PI's Weekly Media Digest: Vision Zero, alcohol abuse as strong predictor of violence, from vaping to dripping
Next City featured PI’s brief on incorporating health equity into Vision Zero strategies. “To work from a health equity lens you need to look at the root causes,” says Elva Yanez, co-author and director of health equity at the Los Angeles-based Prevention Institute. “Look at the policies, practices and norms that have allowed these disparities to arise in the first place.”
Mother Jones reports on immigrants who are likely most vulnerable to deportation under the Trump administration, day laborers, and what cities like Los Angeles are doing to limit that vulnerability: “While reliable numbers are hard to come by, a 2006 national study of day labor estimated that 117,600 people seek this kind of work daily. The laborers often stand out on public streets near lumber yards or home improvement centers in the hope that a contractor or homeowner will hire them for help with heavy jobs such as landscaping, hauling, clearing, or moving…. Already there have been reports of anti-immigrant vigilantes photographing and harassing day laborers and, in one incident, going into a labor center in Hollywood and taking pictures of signup sheets bearing laborers' names… In defiance of the Trump administration, Los Angeles city officials have agreed to draft a law that decriminalizes the work of street vendors—many undocumented—who sell hot dogs, fruit, and other foods on streets. For years, their actions were illegal. The next push by the city's pro-immigrant advocates is to convince officials to grant amnesty to those vendors who still face criminal charges in the hope of helping them avoid deportation.”
The New York Times reports on the case of a woman, Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, who is likely one of the first undocumented immigrants to be separated from her family and deported under the Trump administration, after two decades of living and working in the US. After being swept up in a workplace raid eight years ago, Garcia de Rayos was allowed to stay in the US under condition that she check in regularly with ICE. During such a check in on Wednesday, she was taken into custody, “among the first undocumented immigrants to be arrested during a scheduled meeting with immigration officials since President Trump’s inauguration. “It has 100 percent to do with the executive order,” said Ray Ybarra-Maldonado, a Phoenix immigration lawyer who is representing Garcia de Rayos. “Her case is no different than the last time she checked in. The facts are 100 percent the same. The only difference is the priorities for removal have now changed.”” Protests Wednesday night attempted to obstruct her detention and deportation, but as of Thursday afternoon, reports are that she was deported to Mexico.
On Thursday night, the Ninth Circuit Court upheld the stay on Trump’s immigration ban.
Vox summarizes executive orders signed by Trump on Thursday that “don’t change laws or even really create new policy. Instead, they amount to vague demands that federal agencies establish task forces to investigate and combat crime, anti-police violence, and international drug cartels,” such as an order tasking newly appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to establish a Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, with a focus on “illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime” and develop a strategy to prosecute individuals who commit violent crimes against law enforcement.
According to Wired, gun violence researchers are downloading gun violence data from federal websites, anticipating that the new administration may scrub research on guns as they did with climate change.
According to the San Francisco Examiner, the city of San Francisco is suing five online gun retailers for selling high-capacity magazines that have been banned in the state since the 1990s.
A new study released by the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC-Davis found that alcohol abuse is a stronger predictor of violence than having a criminal record and that preventing alcohol abuse can help prevent violence.
The New York Times reports on “dripping,” the “practice of applying nicotine liquid directly to the heated coils of an e-cigarette or other vaporizer to produce thick clouds of nicotine vapor,” and the subject of a new Yale University study of Connecticut high school students that suggests “that the approach was gaining favor among teenagers as a way to produce more flavorful clouds of vapor and “a stronger throat hit.”
This week, water protectors and allies trying to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline launched emergency protests across the country in response to the announcement that pipeline construction will resume.
An editorial in the British Medical Journal makes the case for doing a better job of addressing inequalities to improve our health and wellbeing. Authors Kate E Pickett and Richard G Wilkinson, of the University of York, say increasing evidence shows the links between wealth disparities and physical, mental and community wellbeing: “Inequality matters because, as a robust and growing body of evidence shows, the populations of societies with bigger income differences tend to have poorer physical and mental health, more illicit drug use, and more obesity. More unequal societies are marked by more violence, weaker community life, and less trust.”
STAT features researchers from Wayne State University, including a number of former refugees, who are conducting psychological evaluations of recent refugees to identify and address sources of stress and to better understand the effects of the sustained trauma they experience before and after coming to the US.
Representatives from health care, criminal justice, and government are collaborating across 23 counties in Western North Carolina to prevent and address substance misuse, Mountain Xpress reports.
A Community Catalyst blog discusses how ACA repeal could undermine response to the opioid epidemic in rust belt states. “Overall, repeal could eliminate coverage for up to 2.8 million Americans with a substance use disorder, including about 222,000 with an opioid disorder. In Kentucky, the ACA allowed 320,000 uninsured people with substance use disorders to get covered, and another 300,000 who were already covered to get better access to treatment.
Kaiser Health News reports on how many hospitals are worried that repealing the ACA will mean a loss of innovative care models, like ACOs, which they have spent a lot of money to establish: “I think, if there’s a real change in direction away from these alternative payment models, we will be assuming risk to care for a population,” said Dennis Keefe, head of hospital chain Care New England. “We have invested enormously to be successful in this area.”
Thirty-five percent of Americans didn’t know that Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing, according to a poll reported by the New York Times. This confusion was more pronounced among people 18 to 29 and those who earn less than $50,000 — two groups that could be especially affected by repeal. Also, there were many reports this week on how more Americans are now in favor of the ACA than opposed, including this one from NPR.