Public Health - General
kkrisberg | August 26, 2013Helping others isn't only the right thing to do, it's the healthy thing to do.
In a recent study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), researchers found that helping others was a predictor of reduced mortality because it buffers the relationship between stress and death. In other words, stress did not predict mortality among people who had helped others in the past year, but it did predict mortality among those who had not helped others.
In fact, study researchers found that their data, along with previous data, "indicate that help given to others…
kkrisberg | August 16, 2013In their efforts to protect the most vulnerable workers from illegal workplace practices and conditions, worker centers have now attracted the million-dollar ire of formidable anti-union forces. And while advocates say it's a sign of worker centers' success, it's still a worrisome trend that's made it all the way to the halls of Congress.
In late July, a full-page ad ran in the Wall Street Journal accusing worker centers of being fronts for labor unions. The ad was paid for by a group calling itself the Center for Union Facts, a nonprofit with a $3 million-plus budget run by industry lobbyist…
lborkowski | August 15, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Osha Gray Davidson in Rolling Stone: The Great Burning: How Wildfires Are Threatening the West
Courtney Subramanian at TIME's Healthland blog: Rebranding Climate Change as a Public Health Issue
Harold Pollack at Washington Post's Wonkblog: 85 million Americans lack dental coverage. Fixing that requires more than just money.
Abraham Lustgarten at ProPublica: Unfair Share: How Oil and Gas Drillers Avoid Paying Royalties
Heather Rousseau at NPR's Shots blog: In Rural Uganda, Homemade Bikes Make the Best Ambulances
kkrisberg | August 2, 2013Fair working standards for construction workers and financial profit for developers aren't incompatible, according to a new report from Texas' Workers Defense Project. In fact, consumers are actually willing to pay more to live in places built on principles of safety, economic justice and dignity.
Released this week in collaboration with the University of Texas' Center for Sustainable Development, "Green Jobs for Downtown Austin: Exploring the Consumer Market for Sustainable Buildings" studied consumer attitudes toward sustainable construction jobs and explored the market for certification…
lborkowski | July 31, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Two Nature news features on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, by Maryn McKenna and Beth Mole, respectively: Antibiotic resistance: The last resort and MRSA: Farming up trouble
David Leonhardt in the New York Times: In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters
Jim Morris at the Center for Public Integrity: Industry muscle targets federal 'Report on Carcinogens'
Stephanie Lee in the San Francisco Chronicle/ Reporting on Health: Poverty, health struggles in scenic Mendocino
Charles Kenny & Justin Sandefur in Foreign Policy: Can Silicon Valley Save the World…
kkrisberg | July 26, 2013With immigration at the forefront of national debate, Jim Stimpson decided it was time to do a little more digging.
"There's a lot of rhetoric around immigrants' use of public services in general and health care specifically, and I thought with impending federal immigration reform it would be useful to have some sort of contribution about the facts of unauthorized immigrants' use of health services in the United States," said Stimpson, a professor within the University of Nebraska's School of Public Health and director of the university's Center for Health Policy.
So together with colleagues…
kkrisberg | July 19, 2013When I asked Teresa Schnorr why we should be worried about the loss of a little-known occupational health data gathering program, she quoted a popular saying in the field of surveillance: "What gets counted, gets done."
Schnorr, who serves as director of the Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies at CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), was referring to the Adult Blood Lead Epidemiology and Surveillance program (ABLES), a state-based effort that collects and analyzes data on adult lead exposure. For more than two decades, NIOSH has been…
kkrisberg | July 12, 2013In a recent study comparing workers at industrial livestock operations and those employed at antibiotic-free livestock operations, researchers found that industrial workers were much more likely to carry livestock-associated strains of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, more commonly and scarily known as MRSA.
First, it's important to note that both groups of workers had a similar prevalence of S. aureus and methicillin-resistant S. Aureus (MRSA); however, it was overwhelmingly workers at industrial livestock operations, sometimes known as concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs,…
kkrisberg | July 5, 2013Last year, reported cases of West Nile virus in the United States hit their highest levels in nearly a decade. It's a good reminder to keep protecting yourself from getting bitten, but it also begs the question: Is this just a sign of a much bigger threat? The answer is just as wily as the pesky mosquito.
According to recent data published June 28 in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the federal public health agency received reports of 5,780 nationally notifiable arboviral disease cases in 2012. (Arboviral diseases are those transmitted by arthropods, such as ticks and mosquitoes…
kkrisberg | June 28, 2013Sharon Thomas-Ellison works hard for her paychecks at Jimmy John's. On occasion when no one else is available, the 19-year-old has worked from 11 in the morning until 1 a.m. at night with just a 30-minute break — and it's okay, she says, she needs the extra income.
After a long day's work on her feet, often working split shifts, the St. Louis resident goes home to the one-bedroom apartment she shares with her brother, who also works for Jimmy John's, a fast food sandwich chain that's become a billion-dollar a year enterprise with more than 1,500 stores nationwide. It's a struggle to pay the…
lborkowski | June 21, 2013by Kim Krisberg
When most of us pass by a new high-rise or drive down a new road, we rarely think: Did the builders and planners consider my health? However, a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers evidence that certain types of land use and transportation decisions can indeed limit the human health and environmental impacts of development.
Released in mid-June, the publication is a revised and updated version of an EPA report initially published in 2001. Agency officials said the report was particularly timely as the nation's built environments are quickly changing…
lborkowski | June 18, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
NPR Staff on All Things Considered: Water Wars: Who Controls the Flow?
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: The Risks You Don’t Think of: A Plea to Pack a ‘Go Bag’
Dwyer Gunn at Gothamist: Why Working Class Women Are Better Off Injured Than Pregnant
Jay Hancock at Kaiser Health News: Hospital CEO Bonuses Reward Volume and Growth
Brad Plumer at Wonkblog: Why does the government encourage people to build homes in wildfire zones?
lborkowski | June 11, 2013by Kim Krisberg
It seems we barely go a week now without news of another violent gun incident. Last week's shooting rampage in Santa Monica, Calif., has resulted in the deaths of five people. And since the Newtown school shooting last December — in the span of less than six months — thousands of Americans have been killed by guns.
Just a couple days before the Santa Monica shooting, the Institute of Medicine (IoM) and National Research Council released a new report proposing priority research areas for better understanding gun-related violence, its causes, health effects and possible…
lborkowski | June 7, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Every Tuesday night, the Austin-based Workers Defense Project welcomes standing room-only crowds to its Workers in Action meetings. During the weekly gatherings, low-wage, primarily Hispanic workers learn about their wage and safety rights, file and work on wage theft complaints, and organize for workplace justice.
Once a month, a representative from the local OSHA office would join the Tuesday meeting, giving some of Texas' most vulnerable workers the chance to meet face-to-face with the agency charged with protecting their health and safety on the job. Unfortunately, due to…
lborkowski | June 5, 2013When Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) passed away Monday at the age of 89, the Senate lost one of its longest-serving members and the US lost a public-health champion. Brad Plumer at the Washington Post's Wonkblog describes several of Senator Lautenberg's achievements, including banning smoking on airplanes, preventing people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns, and requiring states to raise their drinking ages to 21 and lower the drunk-driving blood alcohol threshold from .10 to .08. The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin writes about Lautenberg's environmental…
lborkowski | June 3, 2013I linked last week to Matthew Yglesias's Slate piece "The Best and Simplest Way to Fight Global Poverty," which reports on a study that gave unconditional cash grants to poor young adults in Uganda and found that four years later, recipients of the grants had more business capital and higher earnings than those in a control group. I thought about the study again over the weekend as I listened to a Planet Money podcast about a charitable school-building project in Haiti that exemplifies how hard -- and potentially less effective -- it can be to give poor communities assets like schools rather…
lborkowski | May 31, 2013by Kim Krisberg
In the United States, getting better often comes with an unfortunate and devastating side effect: financial bankruptcy. In fact, a 2009 study in five states found that between 2001 and 2007, medical-related bankruptcies rose by nearly 50 percent. And for those diagnosed with cancer, the risk is even worse.
As if a cancer diagnosis wasn't scary enough, a group of researchers recently calculated that cancer patients are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to go bankrupt than people without cancer. And younger cancer patients faced bankruptcy rates of two to five times…
lborkowski | May 31, 2013A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
The Latest in the NPR-WAMU series Poisoned Places: Elizabeth Shogren and Robert Bennicasa on "Baton Rouge's Corroded, Overpolluting Neighbor: ExxonMobil"and Richard Harris on "Breathing Easier: How Houston is Working to Clean up its Air."
Maryn McKenna at Superbug: To Prevent MRSA In Hospitals, Don’t Prevent Only MRSA
Matthew Yglesias at Slate: The Best and Simplest Way to Fight Global Poverty
Eric Jankiewicz and Sara Sugar of Brooklyn Bureau: Bushwick's Struggles With Asthma: What's Poverty's Role?
Tracy Weber, Charles Ornstein, and Jennifer LaFleur of…
lborkowski | May 24, 2013by Kim Krisberg
When it comes to nonviolent drug offenses, systems that favor treatment over incarceration not only produce better health outcomes, they save money, too. It's yet another example of how investing in public health and prevention yields valuable returns on investment.
In a new study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), researchers found that California's Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act, which diverts nonviolent drug offenders from the correctional system and into treatment, saved a little more than $2,300 per offender over a 30-…
lborkowski | May 14, 2013by Kim Krisberg
Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers wrapped up their latest legislative session. And nearly 500 miles south of Tallahassee in Miami-Dade County, workers' rights advocates breathed yet another sigh of relief.
Ever since Miami-Dade adopted the nation's first countywide wage theft ordinance in 2010, it's been under attack. For the first two years after its passage, state legislators tried to pass legislation to pre-empt local communities from passing their own wage theft laws; this last legislative session, they tried again but included a carve out for Miami-Dade and for…