PI's Weekly Media Digest: CA Governor Brown signs gun safety bills; CDC director resigns - ties to Coca-Cola found; and more
Welcome to our media digest for the week of July 8, 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
This week, 32-year-old Philando Castile, a black man in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop over a broken tail light. When he was instructed to hand over his license and registration, he informed the shooting officer that he had a gun and a concealed carry permit. Nevertheless, Castile was shot while reaching for his wallet. And instead of administering first aid to Castile as he bled out in the passenger seat, the shooting officer kept his gun pointed inside the car. On Tuesday night, Baton Rouge resident Alton Sterling was fatally shot by two police officers outside a convenience store. Alton Sterling was selling CDs when two officers pinned him to the ground and shot him multiple times at point-blank range while he was restrained on the ground. The 37-year-old father of five died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back moments after a witness captured the incident on camera. The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting.
In 2015, police killed at least 248 black people in the United States. Sterling was the 114th black man killed by police in the 186 days of 2016 so far. Officers involved in these killings face little or no punishment. In 2015, approximately 1,200 people were killed by police across the country and no officer was convicted of murder or manslaughter. The Guardian maintains The Counted, its own, broader database of people killed by police in the U.S. by all known causes, including gunshots, tasers, and other factors which have resulted in people’s deaths while in police custody. As of Thursday afternoon, The Guardian reports that 531 people have been killed by police so far in 2016, including 499 who have been fatally shot by police — one fewer gunshot death than what’s being reported by Fatal Force.
During a rally calling for an end to police violence on Thursday, five police officers were killed. Here is what we know so far. The Washington Post reports on police reforms introduced by the Dallas police department, many of which attempt to address concerns about police violence, including providing public access to data on police-involved shootings.
Alternet explores the role of white privilege in shaping Judge Aaron Persky's decision to give a lenient sentence to convicted rapist Brock Turner, in the context of the judge’s other decisions to harshly sentence of men of color for similar crimes.
Health Equity
Although the Pentagon's decision to allow transgender members of the military to serve openly has received less media attention than the ruling that allowed lesbian, gay and bisexual people to serve openly, it is equally important and a "critical, and long overdue, correction," writes Melissa Batchelor Warnke for the Los Angeles Times. Warnke notes that transgender people are twice as likely as the average American to enlist in the armed forces, arguing "Lifting the ban on openly transgender service members makes our military more reflective of the range of freedoms it was created to protect." A federal judge struck down Mississippi's anti-LGBTQ bill hours before it was scheduled to go into effect on Friday, saying that it fails to "respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi's citizens." Under the so-called "religious freedom" bill, House Bill 1523, an "LGBTQ couple could be refused a wedding cake from a local baker; a couple living together but not married could be legally barred from fostering a child or renting a car; a volunteer at a suicide hotline could refuse to speak to a transgender person. The measure even explicitly allows employers to set gender-specific dress codes." LGBTQ communities continue to face alarming disparities in health that reflect the unfortunate impact of bigotry and prejudice. For example, research found 42 percent of transgender adults reported verbal harassment, physical assault or explicit denial of equal treatment in a hospital or doctor’s office.
The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit Friday in federal district court challenging abortion restrictions passed by Louisiana lawmakers this year. Despite facing a budget crisis, lawmakers passed seven laws that restricted access to reproductive health care, including abortion services, which the Center for Reproductive Rights claims “individually, and cumulatively” unduly restrict the “constitutional right to abortion.”
California
California Governor Jerry Brown signed a sweeping package of six tough new gun bills into law last week while vetoing five others. California Healthline interviews Garen Wintemute, one of the nation’s most prominent gun violence experts. He studies the problem from a public health perspective, using empirical research, and then proposes potential solutions based on his findings.
A pilot program started in 2014 at an Oakland, California, school that uses a “whole school intervention approach” to mitigate the impact of poverty, disability and instability on the lives of children of color. Last week, a comprehensive study by the nonprofit mental health agency Seneca Family of Agencies of the pilot program found an increase in math, reading, attendance and a decrease in suspension rates for special education students, better outcomes in math, reading, attendance and suspension for Latino students, an important finding because nearly 80 percent of UE students in Oakland schools are Latino, and improved English language arts, reading, math and attendance for English Language Learners, crucial because many schools participating in the project serve high percentages of these students (nearly 50 percent of Oakland students).
Albany, California, will include a soda tax on the November ballot.
California health officials are using new ad campaigns and anti-smoking legislation to reduce smoking among LGBTQ+ communities, who smoke at twice the rate of their non-LGBTQ peers and are a key target market for tobacco companies.
Community environments
The director of the CDC's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention has resigned, following the discovery of deep ties between the director and Coca-Cola, dating back decades, that included providing guidance to Coca-Cola on how to influence health authorities on sugary drink regulation.
The Guardian reports on a new study suggesting that TV advertising for junk food influences kids' eating habits. "If the advertising of cigarettes can be banned, so too can advertising junk food," said Professor Neena Modi, president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health.
A new JAMA Internal Medicine study finds that more than half of Americans' calories come from subsidized foods, many of which are unhealthy (e.g., the many many junk foods made out of heavily subsidized corn), and people who are younger, less educated, or lower income eat more subsidized foods.
Mental health
The New York Times reports that partisan disputes over funding for treating drug addicts is endangering the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, once-promising legislation to take on the opioid epidemic. Democrats say that without the funding, states won’t have the resources to expand access to treatment.
The FDA commissioner argued that industry responsibility must play a role in addressing the opioid epidemic. "There is a lot of money being made off opioids. My view is, if you make a lot of money off something, you do have some social responsibility for the casualties of your success.” The Obama administration is preparing a rule that will increase in the number of patients doctors can give buprenorphine, a medication that can be used to treat drug addiction (as many as 275 patients, up from 100). Pfizer has agreed to start disclosing in promotional materials for its opioid painkiller Embeda that narcotic drugs can come with a serious risk of addiction.
Ahead of this weekend’s meeting to finalize the party platform, Democrats have released a draft agenda with a special focus on community health centers that can provide primary care, family planning, and mental health services to underserved populations, a national initiative to reduce suicide rates among all age groups, and ensuring Medicare has the ability to negotiate prices with drug makers. You can read the draft in full here.
Health Systems Transformation
Modern Healthcare reports on CMS’s data released last week showing small health insurers and cooperative health plans (co-ops) owe large payments to the federal government under the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) risk-adjustment program, while several larger insurers will receive risk-adjustment payments from CMS. In addition, the data note that CMS will pay nearly 500 insurers a total of $7.8 billion under the ACA's reinsurance program for health plans sold in 2015.