public health
kkrisberg | December 30, 2014With the new year just around the corner, it’s the perfect time to celebrate worker victories of 2014. At In These Times, reporter Amien Essif gathered a list of the nine most important victories of 2014, writing:
Much has been made of the incredibly hostile climate for labor over the past few decades. Yet this past year, workers still organized on shop floors, went out on strike, marched in the street and shuffled into courthouses to hold their employers accountable, and campaigned hard for those who earned (or, often enough, didn’t earn) their vote. Legislators, meanwhile, tarried on with…
kkrisberg | December 23, 2014With the second round of open enrollment now underway, the Affordable Care Act is expected to help narrow racial and ethnic disparities in insurance coverage, a new report finds. However, not all communities are predicted to benefit equally. Because nearly half of the country’s legislatures decided against expanding Medicaid eligibility, black Americans may continue to face difficulties finding quality, affordable health coverage.
This month, the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center released a new report detailing racial and ethnic differences in insurance rates under the ACA. Using data…
kkrisberg | December 17, 2014When compared with gasoline-powered cars, vehicles fueled with electricity from renewable sources could cut air pollution-related deaths by 70 percent, according to a new study, which noted that air pollution is the country’s greatest environmental health threat.
Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study’s researchers examined the impact of various vehicle energy sources on the concentrations of two types of air pollutants known to affect human health: particulate matter and ground-level ozone. Previous research has found that air pollution causes…
kkrisberg | December 16, 2014America’s petrochemical industry has spent millions trying to discredit the science on benzene, a known human carcinogen linked to leukemia and other cancers, according to an investigative piece from reporter Kristen Lombardi at the Center for Public Integrity. Lombardi begins her story with the life of John Thompson, who spent much of his life working for the petrochemical industry in Texas. She writes:
Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he often encountered benzene, stored on job sites in 55-gallon drums, which he used as a cleaning solvent. He dipped hammers and cutters into buckets…
kkrisberg | December 12, 2014The week of midterm exams is stressful for any college student. For San Francisco State student Michelle Flores, it was another stress-filled example of the unfair conditions she and millions of other retail workers face on a regular basis.
Flores, a 20-year-old labor studies and public policy undergrad, is a cashier at a national grocery store chain and usually works a 24-hour week, though she’d like to work more. Just before midterms, she found out her supervisor expected her to work 30 hours the same week as her exams — and he gave her just two days notice.
“I said I'd work them,” she said…
kkrisberg | December 11, 2014Feeling tired? You’re not alone. A new study finds that many U.S. workers aren’t getting enough sleep, which is essential to optimal health, and that people who work multiple jobs are at heightened risk of getting less than the recommended hours of nightly rest.
To conduct the study, which was published in the December issue of the Sleep journal, researchers examined the responses of nearly 125,000 Americans ages 15 years old and older and who participated in the American Time Use Survey between 2003 and 2011. They found that work was the dominant reason for reporting less sleep across nearly…
kkrisberg | December 9, 2014In ongoing public health efforts to curb the obesity epidemic, better menu and nutrition labeling is often tapped as a low-cost way to help make the healthy choice, the easy choice. And while the evidence on the effectiveness of such interventions is still emerging, a recent study found that educating young people on the calories in sugar-sweetened beverages did make a positive difference.
Published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study focused on an experiment inside six corner stores located near middle and high schools within low-income, predominantly…
kkrisberg | December 3, 2014As public health practitioners increasingly look upstream to identify the determinants that put people on a trajectory toward lifelong health and wellbeing, early childhood is often tapped as a pivotal intervention point. Now, a new tool is available that practitioners can use to measure neighborhood-level opportunity indicators that are fundamentally linked to children’s health.
In the November issue of Health Affairs, researchers presented the newly developed Child Opportunity Index for the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. The index covers three domains of opportunity: educational,…
kkrisberg | December 2, 2014“Cows don’t know holidays,” says Alfredo Gomez, a 56-year-old dairy worker in southeastern New Mexico. “Here, there’s no Christmas.”
That’s an opening quote from Joseph Sorrentino’s article on the conditions dairy farm workers face in New Mexico, where he reports that milk production topped $1.5 billion last year and the industry employs thousands of workers. Published yesterday in In These Times, the article chronicles the dangerous conditions that farm workers face as well as the lives of dairy farm animals. Sorrentino reports:
“There’s no training — you just start working,” says Gustavo…
kkrisberg | November 26, 2014Children who have the opportunity to attend full-day preschool programs, versus part-day programs, tend to score higher on school readiness measures such as language, math, socio-emotional development and physical health, according to a recent study. So, why is this finding important to public health? Because education has literally been described as an “elixir” for lifelong health and wellbeing.
When it comes to the upstream factors that can put people on a lifelong trajectory toward longer life expectancy, greater health and less chance of disability and disease, educational achievement is…
kkrisberg | November 25, 2014Months before the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in Texas, the state’s public health laboratory had begun preparing for the disease to reach U.S. shores. And while the virus itself is an uncommon threat in this country, the response of the nation’s public health laboratory system wasn’t uncommon at all — in fact, protecting people’s health from such grave threats is exactly what public health laboratorians are trained to do.
“Having that preparedness background, we’re always ready to get that call at 3 in the morning,” said Grace Kubin, director of the Laboratory Services Section at the…
egrossman | November 19, 2014Often unwatched by all but policy-wonks yet key to determining policies put forth by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), are the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Boards. These boards consult with the EPA on the science that influences regulations, particularly on individual chemicals – science that’s used to protect the public from chemical hazards. On Tuesday the House passed a bill, the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act of 2013 or H.R. 1422, that would change how the EPA selects Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) members. The White House, in a statement from the Office of Management and…
kkrisberg | November 18, 2014They take care of our most precious resource and yet most of them have to rely on public assistance just to make ends meet.
Katie Johnston at the Boston Globe wrote about a new report from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, which “found that difficulties child-care workers face in making ends meet create high levels of stress that can affect their performance. Recent research has found that adverse interactions with caregivers early on can alter a child’s genetic chemistry, impairing memory, the immune system and mental health.” On average,…
kkrisberg | November 14, 2014As paid sick leave policies gain momentum across the country, a new study finds that such policies do indeed improve worker morale and have little overall effect on employer profitability.
Published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health, the study examined the effects of a 2007 paid sick leave policy in San Francisco, which became the first U.S. jurisdiction to enact a paid sick leave ordinance. (A number of states and cities have followed San Francisco’s lead — most recently Massachusetts, which passed a statewide earned paid sick leave policy by ballot measure…
kkrisberg | November 12, 2014Decreased lung function, breast cancer, miscarriage, depression and neurological disease. These are just a few of the health and disease risks that salon workers disproportionately face while on the job, according to a new report on the impact of toxic chemicals within the beauty and personal care industry.
Yesterday, Women’s Voices for the Earth, a nonprofit working to eliminate toxic chemicals from workplaces, homes and communities, released “Beauty and Its Beast: Unmasking the Impact of Toxic Chemicals on Salon Workers,” which highlights decades of research on beauty care workers and…
kkrisberg | November 7, 2014In the span of just a couple years, five of Heather Buren’s colleagues at the San Francisco Fire Department were diagnosed with breast cancer. At first, Buren thought the diagnoses were part of the unfortunate toll that comes with age. Still, something felt amiss — “it just felt so disproportionate to me,” she said.
Around the same time, Buren helped a good friend and mentor within the department as she underwent a double mastectomy. Buren said it was at that moment that she decided to take decisive action.
“(The cancer) just brought her to her knees,” she told me. “Now she’s good and back in…
kkrisberg | November 4, 2014The experience of Pennsylvania nurse Jessica Wheeler starts off Esther Kaplan’s piece on workplace speedups in The Nation. The article begins:
Wheeler recalls one night when she had a patient who couldn’t breathe and several others under her care. “I called the supervisor to ask for anybody—a nursing assistant, anybody! And I didn’t get it, and my patient ended up coding.” Another night, Wheeler had a post-op patient who required constant attention; the patient was confused and sick, and she soon escaped her restraints and pulled out her drains, spraying fecal matter all over the wall. Early…
kkrisberg | October 31, 2014A recent study of air quality around unconventional oil and gas extraction sites — more commonly referred to as fracking — found high levels of benzene, hydrogen sulfide and formaldehyde, all of which pose risks to human health. But what makes this study particularly interesting is that the air samples were collected by the very people who live near the extraction sites, and the collection times were specifically triggered by the onset of health symptoms.
Published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health, the study involved residents living near 11 unconventional extraction sites in…
kkrisberg | October 29, 2014Raising the federal minimum wage isn’t only good for workers — it’s good for the federal budget as well, according to a new issue brief from the Economic Policy Institute.
Released earlier this month, the policy brief details just how many low-wage workers have to depend on public assistance programs to make ends meet and how increasing the minimum wage could save billions in federal spending — and those billions could be redirected toward creating stronger, more resilient anti-poverty programs. The brief reports that about half of all workers earning less than $10.10 per hour, the new…
egrossman | October 28, 2014Despite substantial public opposition and the “grave concerns” of about 50 members of Congress and significant unanswered questions about human and environmental health impacts, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has approved a new herbicide called Enlist Duo for use on genetically engineered corn and soybeans in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. EPA, which says it has approved Enlist Duo “to manage the problem of resistant weeds” is now considering approving Enlist Duo for use in ten more states: Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi,…