PI's Weekly Media Digest: GOP House proposal would undercut school meals program; major newspapers found to innaccurately associate mental illness with gun violence; and more
Welcome to our media digest for the week of June 10, 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.
Violence Prevention
The Stanford rape case has received a tremendous amount of media coverage this week, with former Stanford student Brock Turner sentenced to just six months in jail on three felony counts for sexually assaulting a young woman while she was unconscious. The light sentence – and the judge’s rationale for going easy on Turner – have raised outrage, as well as letters submitted by Turner, his father, and a childhood friend, for failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the crime Turner committed (Turner himself seems to think campus drinking culture and drunk sex, not sexual assault, is the problem), blaming the victim, and blaming the prosecution and public outrage at Turner on “political correctness.” The survivor’s statement, read at Turner’s sentencing, has also received wide attention—a tremendous piece of writing that powerfully dismantles damaging societal myths about rape and responds forcefully to Turner’s attempt to shift the blame and his myopic focus on the consequences to himself, rather than the impact the assault has had on her life. Vox reported on the media's racial double standard in covering sexual assault cases, and a public defender commented on the way her clients, many of whom face lengthy prison sentences for victimless crimes, are sentenced and the preferential treatment Turner received as a person of privilege within the criminal justice system. Today, Joe Biden responded with an open letter to the victim, praising her strength and condemning rape culture: “We will speak to change the culture on our college campuses—a culture that continues to ask the wrong questions: What were you wearing? Why were you there? What did you say? How much did you drink? Instead of asking: Why did he think he had license to rape?”
BMSG comments on the NBC Bay Area segment featuring PI, saying it “moves beyond the paradigm of violence prevention as a criminal justice issue. Dr. Howard Pinderhughes of UCSF explains that an inequitable economy and structural violence "add up to conflict and trauma which then helps to feed the cycle of violence."
The article provides sobering data on gun violence in America – even on National Gun Violence Awareness Day (June 2nd), which had "at least 35 shootings in the U.S., leaving 12 dead and 22 injured." As the NY Times notes, “By the time Memorial Day weekend had ended, 64 people in Chicago had been shot, six fatally.” The paper visited the shooting scenes to find out what had happened -- and why – putting a human face on the tragedy. And though mass shootings get the most attention when it comes to gun violence, 60 percent of deaths caused by firearms are suicides. And a new study in Health Affairs emphasizes that suicide, not homicide, is the greater public health problem for mentally ill people with guns.
A new study published in Health Affairs looked at how several prominent newspapers and broadcast networks covered mental illness from 1995 to 2014. More than half of the stories—55 percent—mentioned violence in conjunction with mental illness. Yet, only 4 percent of the violence—not just gun violence, but any kind—in the US is attributable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression. But stories connecting mental illness with mass shootings specifically increased from 9 percent between 1994 and 2004 to 22 percent between 2005 and 2014. One expert notes, “Anyone who kills someone else in a mass shooting scenario or otherwise is not what we would consider mentally healthy. But that does not mean they have a clinical diagnosis and therefore a treatable mental illness…There could be a whole host of other risk factors for violence going on.”
Community environments
The House version of Child Nutrition Reauthorization faces stiff opposition from advocates, school professionals, and House Democrats. The current House proposal would undercut school meals through changing community eligibility standards (currently, when at least 40% of students qualify for free/reduced lunch, the entire school qualifies, removing stigma and meeting student need in high-poverty neighborhoods; Republicans want to raise the eligibility threshold to 60%), lowering nutrition standards, and piloting a block grant model for school meals that would cap overall school meal costs (so the program would be unable to meet rising demand) and allow states to set their own eligibility standards to receive free/reduced lunch. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi vowed Thursday to do "whatever it takes" to ensure the bill "never sees the light of day on the floor of the House… This is a moral issue. It isn't even an issue - it's a value. We're having a values debate right now with the Republicans. They want to give tax credits to their rich friends and then say, 'We have to balance the budget, so let's take food out of the mouths of babies to do it.' It's just plain wrong."
The Philadelphia City Council approved a 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks Wednesday. A full council vote is expected to approve the tax next week. Philadelphia will become the first major city in the US to enact a sugary drink tax.
Obesity rates among children and adults continue to rise, with the adult obesity rate climbing from 24.6% in 2006 to 37.9% in 2014. While the obesity rate for men rose slowly, the rate for women grew more quickly (35.7% in 2006 to 40.5% in 2014). Recent reports on trends in women’s health find that US women of all races, when compared to US men and women in other developed countries, continue to lose ground, facing rising maternal mortality, decreased life expectancy, and higher suicide rates, among other trends.
A recent New York University study found that over two-thirds of non-alcoholic beverages promoted by celebrities contain added sugar.
The CDC released the 2015 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, finding that teenagers in the survey period were less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, wear seatbelts, have unprotected sex, than previous years. One alarming finding is the high prevalence of vaping, with 44.9% of teenagers reporting that they had tried vaping. Teenagers are also reporting more screen time and less sleep.
California
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a challenge to concealed-weapon permitting in California, finding that "there is no Second Amendment right for members of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public."
The SF ordinance that requires health warning labels on advertisements for sodas and other sugary drinks will not go into effect on July 25 as scheduled, due to a challenge from the soda industry.
California’s new tobacco control laws – to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products, expand workplace smoke-free policies, and raise the smoking age to 21 – went into effect on Thursday.
The SF Chronicle reported on the results of providing housing for homeless adults, looking at money spent on public services before and after they entered supportive housing. Cost of services increased immediately after adults entered housing, as they took advantage of medical care they had not previously received (e.g., a 199% increase in emergency care, 85% increase in behavioral health care), but after an initial spike, costs declined sharply every year after the initial spike.
Bay Area voters approved a climate adaptation and habitat restoration tax.
Health Equity
The Guardian claims that at least 33 large American cities use testing methods deliberately designed to undercount the presence of lead in tap water.
The Detroit mayor wrote an op-ed detailing the city’s comprehensive approach to reducing inequity, particularly for young people of color, by focusing on education and jobs opportunities. In its rating of 50 U.S. cities that are addressing the achievement gap, Detroit came out on top among them, scoring 95 out of 100.
Rewire questions why a June 14 White House hosted United State of Women Summit that “celebrate the progress we’ve made on behalf of women and girls and to talk about how we’re taking action moving forward” mostly avoided the topic of reproductive rights. The author notes, “This, despite the fact that in the last five years, states put upwards of 288 new abortion restrictions on the books, which is more than a quarter of the total such laws adopted since Roe v. Wade…In the first three months of 2016, states introduced 411 new abortion restrictions.” And this Yes Magazine piece draws attention to the unique circumstances that low-income and black women experience in their struggle for reproductive justice.
BMSG notes that newly released data from the U.S. Department of Education reveals that students of color and students with disabilities were significantly more likely to be suspended from school, and that this pattern begins in preschool. African-American preschoolers were 3.6 times more likely to be suspended than white children, according to the data.
Time magazine covers a new study showing that pay disparities by race and sex mirror overall trends in the labor market. Dr. Anupam Jena, the study's author, says that he had hoped "that as you start to focus in on people who are much more similar than they are dissimilar, that income disparities would start to vanish." He laments that "it appears that that's not the case."
While Veterans Affairs could begin to cover sex-reassignment surgery for veterans with gender dysphoria, CMS says there is insufficient evidence to support mandating coverage of sex-reassignment surgeries through Medicare. And Rewire covers the story of Joe Robinson, a transgender man and operating room nurse at a Dignity Health medical center in Arizona, has alleged in a lawsuit filed Monday that his employer’s insurance policy of depriving coverage for gender dysphoria is discrimination on the basis of sex, in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Jessica Valenti writes for the New York Times on the effects of objectification and harassment on women’s lives: “Researchers interested in objectification theory — the idea that the way women are looked at and dehumanized affects their mental health and their sense of self — have found that women often change and constrain their behavior because of past experiences with sexism. A study published in 2015 found a link between the misogyny women face and psychological distress.”
Health Systems Transformation
A health center network in France is building a model of care around the idea that patients should have a say in structuring the centers' health initiatives. The result is health centers that integrate traditional medical care with mental health services, legal support and more. The article notes, “If health is determined by the social environment, then access to social rights and services is as important as health care. If it gets financing, this promising model could well have a significant impact.”
CMS finalized a Medicare Shared Savings Program rule that it says will encourage more participation in its flagship Accountable Care Organization model and better reward participants for providing quality care.
As The Nation’s Health reports, a health-in-all-policies approach is public health’s most effective tools in raising awareness about social determinants and in bringing nontraditional partners to the table. The article goes on to detail how the approach is already underway in California, noting that the California Health in All Policies Task is working to improve active transportation, promote land-use decisions that increase healthy food options and support green spaces within urban communities, all of which can have positive health impacts.
In an op-ed in Hospitals and Health Networks the former governor of Oregon argues for a new approach to health, concluding “Those hospitals that still have healthy margins should begin to adjust their central role as major community employers, investors and procurers of goods and services. To do so, they need to use strategies that improve community health, including the courageous redeployment of resources upstream to address the social determinants of health.”
Mental Health
Mental health treatment rates increased significantly in 2014 among those experiencing serious psychological distress, but racial and ethnic disparities in access to mental health services persist. The study examined data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health to evaluate access to behavioral health treatment associated with early implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and state health insurance exchanges. While respondents were significantly more likely to receive mental health treatment than those in earlier comparison periods (2005–2013), racial and ethnic minority respondents received treatment at substantially lower rates than whites.
Spending data on mental health services reveal a long-term trend of increased financing of mental health care by private and public insurers. In contrast, the majority of substance use treatment has been funded through state and local government budgets and out of pocket by consumers. The study also found that from 2004 to 2013, a growing percentage of adults received mental health treatment, albeit only because of the increased use of psychiatric medications. In the same period, only 1.2–1.3% of adults received substance use treatment in any setting, although use of medications to treat substance-related disorders increased rapidly.
The Connecticut governor signed a bill this week to combat opiate addiction, with a primary focus on curbing prescribing practices.
Patients with a history of substance abuse can be put at risk when doctors overlook this information about their pasts. Seth Mnookin, who recovered from a three-year heroin addiction, describes his experience undergoing surgery and pain management in healthcare settings.