Public Health - General
kkrisberg | May 17, 2016Hardly a day goes by lately without another story on companies like Uber and their model of classifying workers as independent contractors while treating them more like traditional employees and sidestepping traditional employer responsibilities. It’s a model that has serious implications for workers’ rights and wages. However, there’s another form of employment that may be even more damaging to hard-fought labor standards: subcontracting.
In March, the University of California-Berkely Labor Center released “Race to the Bottom: How Low-Road Subcontracting Affects Working Conditions in…
kkrisberg | May 13, 2016It’s been 15 years since worker safety advocates in Puerto Rico first began fighting against a proposal to dilute the qualifications associated with being a professional industrial hygienist. As part of their efforts, such advocates developed their own proposal to protect the livelihoods of those with the knowledge and experience to properly protect workers. And after years of work, they may finally cross the finish line victorious.
“We’re really hopeful it works out and we’ll see the light of day,” said Lida Orta-Anés, professor in the Industrial Hygiene Program at the University of Puerto…
kkrisberg | May 12, 2016With near constant news on the threat of Zika virus and a quickly growing evidence base detailing the virus’ devastating impact on fetal brain development, you’d think Congress could get its act together to make sure our public health system is fully prepared and equipped to confront the mosquito-borne disease. Sadly, you’d be wrong.
It’s been nearly three months since the White House submitted a request to Congress proposing $1.9 billion in emergency funding to support a full range of activities needed to prepare for, prevent, detect and respond to Zika in the United States. As of today, May…
lborkowski | May 9, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Melissa Harris-Perry in Elle and before the Congressional Caucus for Black Women and Girls: How Our Country Fails Black Women and Girls
N.R. Kleinfeld in The New York Times: Fraying at the Edges (“A withered person with a scrambled mind, memories sealed away: That is the familiar face of Alzheimer’s. But there is also the waiting period, which Geri Taylor has been navigating with prudence, grace and hope.”)
Oliver Laughland and Mae Ryan in The Guardian: Workers fight for dignity in Trump's Las Vegas hotel: 'You don't talk to the boss'
Emily Peck in the…
kkrisberg | May 5, 2016Just in time for Mother’s Day comes more good news from the Affordable Care Act: the rate of uninsured moms caring for kids younger than 19 has dropped to its lowest rate in nearly 20 years.
According to a new analysis from the Urban Institute released this month, the rate of uninsured moms fell 3.8 percentage points between 2013 and 2014 — that’s a decline about three times as large as any of the previous year-to-year changes observed since 1997. In sheer numbers, that means about 1.6 million moms gained health insurance. To give you even more perspective, consider that uninsurance rates…
kkrisberg | May 3, 2016If you’re pregnant and live in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s likely you’ll pay about $522 for an ultrasound. If you live about 60 miles south in Canton, Ohio, it costs about $183 for the same procedure, a recent study found. Why such a significant price difference? Researchers couldn’t single out one overriding factor. But the study does tell us this: place matters when it comes to how much you pay for health care.
The study was published last week in Health Affairs and was based on data from the Health Care Cost Institute, a commercial claims database that includes nearly 3 billion paid claim lines…
kkrisberg | April 27, 2016At the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reporter Raquel Rutledge follows up her in-depth investigation into diacetyl exposure among coffee plant workers with news that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is looking into the hazardous exposures that some 600,000 people face as they work to roast, grind, package and serve coffee. Rutledge reports that in the wake of newspaper’s 2015 investigation, CDC is now conducting tests at facilities across the nation — in fact, the first test results from a coffee roasting facility in Wisconsin found very high levels of chemicals that have the…
lborkowski | April 26, 2016Reading over the list of 2016 Pulitzer Prize winners makes clear just how essential journalism's watchdog role is to public health. In 2015, news organizations devoted considerable resources to researching, reporting, and commenting on slave labor in international seafood supply chains; funding cuts resulting in dangerous conditions in Florida mental hospitals; and failures in justice systems across the country. Bringing public attention to these problems is a first step to fixing them, and in many cases, this reporting has gotten results.
The Associated Press won the Public Service prize for…
kkrisberg | April 22, 2016When President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, he also ushered in the first major nutrition changes in the school meal program in 15 years. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the changes received a good bit of pushback, with many arguing that healthier foods would mean fewer kids buying school lunches and big revenue losses for schools. But a new study shows otherwise.
Last week, a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine and that focused on 11 Massachusetts school districts found that while schools experienced initial losses following the meal changes,…
kkrisberg | April 20, 2016Just a few weeks ago, legislators in New York reached a deal to raise the minimum wage to $15. And while that’s certainly a big boost for incomes, it could also turn out to be a literal lifesaver.
Published this month in the American Journal of Public Health, a new study found that if $15 had been New York City’s minimum wage from 2008 to 2012, 2,800 to 5,500 premature deaths could have been averted, with the bulk of such avoided deaths occurring in low-income communities. To conduct the study, researchers used U.S. Census data to calculate how the proportion of low-income residents in each…
lborkowski | April 18, 2016Rena Steinzor in the New York Times Opinion Pages: Judgment Day for Reckless Executives
Angus Deaton in JAMA: On Death and Money: History, Facts, and Explanations (This is an editorial about the study by Raj Chetty and colleagues on income and life expectancy, and you can also read about their findings in the New York Times.)
Maryn McKenna in the New York Times Magazine: The Looming Threat of Avian Flu
Kira Shepherd in Rewire: The Context of Historical Racism Matters in the Birth Control Benefit Case
Edward Humes in Citylab: The Absurd Primacy of the Automobile in American Life
kkrisberg | April 15, 2016Lead isn’t the only toxin threatening the safety of community drinking water. A recent study on water located downstream from a West Virginia fracking disposal site uncovered levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals high enough to adversely impact the aquatic animals living there. And that means human health could be at risk too.
“We can’t make any direct (human health) assumptions about this particular water,” said study co-author Susan Nagel, an associate professor in the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s Division of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health. “But we certainly…
kkrisberg | April 12, 2016At Reveal, Christina Jewett investigates the gaping holes in California’s workers’ compensation system that make it so vulnerable to fraud and leave workers in the dark about the bogus care being charged in their names. She begins the article comparing the workers’ comp system to Medicare:
When Medicare makes rules, it has a strong incentive to encourage doctors, pharmacists and others to follow them: money.
The purse strings are not held nearly as tightly in California’s workers’ compensation system, in which a division of power creates the first major hurdle.
Lawmakers make rules. The state…
Leaked poll shows business execs overwhelmingly support paid leave, higher wages and fair scheduling
kkrisberg | April 5, 2016You know how opponents of paid sick leave and raising the minimum wage always cite resistance in the business community? Well, in turns out that such resistance might be closer to a marketing gimmick rather than a genuine reflection of employer sentiment.
Yesterday, the Center for Media and Democracy released a leaked internal poll of 1,000 top-level business executives nationwide, many of whom are members of their local or state chambers of commerce. Here’s what the poll, which was commissioned by the Council of State Chambers and conducted by LuntzGlobal, found: 80 percent supported raising…
kkrisberg | April 4, 2016In debates over air pollution control, it’s always a tug-of-war between the cost to business and the cost to public health. Late last month, a study emerged with new data for the public health column: the cost of the nation’s nearly 16,000 annual preterm births linked to air pollution is more than a whopping $5 billion.
Published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the study estimated the burden of U.S. preterm births and related costs associated with fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — a pollutant from motor vehicles and the burning of fuels such as wood and coal. While preterm birth is a…
kkrisberg | March 29, 2016At Slate, Michelle Chen writes about the experiences of hotel housekeepers in Miami during spring break. The story starts with Adelle Sile, a housekeeper at the four-star Fontainebleau Miami Beach:
Around this time of year, thanks to the influx of spring break and Easter break vacationers, the time (Sile) has to clean each room during her eight-hour shift gets squeezed as guests stretch their mornings to the final minutes before checkout. When she does finally get in, she sometimes opens the door to find vomit, empty bottles, crack pipes, marijuana buds, and makeshift mattresses of cushions…
kkrisberg | March 25, 2016Here’s what states get when they expand Medicaid: more savings, more revenue, more jobs, more access to care for their communities.
That’s the conclusion from a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issue brief released this month that compared the differences between states that chose to expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act and those that opted out. Under the health reform law, the federal government will pay the entire cost of expanding state Medicaid programs up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level through 2016, phasing down to 90 percent by 2020. It’s a pretty good…
kkrisberg | March 23, 2016A recent study finds vaccine refusals have, indeed, accelerated the resurgence of whooping cough and measles here in the U.S. The findings are making headlines around the country — and comment sections are filling up with vitriol from anti-vaxxers — but it would feel amiss not to highlight the study on a blog dedicated to public health. But first, let’s remind ourselves of the pain and suffering that preceded vaccines.
Here’s a brief snapshot of what life was like before vaccines and what it’s currently like for people without access to these life-saving medicines:
Whooping cough (pertussis…
lborkowski | March 22, 2016A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Charles Ornstein, Ryann Grochowski Jones and Mike Tigas at ProPublica: Now There’s Proof: Docs Who Get Company Cash Tend to Prescribe More Brand-Name Meds
Anna North in the New York Times: What Planned Parenthood Really Does
Alison Young and Mark Nichols in USA TODAY: Beyond Flint: Excessive lead levels found in almost 2,000 water systems across all 50 states
David Roberts at Vox: How your taxes ended up enriching coal executives who are betraying their workers
Rick Jacobus at Shelterforce: Why We Must Build (“We can’t build our way out of the housing…
kkrisberg | March 18, 2016In another example of the value of investing in public health, a recent study finds that PulseNet, a national foodborne illness outbreak network, prevents about 276,000 illnesses every year, which translates into savings of $507 million in medical costs and lost productivity. That’s a pretty big return on investment for a system that costs just $7.3 million annually to operate.
Created 20 years ago and coordinated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, PulseNet includes 83 state and federal laboratories and identifies about 1,750 disease clusters every year. It works by linking…