Liz Borkowski
lborkowski
Posts by this author
August 19, 2013
Wage theft – when employers fail to pay workers what they’ve earned – has been in the news lately:
In a lawsuit that could become a class-action suit, two former Apple store employees allege that the company failed to pay employees for time spent waiting for bag searches – time they say the…
August 15, 2013
A 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…
August 12, 2013
The Washington Post’s Lena H. Sun writes about Obamacare implementation, and finds that it differs greatly between Maryland and Virginia, which share a border but have very different attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act. Both have large uninsured populations (around 800,000 in Maryland and 844,…
August 7, 2013
After years of hearing about alarming increases in states' obesity rates, it was nice to get some good news: CDC reports that the percentage of low-income preschool children classified as obese has declined in 19 states. (Height and weight data came from 11.6 million children aged 2-4 participating…
August 5, 2013
Fast-food workers in several Midwestern cities and New York held one-day strikes last week to protest poverty wages. Jeff Schuhrke reports for In These Times, with a focus on the Chicago protests:
Hundreds of fast-food and retail workers in Chicago are on strike today and tomorrow, joining…
July 31, 2013
A 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…
July 29, 2013
Celeste wrote earlier this month about a public meeting at which the US Chemical Safety Board would vote on whether to label several of their outstanding recommendations to OSHA as having seen unacceptable progress. I attended the day-long meeting, and thought the CSB staff and board members made a…
July 22, 2013
Many of us have been complaining about the heat that’s blanketed much of the country for the past couple of weeks, but the situation is especially severe for those who work outdoors or in spaces without adequate cooling.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death…
July 18, 2013
by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA
The current issue of Mother Jones offers an article on the troubling and growing list of State "gag laws" which make it a crime to disclose contamination and abuse in animal breeding and slaughter houses. Ted Genoways in "Gagged by Big Ag," describes the events and…
July 16, 2013
In a recent opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press, David Fukuzawa of the Kresge Foundation suggests that improving the performance of Detroit's public school children requires tackling lead poisoning. Federal and state funds to prevent lead poisoning have dropped, and the millions of dollars…
July 8, 2013
Chemical Safety Board Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso testified before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee regarding its preliminary findings on the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people in April. Ramit Plushnick-Masti reports for the Associated Press:
"The safety of…
July 3, 2013
The Supreme Court's decisions on marriage equality and the Voting Rights Act got a lot of media attention last week, but several of the Court's other decisions also have implications for public health -- and they came down on the side of employers, real-estate developers, and drug manufacturers.
In…
July 1, 2013
Last week, the Senate confirmed Howard Shelanski to lead the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), part of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the source of many lengthy delays of health and safety regulations. On Sunday, the New York Times published a scathing…
June 27, 2013
When the Supreme Court released its United States v. Windsor decision striking the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act yesterday, supporters of marriage equality felt joy akin to what Affordable Care Act supporters felt a year ago when the Court released its decision upholding the healthcare law. Because…
June 24, 2013
Back in January, the Huffington Post's Dave Jamieson reported on the case of Reuben Shemwell, a Kentucky mineworker who'd been fired from his welding job with an affiliate of Armstrong Coal. Shemwell filed a discrimination complaint saying he'd been fired because he had complained about safety…
June 21, 2013
by 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…
June 19, 2013
Yesterday, US Secretary of State John Kerry marked the 10th anniversary of the creation of PEPFAR, the US President's Plan for Emergency AIDS Relief. President George W. Bush launched PEPFAR in 2003 with an initial $15-billion, five-year commitment to provide antiretroviral therapy (ART) to HIV-…
June 18, 2013
A 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…
June 14, 2013
Last week, striking Walmart workers and supporters of OUR Walmart converged on the company's shareholder meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas, calling for higher wages and better working conditions. Walmart employee Janet Sparks delivered a shareholder resolution that would have required senior…
June 13, 2013
A fire at a poultry plant in Dehui, China last week killed at least 120 people and injured many others. Some state media reports attribute the fire to an ammonia leak, and medical workers reported that many victims had swollen respiratory tracts consistent with ammonia poisoning. Workers who…
June 11, 2013
by 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…
June 7, 2013
by 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,…
June 5, 2013
When 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…
June 3, 2013
I 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…
May 31, 2013
by 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…
May 31, 2013
A 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…
May 30, 2013
By Sara Gorman
In response to the realization that between 16% and 49% of people in the world have psychiatric and neurological disorders and that most of these individuals live in low- and middle-income countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Mental Health Gap Action Programme…
May 28, 2013
Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved immigration legislation that would overhaul US immigration laws. Alan Gomez reports in USA Today:
The bill was produced by a bipartisan group of senators known as the Gang of Eight. With four of those members on the committee, the bill survived 212…
May 24, 2013
by 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…
May 21, 2013
At the Washington Post's Wonkblog, Ezra Klein has put up two posts about healthcare costs that are well worth reading. The first is about Oregon's Medicaid program, which has been the basis for some exciting recent research on how Medicaid coverage affects recipients' lives and is now trying to…