Public Health - General
lborkowski | July 9, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Last month, more than 70 ironworkers walked off an ExxonMobil construction site near Houston, Texas. The workers, known as rodbusters in the industry, weren't members of a union or backed by powerful organizers; they decided amongst themselves to unite in protest of unsafe working conditions in a state that has the highest construction worker fatality rate in the country.
The workers reported multiple problems with the ExxonMobil subcontractor who hired them, including not being paid on time, not having enough water on site and no access to medical care in the event of an…
lborkowski | July 4, 2012While the adoption of the Declaration of Independence is the most important anniversary that the US celebrates on July 4th, this date is also the anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act. President Johnson signed the FOIA on July 4, 1966 – although he apparently wasn’t happy about it, and refused to hold a signing ceremony.
The National Security Archive -- which is not a government agency, but a nonprofit based at the George Washington University (where I work) -- looked back at the history of FOIA on its 40th anniversary in 2006, and reported:
Documents from the LBJ Library show that…
lborkowski | June 28, 2012by Kim Krisberg
For me, there were few better places to hear about today's 5-4 Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act and its individual insurance mandate than at a meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Here in Charlotte, N.C., for APHA's Midyear Meeting, I was surrounded by hundreds of public health practitioners, researchers and advocates as we all watched the magnified scroll of Scotusblog.com, anxiously waiting for the decision.
At 10:08 a.m., the blog declared: "The individual mandate survives as a tax."
That was when the cheers (and tears) began. You…
lborkowski | June 26, 2012by Kim Krisberg
Just a few years ago in Butte County, Calif., it wasn't unusual for public health workers to administer more than 1,000 free HIV tests every year. In true public health fashion, they'd bring screening services to the people, setting up in neighborhoods, parks and bars, at special community events and visiting the local drug treatment facility and jail. The goal was prevention and education, and no one got turned away.
That was before 2009, which is when California state legislators cut millions in HIV prevention and education funds from the state budget. The cut meant that…
lborkowski | June 18, 2012by Kim Krisberg
When most of us think of sustainability and construction, the usual suspects probably come to mind: efficient cooling and heating, using nontoxic building materials, minimizing environmental degradation — in other words, being green. But in Austin, Texas, a new effort is working to expand the definition of sustainability from the buildings themselves to the hands that put them together.
Launched about a year ago, the Workers Defense Project's Premier Community Builders program certifies major new developments as sustainable for workers. That means making sure construction…
lborkowski | June 15, 2012Yesterday, that National Academies Press celebrated its first year of offering free PDFs of many of its reports. NAP reported in an anniversary email that website visitors have downloaded over 1.3 million PDF versions of books -- and that over the next year NAP will be adding more books (new and old alike) to the list of free downloads. Among the most downloaded so far are:
The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health
Relieving Pain America: A Blueprint for Transforming Prevention, Care, Education, and Research
To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System
The reports on…
lborkowski | June 13, 2012Last week, the House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Administration held a hearing on the National Preparedness Report released earlier this year by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Subcommittee Chair Gus Bilirakis noted in his opening remarks that it’s the start of hurricane season, and cited the response to Hurricane Irene and the Joplin tornado as evidence that preparedness in the US has improved since the days of September 11, 2011 and Hurricane Katrina.
The first witness was FEMA Deputy Administrator…
lborkowski | June 4, 2012by Kim Krisberg
A recent report again confirms what comes as no surprise to public health practitioners: that income and education are inextricably tied to the opportunities for better health and longevity.
In mid-May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its yearly report on Americans' health, "Health, United States, 2011." This year's report included a special section examining the links between socioeconomic status and health. It's another reminder that good health is as much — or even more — tied to what goes on outside a doctor's office rather than what goes on inside…
lborkowski | May 21, 2012by Kim Krisberg
"We will pay for this by taking money from one of the slush funds in the president's health care law."
That's an April quote from U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on how Republicans plan to offset the cost of stopping scheduled hikes in student loan interest rates. And the "slush fund" in question? The Prevention and Public Health Fund, the historic $15 billion investment in prevention authorized via the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
The April move by House Republicans wasn't the first attempt to raid the fund. Several tries have been made to repeal the fund entirely or…
cmonforton | May 18, 2012Members of and organizations affiliated with the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) received an Action Alert today urging them to tell USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to withdraw his agency's proposed rule on poultry slaughter inspection (77 Fed Reg 4408.) As written here previously and by the Center for Progressive Reform's Rena Steinzor in "The Age of Greed," the USDA proposal was developed in response to President Obama's edict about regulations, and his call to agencies to eliminate "outmoded" and "excessively burdensome" rules. The change proposed by USDA involves shifting the responsibility…
lborkowski | May 7, 2012A recent Freakonomics podcast tells one of my favorite public health stories: how observant physician Ignaz Semmelweis figured out how to slash the incidence of childbed, or puerperal, fever, a disease that killed 10-15% of the women who gave birth in the doctor-staffed ward of the Vienna General Hospital in the mid-nineteenth century. (Death rates were similarly alarming elsewhere, since germ theory hadn't yet taken hold.)
As the podcast explains, Semmelweis observed that the death rate from childbed fever was lower among women who delivered babies in the ward staffed by midwives compared to…
lborkowski | May 3, 2012by Andrea Hricko, MPH
Rick Brown, PhD, a sociologist by training, was a world renowned champion of public health. Thousands of occupational health, children's health, and community health advocates who knew him are mourning his loss. Rick passed away two weeks ago of a stroke while lecturing in Kentucky.
His work on health care issues (especially the lack of health insurance for children) and his development of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) were just two of his major achievements. He was a longtime professor at UCLA School of Public Health, adviser to several U.S. Presidents,…
lborkowski | May 2, 2012I've written before (here and here) about some of the research that's been demonstrating the importance of avoiding long stretches of sedentary time. (The Sedentary Behavior Research Network has proposed that "sedentary" refer to waking time spent sitting or lying down and expending little energy, while "inactive" refer to people with low levels of overall activity, and I'm using those definitions.) Some of us may feel virtuous for meeting CDC's physical activity guidelines through regular workout sessions, but bouts of aerobic exercise can't completely offset the toll of too much time spent…
lborkowski | April 30, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It was a lucky winter for Becky Belmont. The weather was on her side.
As the director of energy and weatherization at West Central Minnesota Communities Action Inc., Belmont was sure the agency would run out of energy assistance funds to help all those in need. But fortunately, a mild Minnesota winter translated into fewer residents who needed help keeping their homes warm this year.
Today, Belmont seems pretty optimistic that even with declining funds, the agency will have enough funding to last through May 31, which marks the end of its Energy Assistance Program year. This…
lborkowski | April 25, 2012Today is World Malaria Day, and the World Health Organization has launched a new initiative, dubbed T3: Test, Treat, Track. It urges countries where malaria is endemic to test every suspected malaria case, treat every confirmed case with anti-malarial medicine, and track the disease with "timely and accurate surveillance systems." The good news is that scaled-up malaria prevention and control efforts -- including delivery of 145 million insecticidal bed nets in 2010 alone -- have saved a million lives over the past decade. But, the WHO points out, there's still a long way to go in combating…
lborkowski | April 13, 2012Yesterday, the FDA announced a new program that has the potential to slash the routine use of antibiotics by livestock producers. The routine administration of antibiotics to livestock with no signs of sickness helps animals grow more quickly, but it's also a significant contributor to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. An estimated 70% of the antibiotics sold in the US are given to non-human animals, and most of them are the same drugs that humans rely on to treat our illnesses.
Gardiner Harris's New York Times article about FDA's announcement bears the exciting (to me, anyway)…
lborkowski | April 2, 2012This week (April 2-8) is National Public Health Week. As Kim Krisberg described a couple of weeks ago, localities and groups across the country are recognizing it with a wide range of activities, from a health film festival to a safe sex carnival to a 1950s-themed health fair featuring the jitterbug and hula hoops. (Go here to find an event in your area.) This year, the American Public Health Association (which has organized National Public Health Week since 1995) has made the week's theme "A Healthier American Begins Today: Join the Movement!" The NPHW website explains the theme's…
lborkowski | March 29, 2012by Kim Krisberg
A couple weeks ago on the southern-most tip of the continental United States in Key West, nearly 70 residents gathered at a town hall meeting to talk about mosquitoes. And not just any mosquito. A special, genetically modified mosquito designed to protect people's health.
While the modified mosquito has yet to make the two-mile wide island its home, local mosquito control officials are busy making the case that its intentional release will help safely contain the risk of mosquito-borne dengue fever, which made a startling reappearance in Key West in 2009. The male mosquito is…
lborkowski | March 16, 2012by Kim Krisberg
"CQ, CQ Celebrating National Public Health Week!" "CQ, CQ Celebrating National Public Health Week!"
If you're an aficionado of amateur radio -- or ham radio as it's also known -- this is the call you might hear coming out of Oklahoma City on April 6. In layman's terms, it means "Calling all stations, calling all stations! Celebrating National Public Health Week!"
In honor of this year's National Public Health Week observance, which runs April 2-8, officials with the Oklahoma City-County Health Department will hold a special drill in which all of its amateur communications…
lborkowski | March 13, 2012National Sleep Awareness Week might have been last week, but many of us are feeling the importance of shuteye this week, as we struggle to drag ourselves out of bed at what feels like an inappropriate hour. While Daylight Saving Time may get the blame for sleepiness this week, though, there are important year-round factors that cause fatigue. In honor of National Sleep Awareness Week, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's NIOSH Science Blog published two posts about the impact of work demands on sleep. Claire Caruso and Roger Rosa start off by highlighting the…