Public Health - General
lborkowski | April 21, 2011By Kim Krisberg
I've had this conversation more times than I can count.
You're a reporter? What do you write about?
Public health.
(Blank stare.) Oh. What's public health? Is that like universal health care or something?
How do you describe public health? It's a tricky question. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines public health as the "art and science dealing with the protection and improvement of community health by organized community effort and including preventive medicine and sanitary and social science." Others describe it as a profession dedicated to the prevention of disease and…
lborkowski | April 14, 2011At her Washington Post blog 2chambers, Felicia Sonmez reports that the House has passed legislation repealing the section of the Affordable Care Act that created the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which gives the Department of Health and Human Services $15 billion over the next 10 years to fund prevention and public health.
The Republican complaint? Sonmez reports, "Republicans have criticized the account as a "slush fund" that gives Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wide latitude in administering federal money without congressional oversight." This is an odd critique…
lborkowski | April 6, 2011It's National Public Health Week, and this year's theme is "Safety is No Accident: Live Injury Free." The American Public Health Association notes that in the US each year, nearly 150,000 people die from injuries, and almost 30 million people visit emergency rooms for injuries. They offer safety tips for home, work, play, transportation, and communities.
CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control provides detailed information on what kinds of injuries kill people of different age groups. Here are a few statistics (2007):
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for…
lborkowski | March 29, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling of NPR: Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon
Susan Milius in Science News: Backup Bees
Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: The Radium Girls (Part II, Part III)
Frank N. Von Hippel on the New York Times Opinion Page: It Could Happen Here ("Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of 'regulatory capture' -- in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it.")
Michelle Andrews for Kaiser Health News: Demand Grows for Palliative Care
lborkowski | March 18, 2011In the early hours of March 11th, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck northern Japan, and a massive tsunami followed. More than 5,000 people are dead and almost 10,000 are missing. Hundreds of thousands are homeless, and those living near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station have been told to evacuate - while a small crew of brave workers remains nearby to try and avert catastrophic meltdown.
Here in the US, our budget debates highlight differing opinions about how much we want our government to do for us. The stories we tell ourselves make a virtue of self-sufficiency, and we highlight…
lborkowski | March 8, 2011For today's celebration of International Women's Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remarks:
One hundred years ago, when the world first commemorated International Women's Day, gender equality and women's empowerment were largely radical ideas. On this centenary, we celebrate the significant progress that has been achieved through determined advocacy, practical action and enlightened policy making. Yet, in too many countries and societies, women remain second-class citizens.
He goes on to describe violence against women (including sexual aggression in conflict), women and children's…
lborkowski | March 2, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Deborah Blum at Slate: Bring Back the Poison Squad ("If we look back to a similar crisis of food safety in the last century, we see that federal regulators were willing to risk their lives to protect the rest of us.")
Jenny Gold of Kaiser Health News on NPR: In Pa., Low-income Adults Soon May Be Uninsured (and check out Steve Inskeep's interview with Julie Rovner, which followed this story when it aired)
Jim Morris, Chris Hamby, and M.B. Pell at the Center for Public Integrity: Regulatory Flaws, Repeated Violations Put Oil Refinery Workers at Risk
The…
lborkowski | February 24, 2011We're hearing a lot of rhetoric about the need to slash government spending, so it's a good time to remind everyone that there's no such thing as a free lunch - and if you think you're getting a free lunch, it might be loaded with pathogens.
Maryn McKenna, writing at Superbug about a New England Journal of Medicine study, has an illustrative example: the Great Tomato Scare of 2008. Between May and August of 2008, 1,499 people (and probably many more) fell ill from the Saintpaul strain of Salmonella, and two people died. The Food and Drug Administration initially thought tomatoes were to…
lborkowski | February 17, 2011Cross-posted from the American Geophysical Union's GeoSpace blog.
Even though the deadly cholera epidemic in Haiti is now spreading more slowly, health officials are still working to prevent as many new cases as possible. Detailed models of the disease's spread help those in charge of making public health decisions understand the effectiveness of control measures, from vaccines to investments in clean water supply and education.
A new study by Enrico Bertuzzo and colleagues just accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters looks at how the Haitian cholera outbreak is likely to…
lborkowski | February 15, 2011The Kaiser Family Foundation has just released a report on the future of global health journalism, and it's not surprising to hear that the traditional model of covering global health is crumbling. KFF commissioned journalists Nellie Bristol and John Donnelly to conduct this research, and their interviews with 51 stakeholders found that challenges abound. Budget pressures on mainstream news media have reduced the number of reporters on this beat and restrained their ability to travel. Freelancers struggle to find receptive outlets for their stories and stretch paltry story payments to cover…
lborkowski | February 4, 2011Ben McGrath has an excellent article on "the NFL and the concussion crisis" in the January 31st issue of the New Yorker. It's well worth a read (though it might change the way you see the Superbowl), but the thing I want to highlight is the roles of Alan Schwarz and the New York Times in raising the public's awareness of a problem that pervades football. (For our international readers, I'm referring to the US version of football - I realize that word means something different in the rest of the world.)
Specifically, the problem is the effects of repeated brain trauma, which football players…
lborkowski | January 27, 2011Gym regulars might grumble when classes and locker rooms fill with resolute new members each January, but the crowds rarely last long. I'm sure many gyms' revenue models depend on members who pay monthly fees but use the facilities infrequently, if at all. These people (and I've been one in the past) are essentially throwing money away by not going to the gym, but that doesn't seem to be enough to get them out of bed and into spinning class at 6am. The rewards of better fitness are much more distant than the allure of another half hour of sleep.
The Boston Globe's Susan Johnston reports on a…
lborkowski | January 26, 2011Cholera has killed roughly 3,800 people in Haiti and sickened another 189,000, and it will continue to circulate in the population for the foreseeable future. The good news is that the number of new cases per week has dropped from 12,000, which it reached in November, to about 4,700, and the mortality rate has also decreased. Intensive treatment and prevention efforts (including provision of clean water and educational campaigns) have saved thousands of lives, and will have to continue even as the attention of the international community wanes.
David Cyranoski of Nature News points out that…
lborkowski | January 13, 2011A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Travis Saunders at the Scientific American Guest Blog: Can sitting too much kill you?
Tanya Snyder in Streetsblog Capitol Hill: Actually, Highway Builders, Roads Don't Pay for Themselves
Tina Rosenberg for the New York Times' Opinionator: To Beat Back Poverty, Pay the Poor
Ilan Greenberg in Guernica: Murder Music ("Jamaica's dancehall music is being blamed for the country's violent attacks on gays. But there are many who don't see the music as homophobic, only the battle cry of a changing nation.")
Environmental Health News compiles its Top Stories of…
lborkowski | January 12, 2011One year after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed more than 200,000 Haitians and left 1.5 million homeless, conditions in the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation are still grim. Cholera has killed 3,600 people and weakened many more; the UN warns that 650,000 may be affected over the next several months, and the death rate from the disease is an "unacceptably high" 3.6%. Elections in November were accompanied by widespread charges of fraud and voter intimidation, and it's still unclear which candidates will face off in an upcoming runoff.
More than a million Haitians still live in makeshift…
lborkowski | January 11, 2011According to new research from the Institute for Women's Policy Research, in 2010 44 million private-sector US employees, or 42% of the workforce, lacked access to paid sick time. This IWPR analysis distinguishes between employees who are eligible for paid sick time vs. those who can actually access it, because employers often don't allow for the use of paid sick time by employees in their first months on the job. IWPR reports that new employees have to wait an average of 3.5 months to access paid sick days.
The occupational categories with the lowest percentages of private-sector employees…
lborkowski | December 6, 2010The Pump Handle and Casaubon's Book are writing posts this week about the global trend of urbanization. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and this shift has implications for the health of the planet.
I grew up in suburban Delaware, and my first experience with urban living came in college when I spent a month on a study abroad trip to London. I fell in love with the Tube, the neighborhood markets and pubs, the profusion of cuisines, and the array of theatrical performances listed in Time Out magazine (it was the nineties, and we relied on the paper version). I…
lborkowski | November 29, 2010Given that Haiti is suffering from the devastation of a major earthquake and a cholera epidemic, it's not surprising that voters yesterday encountered disorganized polling places where many were told their names weren't on the rolls. But there were also reports of violence and intimidation, polling places being ransacked and ballot boxes ripped open, and ballot-stuffing. In the afternoon, 12 of the 19 candiates for president joined together and called for the election to be canceled.
Meanwhile, the cholera epidemic continues. Haitian authorities report that more than 1,600 people have died…
cmonforton | November 26, 2010Our friend and APHA OHS colleague Mark Catlin has assembled on YouTube an amazing collection of more than 500 environmental health and safety film clips. The video collection contain footage dating back to the 1920's, with loads WWII-era films produced by the U.S. military, Public Health Service and companies promoting tires, asbestos, oil, steel, tetraethyl lead, and more. The collection has already had a million hits this year.
One of my favorites, Safety Styles, features WWII pin-up model Veronica Lake. The actress, known for her flowing long blonde peakapoo hair style, encourages…
lborkowski | November 16, 2010When severe flooding in Pakistan left millions of people without food, shelter, and water, I wrote a post wondering why that disaster was getting less attention than Haiti's earthquake. I suspected the gradual nature of the disaster was part of the problem, and commenters had additional suggestions, ranging from Haiti's closeness to the US to the US public's overall view of Pakistan as a nation.
Last week, The New York Times' Lydia Polgreen put some numbers on the Haitian earthquake vs. Pakistani floods comparison and delved into reasons for the disparity:
In all, $3.4 billion has been…