our analysis shows that Black immigrants that appear before an immigration judge are more likely than their counterparts to be detained and deported. Unfortunately, this isn’t tracked by race, which makes it almost impossible to hold immigration courts and immigration judges accountable.”
Time magazine covers studies showing that black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than white women. Racial disparities in breast cancer mortality vary at the city level, with Atlanta and San Antonio showing the highest rates of disparity. Researchers suggest that this is due to differences in access to public health systems and disparity in quality of treatment.
Alternet provides 18 examples of racism in the criminal justice system, noting that if present trends of mass incarceration continue, one of every four black males born in this decade can expect to go to prison in his lifetime. According to the Sentencing Project, black men are six times as likely to be incarcerated as white men, and Hispanic men are 2.3 times as likely. BMSG notes, “This AlterNet piece explores how excessive force during arrests, length of incarceration, and other forms of racism embedded in our criminal justice system perpetuate the mass incarceration of men of color.”
This Washington Post article covers the daily struggles of a group of people in the nation's second-wealthiest community, northern Virginia's Fairfax County, which are officially classified as "unsheltered" and sleep in their cars. As BMSG notes, however, the piece “misses the opportunity to discuss the social services, or lack thereof, that have kept this population in poverty for so long.”
Native American-led protests in North Dakota have captured the attention of the country, but they’re only the beginning. This ThinkProgress piece traces the roots of the growing movement to December 2012, when four women in Western Canada — three First Nations women and one non-Native ally — held a teach-in to protest legislation that would weaken environmental laws that protect lands Natives hold sacred. The activists entitled their demonstration “Idle No More,” and the movement exploded on social media. Idle No More’s success set off a firestorm of solidarity protests among indigenous groups in the U.S., who in turn used the energy to draw attention to their own local fights — virtually all which involved some sort of spiritual claim. By the time Standing Rock came up, a spiritual network of indigenous people was already in full effect.
A new study found that the gap in life expectancy between the richest 1% and poorest 1% was more than 14 years for men and more than a decade for women. As The Nation’s Health notes, “While higher incomes and wealth are linked to better health within the U.S., their protective nature does not perform as well in a global context.” A 2013 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that compared Americans’ health to counterparts in 16 other high-income nations, finding that Americans typically die sooner and incur higher rates of disease and injury than many of their peers.
Community environments
As more people shift to active transportation – walking or biking between destinations – more cyclists and pedestrians are getting injured and killed. Cyclist fatalities jumped 12.2% to 818 deaths in the US in 2015 and pedestrian fatalities rose by 9.5% to 5,376 deaths. These deaths underline the need to invest in safer infrastructure and driver education. FairWarning quotes Kate Kraft, executive director of the nonprofit group America Walks, who “blames the higher percentage increases of fatalities among walkers and cyclists on several factors. Along with the squeeze caused by more of them converging on streets lacking infrastructure improvements, Kraft cites driving distractions stemming from the use of smartphones and other electronic gadgets in cars. “In some ways,” she said, “there’s a perfect storm.”’ Auto fatalities are all on the rise, climbing to 17,775 in the first six months of 2016, up from 16,100 in the same period in 2015.
More than half of the US population lives in communities exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution, with Latin residents more than 50% more likely to be exposed to air pollution than white residents. “According to CATF's calculations, pollution from oil and gas facilities causes 750,000 asthma attacks in children during the summer ozone season. The task force also was able to calculate the toll on Latinos: roughly 153,000 asthma attacks in Latino kids, and 112,000 lost school days. Asthma is more common among Latino kids than among other children: About 8.5 percent have asthma, compared with 7.9 percent of white children and 5.5 percent of Asian children.”
The New York Times discusses the impact of 'fat shaming' beyond stigmatizing remarks and stares on the street. A recent study conducted at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity found that weight is the most common reason children are bullied in school.
Violence Prevention and Unintentional Injury
The fatal shooting of Alfred Olango, a black man who suffered from mental illness, by a police officer in El Cajon, California, resurfaces longstanding concerns about police treatment of people with mental illness. According to a 2015 report, mental health disorders are a factor in as many as one in two fatal law enforcement encounters. Cuts in funding for treatment of mental illness has also put law enforcement in more frequent contact with those who have psychiatric disorders. And over the weekend, another young black man was shot and killed by police officers, this time in Los Angeles. Police are still releasing details, but according to early reports the 18-year-old was shot by LAPD officers during a police pursuit in South Los Angeles. Snell and Olango’s deaths are reminders of how many black lives are lost at the hands of police officers each year.
CNN reports that for every one American killed by an act of terror in the U.S. or abroad in 2014, more than 1,049 died because of guns.
California
New America Media reports that, “when it comes to collecting health and education data, members of the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) communities in California will no longer be lumped into one category, under a bill signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown earlier this week.” The new law is designed to uncover health and education disparities among the API communities so policymakers will be able to make informed decisions on each subgroup’s needs.
Water conservation continues to decline, even as California’s drought stretches into its sixth year. The state water board relaxed conservation targets six months ago, following a weak El Nino, and water consumption is up 36% from this time last year.
Health Systems Transformation
As the New York Times details, the Affordable Care Act is in real trouble, noting, "Obama's signature domestic achievement will almost certainly have to change to survive.” Democrats, led by President Obama and nominee Hillary Clinton, want a public option to help stabilize the marketplace. Premiums for individual market plans in Minnesota will increase by 50 percent to 67 percent next year. Most plans also are instituting enrollment caps; for instance, UCare will stop sign-ups after hitting 30,000 customers. And that follows more bad news: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota announced in June that it will drop its most popular individual market product, which accounted for roughly 40 percent of the market in 2016.
The nation’s top health officials on Monday laid out their plans for spending $1.1 billion in newly appropriated federal funds to combat the threat posed by the Zika virus. At the same time, they vented frustration at Congress for taking so long to make the money available as the virus spread to more than 25,000 people in U.S. states and territories, including 3,600 on the mainland. CDC last week updated guidance on the Zika virus, recommending that couples postpone trying to become pregnant for at least six months if an asymptomatic male partner has been exposed to the virus. Meanwhile, Pitt announced two promising Zika vaccines that prevented the pups of immunized female mice from becoming infected with the virus.
Mental Health
NPR’s Quil Lawrence features a nonprofit that sponsors a program for combat veterans to walk the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail in the footsteps of a WWII vet who said he wanted to “walk off the war.”
The Huffington Post reports that rapper Kid Cudi engaged followers in a conversation on mental health by posting on Facebook that he is treating his anxiety and depression. “He sparked a conversation among social media users about the importance of mental health care and reiterated that even if depression feels like a lonely place, so many people can relate.” Kid Cudi’s post prompted black men to ask each other “#YouGoodMan?”
The Washington Post’s “Inspired Life” section features the work of Nadine Burke Harris at the Center for Youth Wellness. “She started evaluating children not just for their medical histories, but also their social histories. And instead of treating only symptoms, she sought to help with the root causes of the stress that were making them sick.” This week, Burke Harris received the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, “one of six prizes given annually by the Heinz Foundation to ‘exceptional Americans, for their creativity and determination in finding solutions to critical issues.’
A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that stressful events in childhood predict chromosomal differences in adulthood associated with aging. The study out of the University of British Columbia looked at cumulative childhood and adulthood adversity “ranging from financial to social experiences” and found that certain adverse experiences are linked with shorter telomeres (“DNA protein caps found on the end of chromosomes that protect genetic materials and are associated with health and youth”).
In a commentary in JAMA, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy introduces guidance for Changing the Language of Addiction. They write: “Language related to substance use disorders does influence perceptions and judgments, even among health care professionals with substantial experience and expertise.”
The Center for the Study of Men’s Health will focus on men’s health and disparities and the first projects will focus on African American and Latino men and boys. “Social, behavioral and environmental factors are important determinants of individual and population health and contribute significantly to disparities in health outcomes, including those by race and gender,” said Robert S. Dittus, executive vice president for public health and health care for Vanderbilt University Medical Center and director of The Vanderbilt Institute for Medicine and Public Health. The center is leading the effort to produce the Tennessee Men’s Health Report Card, which is due to be released in June 2017.
University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital is creating a new program, the Recovery and Empowerment after Community Trauma program, to screen and treat families and children affected by violence.
Starting in July 2018, school teachers in New York will soon have to cover mental health as part of health curriculum. The state already requires education on substance abuse. Health officials are hopeful the new curriculum will help students recognize signs of mental illness and get themselves or their peers the help they might need.
Officials in Baltimore are distributing naloxone, a life-saving drug that can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. The needle exchange van now teaches new visitors how to deliver naloxone and sends them off with a free kit stocked with two doses.