public health
kkrisberg | July 12, 2016Mining is one of the most dangerous jobs in America, with more than 600 workers dying in fatal workplace incidents between 2004 and the beginning of July. And many more miners die long after they’ve left the mines from occupational illnesses such as black lung disease, while others live with the debilitating aftermath of workplace injuries. Today, researchers know a great deal about the health risks miners face on the job, but some pretty big gaps remain.
Kristin Yeoman and her colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) hope to begin closing that knowledge…
kkrisberg | July 8, 2016In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted a revised version of its International Health Regulations, a legally binding treaty among 196 nations to boost global health security and strengthen the world’s capacity to confront serious disease threats such as Ebola and SARS. A decade later, just one-third of countries have the ability to respond to a public health emergency. That’s why Rebecca Katz thinks it’s time to get creative.
“How can we think creatively about incentives for countries to build the required public health capacity under international treaty obligations,” Katz, an associate…
kkrisberg | July 5, 2016At the Detroit Free Press, Jennifer Dixon and Kristi Tanner investigate Michigan’s workplace safety and oversight system and talk to the families of victims who say there’s no justice for workers who’ve been injured or killed on the job. During the year-long investigation, the reporters looked into more than 400 workplace deaths across the state, finding “a flawed system of oversight with penalties against employers so low they're not a deterrent.”
The article began with the story of Mary Potter, who worked at a group home for people with developmental disabilities. Dixon and Tanner write:…
kkrisberg | July 1, 2016Dr. Jodi Sherman wants to expand the medical profession’s understanding of patient safety far beyond the exam room and hospital bed. For Sherman, the oft-heard medical mantra of “first do no harm” should also push the health care system to do more to reduce its harmful air emissions and their impact on people’s health.
“Traditionally, our duty has been to the patient in front of us,” Sherman told me. “But we have a duty to protect society as well.”
Sherman, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine, recently co-authored a new study on harmful air pollutants coming…
kkrisberg | June 30, 2016Low wages certainly impact a person’s health, from where people live to what they eat to how often they can visit a doctor. And low and stagnant wages certainly contribute to poverty, which is a known risk factor for poor health and premature mortality. But should low wages be considered an occupational health hazard?
Health economist J. Paul Leigh thinks that they should. In an article published in May in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM), Leigh, a professor of health economics at the University of California-Davis, and Roberto De Vogli, a global health professor…
kkrisberg | June 24, 2016A couple months ago, we reported on a study that found raising the minimum wage to $15 could have prevented thousands of premature deaths in New York City alone. Now comes more science on the life-saving benefits of higher wages — this one found that just a modest increase in the minimum wage could have saved the lives of hundreds of babies. It’s yet another reminder that the movement for a living wage is also a movement toward a healthier nation for all.
Published last week in the American Journal of Public Health, the study examined the impact of state-based minimum wage laws on the rate of…
kkrisberg | June 10, 2016In 2014, more than 28,000 people in the U.S. died from an opioid overdose. That same year, more Americans died from drug overdoses than during any other year on record, with the escalating numbers fueled by opioid abuse. Solutions to the problem are as complex as the epidemic itself, however a recent study pointed to one tool that can make a significant difference: prescription drug monitoring programs.
In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers found that implementation of a prescription drug monitoring program was linked to a more than 30 percent reduction in the rate of…
kkrisberg | June 7, 2016At Reveal, Jennifer LaFleur writes about the U.S. veterans who witnessed the country’s many nuclear weapon tests, the health problems they’ve encountered in the decades since their service, and their fight for compensation. One of the “atomic veterans” LeFleur interviewed — Wayne Brooks — said: “We were used as guinea pigs – every one of us. They didn’t tell us what it was gonna do to us. They didn’t tell us that we were gonna have problems later on in life with cancers and multiple cancers.” LaFleur writes:
All of the atomic vets were sworn to secrecy. Until the secrecy was lifted decades…
kkrisberg | June 3, 2016In the first large-scale study of its kind, researchers report that sexual trauma is indeed a risk factor for suicide among military veterans and are calling on veteran health providers to continue including such trauma in suicide prevention strategies.
Published in June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study is the first large-scale, population-based investigation into whether military sexual trauma is a risk factor in suicide-related mortality. To conduct the study, researchers with the Veterans Affairs system analyzed data on millions of veterans who received outpatient…
kkrisberg | May 31, 2016Everything’s bigger in Texas — including the number of Texans without health insurance. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act, the percentage of uninsured Texas residents has dropped by 30 percent. That means the Texas uninsured rate has hit its lowest point in nearly two decades.
In a new issue brief from Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, researchers report that the Texas uninsured rate dropped from 26 percent in September 2013 — before the ACA’s first open enrollment period — to 18 percent as of March 2016. The decline was observed among every age, income and ethnic group…
kkrisberg | May 27, 2016“In my darker hours when I’m sleeping at night, that’s where I go.” Those are words from Eric Blank, senior director for public health systems at the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), talking about the enormous difficulties that public health labs faced in confronting the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic. Now he fears that without emergency federal funds and in the face of new funding cuts, Zika virus will force the nation’s critical public health lab network into that same scenario — or into something even worse.
“(Public health labs) know what they need and when they need it and yet…
tsmith | May 27, 2016 E. coli, from Wikipedia commons
We've been expecting it, and now it's here.
Yesterday, two article were released showing that MCR-1, the plasmid-associated gene that provides resistance to the antibiotic colistin, has been found in the United States. And not just in one place, but in two distinct cases: a woman with a urinary tract infection (UTI) in Pennsylvania, reported in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, and a positive sample taken from a pig's intestine as part of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), which tracks…
kkrisberg | May 24, 2016At San Jose Mercury News, Louis Hansen reports on the “hidden” workforce of foreign workers that helped expand a Fremont plant for car manufacturer Tesla. The story begins with Gregor Lesnik, an unemployed electrician from Slovenia, who, according to his visa application, was supposed to work in South Carolina. Hansen writes:
The companies that arranged his questionable visa instead sent Lesnik to a menial job in Silicon Valley. He earned the equivalent of $5 an hour to expand the plant for one of the world’s most sophisticated companies, Tesla Motors.
Lesnik’s three-month tenure ended a year…
kkrisberg | May 23, 2016Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers.
About five months after Granillo’s death, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 to approve such an ordinance, which requires that construction workers be given a 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work. On its face, it seems like an incredibly simple and logical request, especially considering the…
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…
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 | 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…
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,…