PI's Weekly Media Digest: Studying sexual abuse against men and boys; the lifelong effects of hardship in childhood; and more
Health Equity
The BBC covered a study published in Pediatrics that found people who were maltreated as children are more likely to have poor health and living standards decades later. The article also concluded that poor living standards during childhood was a key factor in signaling hardship and associated ill health during old age.
A Baltimore Sun investigation found that girls and young women are disproportionately locked up for misdemeanors in Maryland's juvenile justice system, and once they are in in the system, they are more likely to be detained longer. The investigation also found that black girls are nearly five times more likely to be referred to the system than white girls.
In light of the fact that 40 percent of black Americans distrust the criminal justice system, a black teacher provides personal anecdotes and a variety of run-ins with police, to explain why he doesn’t trust the system either.
Missouri just doubled down on the school-to-prison pipeline by passing a new law charging students who get into fights at school with felonies, effective January 1. The article notes the potential consequences, including how a single arrest doubles the likelihood of a student dropping out, kids who make a court appearance are four times more likely to do so, and that students removed from class fall behind in their school work and miss out on valuable social interactions that contribute to their overall development and are more likely to engage in criminal behavior and drastically reduce access to education and job opportunities in the future. The article concludes, “… students of color are disproportionately funneled through the pipeline — as early as preschool. Black students in particular are viewed as more dangerous by their instructors and therefore punished more harshly… that means that the new statute will put them at greater risk of criminalization.”
The D.C. Council approved giving working parents in the nation’s capital one of the most generous universal paid leave policies in the nation. If Mayor Muriel Bowser– who has publicly criticized its cost and the new bureaucracy it would entail - signs the bill, more than half a million private-sector workers in the city will be eligible for up to eight weeks of paid maternity or paternity leave, up to six weeks of paid family leave, and up to two weeks of paid medical leave. Workers would earn up to 90 percent of their normal salary for 11 weeks, with a limit of $1,000 a week.
The New York Times reports on a new UC Berkeley study that found that as income inequality has vastly increased, government spending has not done much to help lift lower incomes. As BMSG notes, “They also found that the bottom half of the country has been shut off from income growth for 40 years, and although more women are in the work force today than ever before, vast inequalities in income, especially at the top, persist.”
On Wednesday, North Carolina Republicans rejected a bid to repeal a state law restricting bathroom access for transgender people. Rewire provides a history of the rise of anti-trans legislation in the US. And Mother Jones details the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ proposals likely to emerge in 2017, including more bathroom bills, more religious objections, and more discrimination. As Salon reports, Donald Trump and the GOP have proposed the First Amendment Defense Act, which will prohibit the federal government from taking action against a person or business if they discriminate against same-sex couples. The bill also contains language that could discriminate against single moms and unwed heterosexual couples.
Grist reports on a Reuters investigation that analyzed blood tests from state health departments and the CDC, there are over 3,000 U.S. communities with lead levels twice as high as in Flint and over 1,100 of those communities have lead levels four times as high. The article notes a CDC estimate that 2.5 percent of children across in the US have at least slightly elevated levels of lead, which can lead to lowered IQs, developmental delays, and learning difficulties, as well as miscarriage and premature birth.
Violence Prevention and Unintentional Injury
The UN is teaming with The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law to conduct an international investigation of sexual abuse against men and boys -- the first project of such scale. As BMSG points, “Project researchers say the human rights community does not do enough to prevent sexual violence against men and boys; they also note that although the issue of sexual violence against girls has not ended, it is part of our national dialogue, while sexual violence against men and boys remains largely invisible.”
St. Louis Dispatch covers the findings of an American Journal of Public Health Violence study that suggests violence could be contagious among teens. The researchers studied data collected in the mid-1990s from more than 5,900 seventh- through 12th-graders at 142 U.S. schools. Their key finding: Students were far more likely to engage in a violent act if a friend had also done so.
The city of New Orleans reached $13.3 million in civil settlements pertaining to three cases of police brutality from the weeks before and after Hurricane Katrina. The mayor apologized on behalf of the city and said that improvements have been made in the New Orleans Police department. However, for Lance Madison, whose developmentally disabled brother was shot in the back right beside him, this settlement is not the end: "I guess the only thing that ends is we don't go back to court anymore," he said. "It may be closure for them, but it will probably never be closure for me." (via BMSG)
This article in The Trace, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to expanding coverage of gun violence in America and addressing the shortage of information about the issue, puts powerful stories about gun violence back on the public's radar. Meanwhile, Modern Healthcare reports on a new initiative that strives to find evidence-based interventions to counter the gun violence in many of Chicago’s communities. The Chicago Gun Violence Research Collaborative is a partnership between Sinai Health System and the Illinois Public Health Institute to document incidents of gun violence and identify its root causes.
A new study from the American Journal of Public Health reveals that black men are nearly three times as likely to be killed by legal intervention as white men, American Indians or Alaska Natives also are nearly three times as likely and Hispanic men are nearly twice as likely. Mother Jones reports the disparity between how many people police claim are killed in encounters is vastly lower than reality. Police reported 444 fatal shootings of civilians in 2014, but The Bureau of Justice Statistics combines media reports and crowdsourcing techniques with reporting by police agencies, finding 1,348 arrest-related deaths from June 2015 through March 2016. The bureau estimated there were about 1,900 arrest-related deaths in the 12 months ending May 2016. Finally, a Washington Post database of fatal police shootings recorded 86 police killings of people with pellet and toy guns since the beginning of 2015. Experts say the demand for replica firearms has grown, but efforts to stop their production have failed due to NRA and other gun rights groups’ resistance. (via BMSG)
The Bureau of Justice Statistics released new data showing that of the nearly 8,000 people who died in federal and state prisons or local jails, most were white. Black inmates died of AIDS-related illnesses at nearly three times the rate of white inmates, while white prison inmates committed suicide at twice the rate of their black peers. Precise explanations for these disparities were not provided, but the article does cite the increasing suicide rates, especially among white men, mirror the recent increases in the general population, and is reflective of the problem with mental health treatment in jails and prisons.
Community environments
CityLab interviews community health workers, who they term “the new frontline of public health.” The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are 48,000 community health workers in the US, held overwhelmingly by women with a high proportion of women of color.
Jane Jacobs’ last book, Dark Age Ahead, predicted the rise of nationalism and xenophobia, pointing to erosion of what she identified as five key pillars of society: family and community, education, science, taxes, and expertise. Looking for ways combat the decline of these institutions, Jacobs turned to the protective role of neighborhoods and cities: ”On the one hand, her life’s work shows us that the vitality of the city and its neighborhoods is the ultimate antidote to darkness. Jacobs had her pessimistic side. In Scranton, she saw first-hand the devastating toll of the Great Depression on industries and workers. As a young woman, she saw the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in Europe. During the 1950s, she witnessed the chilling effect of McCarthyism. Robert Moses-style urban renewal reflected the same unbridled top-down power. For Jacobs, cities and neighborhoods are much more than walkable, mixed-use places, and much more than engines of innovation and economic growth. They are also bulwarks against the forces of darkness—the fonts of social progress, of human civilization, and of democracy itself.”
The World Health Organization released a new study and called for increased scrutiny and regulation of digital marketing targeting kids with ads for junk foods.
Berkeley Media Studies Group released a media analysis of coverage of opioid abuse issues.
California
California's experiment with releasing thousands of drug offenders from its prisons—a major step in the fight against mass incarceration—has run up against a big problem: Once they're out, there aren't enough social service programs to help these offenders overcome addictions and restart their lives.
Approximately 13,500 drug offenders have been released in California since the passage of Prop 47 in 2014, which reclassified simple drug possession as a misdemeanor, not a felony. But the state hasn’t done a good job of helping formerly incarcerated people reintegrate into society and connect with needed social services, according to a seven-month investigation reported on this week by Mother Jones: “Under Prop 47, the millions of dollars saved in prison costs were supposed to be earmarked for rehabilitation programs to help inmates restart their lives. The reporters—who filed 65 records requests, pored over thousands of pages of public documents, and interviewed dozens of policymakers, police officers, and former felons for their investigation—found that not a single cent had been spent yet on these programs. An agency has been working to allocate the money for a year and a half, but it just started accepting bids last month to give out its grants. During this fiscal year, which started in October, the state plans to spend $34 million of its $67 million Prop 47 fund on programs to help the mentally ill, addicts, and youth offenders.”
Kaiser Health News reports on the efforts of 18 California counties to continue project to address social determinants of health. The article notes, “Riverside County plans to connect former inmates with health clinics and social services. Orange County hopes to get homeless residents into housing — and help them stay there. Placer County is opening a respite center where homeless patients can go after they leave the hospital. Those are just some of the pilot projects in a $3 billion experimental effort officials hope will improve the health of California’s most vulnerable populations.”
Mental health
STAT News reports on the already difficult conditions in immigration detention centers: “President-elect Donald Trump has promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the US illegally — many of whom will spend time in detention centers first. But those centers are already straining to handle detainees suffering from physical health problems and serious mental illness. An investigation has found that the immigration detention system often fails to protect people with psychiatric disorders, including detaining individuals with mental illness in solitary confinement against medical advice. There's evidence of others who were mentally and physically unable to take care of themselves — and who were then released in the US or across the border without any support.”
An opinion piece in the Memphis Commercial Appeal highlights a cross-sector effort in Shelby County to address and mitigate Adverse Childhood Experiences. The ACE Awareness Foundation initiative includes families, educators, faith leaders, business leaders, nonprofit managers, elected officials, law enforcement and healthcare providers. At the center of the work is a focus on connection.
A blog in Health Affairs by the Hilton Foundation makes the case that that while the Surgeon General’s recently released report, Facing Addiction in America, was an important step toward raising awareness around substance misuse as a public health problem, the “public still struggles to fully comprehend substance use as a health issue.” The author, Alexa Eggleston, advocates for focusing prevention efforts on youth.
STAT profiled 52 faces, one per week, of people who lost their lives due to opioids:“The faces above and the stories below are a snapshot of the devastating opioid epidemic sweeping across the United States. Publicly acknowledging that a family member suffered from an addiction to drugs, or died of an overdose, has long been a taboo subject — one best kept secret among family and a few knowing friends. That is changing. As the death toll from the opioid crisis mounts, families are increasingly weaving desperate warnings into the obituaries of loved ones about the horror that can result when people abuse painkillers, heroin, and synthetic drugs such as fentanyl. Many words of remembrance have been transformed into pleas for help — directed at lawmakers, families suffering similar experiences, and the general public. Families are using these public notices to push for better and more treatment options while spreading the message that addiction is a disease and not something to be endured in shameful silence.”
A Sunday Review article in the New York Times asks whether recent events in the U.S. elects both reflect and amount to collective trauma, “a collective disturbance that happens to a group of people when their world is suddenly upended.”
Health Systems Transformation
In ACA news, the USA Today penned an editorial blasting the GOP’s “Repeal and Delay” strategy, noting, “For six years, congressional Republicans have been trying to kill the ACA…Now, with a Republican about to move into the White House, they are in a position to get their way. The only problem is, they are like the proverbial dog who finally catches the car and doesn’t know what to do.” According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, repealing the ACA likely would cut taxes for high-income U.S. residents and increase taxes for some lower-income individuals. Meanwhile, the single-day enrollment record was set last Thursday with more than 670,000 people signing up for coverage through the ACA. Finally, according to a new study, the ACA boosted the number of people with health insurance in every state and decreased cost barriers to care.
A new study published in Health Affairs examines the role of public libraries as partners in improving population health. The abstract notes, “Public libraries are…well positioned to be partners in building a culture of health through programming that addresses the social determinants of health.” The article cites new data showing that 500,000 in-person Free Library visits in 2015 included attendance at specialized programs that addressed multiple health determinants, such as housing and literacy and library staff “provided intensive support to vulnerable populations including homeless people, people with mental illness and substance use, recent immigrants, and children and families suffering from trauma.”
Mother Jones reports on an article in JAMA Internal Medicine showing male doctors are responsible for 32,000 more deaths per year among Medicare patients than female, yet are paid an average of $20,000 more a year. The study concludes, “Understanding exactly why these differences in care quality and practice patterns exist may provide valuable insights into improving quality of care for all patients, irrespective of who provides (it).”
New research based on a long-term study of New Zealanders finds that risk factors at age 3 reliably predict later-in-life convictions, hospitalizations and other "economically burdensome outcomes." Researchers were able to use risk factors at age 3 to accurately predict outcomes up to 80 percent of the time.