low-income communities https://scienceblogs.com/ en New study confirms that eating healthy does indeed cost more https://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/12/13/new-study-confirms-that-eating-healthy-does-indeed-cost-more <span>New study confirms that eating healthy does indeed cost more</span> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>On average, eating healthy costs about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets, a new <a href="http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/12/e004277.full?sid=eeaa4389-55c3-47f7-83ce-3d75cb3f0ac6">study</a> finds. The extra cost seems insignificant at first — a small cup of coffee often costs more — but it all adds up to be a considerable barrier for many low-income families.</p> <p>Researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health set out to find the evidence behind the conventional wisdom that healthier foods cost more, conducting the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date of price differences between healthy and unhealthy foods. In examining data from 10 high-income nations, researchers found that among food groups, meats and proteins had the largest cost difference, with healthier options costing 29 cents more per serving and 47 cents more per 200 calories than less healthy options. Overall, diets rich in healthy options — fruits, veggies, fish and nuts — cost significantly more than diets based on processed foods, meats and refined grains.</p> <p>“It’s less than what we might have expected, but it’s important to think about what $1.50 means to some people,” lead study author Mayuree Rao told me. “It translates to about $550 a year for one person, so that’s a lot for many low-income families, especially when you multiply it by three or four family members.”</p> <p>So, why the price gap? Rao and her colleagues said differences in manufacturing could explain some of it. For example, producing skinless chicken and leaner meats requires more work at the processing plant. They also gave a nod to arguments that years of agricultural policies and subsidies that favor the production of less healthy foods — “inexpensive, high volume” commodities like corn — have contributed to cheaper prices. Overall, they called for more research into the reasons underlying the price differences.</p> <p>While the study, which was published last week in the journal <i>BMJ</i>, does emphasize that the collective cost of healthier eating is a real barrier for many families, Rao said it’s still a “drop in the bucket” compared to what we spend on diet-related chronic disease. For instance, obesity is estimated to have cost the country as much as $147 billion in medical costs in 2008 alone, according to the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/AAG/obesity.htm">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</a> And many of the same low-income populations that have difficulty affording healthier foods also suffer disproportionately from diet-related chronic disease, such as obesity and diabetes. Rao and study authors Ashkan Afshin, Gitanjali Singh and Dariush Mozaffarian wrote:</p> <blockquote><p>A daily price difference of $1.50 translates to $550 higher annual food costs per person. For many low-income families, this additional cost represents a genuine barrier to healthier eating. Yet, this daily price difference is trivial in comparison with the lifetime personal and societal financial burdens of diet-related chronic diseases. For example, suboptimal diet quality was recently estimated to account for 14% of all disability-adjusted life years in 2010 in the USA; if translated to a proportion of national health expenditures in 2012, this corresponds to diet-related healthcare costs of $393 billion/year or more than $1200/year for every American.</p></blockquote> <p>Rao, who is also a junior research fellow within Harvard’s Department of Epidemiology, hopes the study will inform policy discussions, especially at a time when issues of food security and chronic disease are making headlines. She said policies that favor healthy foods — such as taxing unhealthy choices and subsidizing healthy ones — is “one way to nudge people toward a healthier diet.” Another example is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, which is expected to experience a <a href="http://frac.org/pdf/final_snap_conferee_natorg_letter_nov2013.pdf">cut</a> of $5 billion in fiscal year 2014 alone. Right now, SNAP benefits average out to about $1.40 per person per meal.</p> <p>“You hear a lot about how difficult it is to eat healthy on the minimal amount of assistance provided by SNAP and these findings shed some light on exactly what that barrier might be,” Rao told me. “Thinking about how to design those programs more effectively to help people buy healthier foods will only help contribute to long-term health.”</p> <p>The Harvard study made a big media splash last week and Rao told me that it’s quite gratifying to see the study resonate with so many people — “it speaks to the fact that it’s very much a part of people’s everyday lives.” But even though $1.50 may not be much to some, public health practitioners still face a challenge in changing people’s behaviors.</p> <p>“It’s part of that age-old problem in public health,” Rao said. “How do we persuade people to make an immediate investment in preventing (disease) that seems so distant in the future?”</p> <p>For a copy of the full study, click <a href="http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/12/e004277.full?sid=eeaa4389-55c3-47f7-83ce-3d75cb3f0ac6">here</a>.</p> <p><i>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.</i><i></i></p> </div> <span><a title="View user profile." href="/author/kkrisberg" lang="" about="/author/kkrisberg" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">kkrisberg</a></span> <span>Fri, 12/13/2013 - 08:58</span> <div class="field field--name-field-blog-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline"> <div class="field--label">Tags</div> <div class="field--items"> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/food-0" hreflang="en">food</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/government" hreflang="en">government</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/healthcare" hreflang="en">healthcare</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/obesity" hreflang="en">obesity</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health-general" hreflang="en">Public Health - General</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/regulation" hreflang="en">regulation</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/agriculture" hreflang="en">agriculture</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/chronic-disease" hreflang="en">chronic disease</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/health-economics" hreflang="en">health economics</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/healthy-eating" hreflang="en">healthy eating</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/low-income-communities" hreflang="en">low-income communities</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/nutrition" hreflang="en">nutrition</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/policy-0" hreflang="en">Policy</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/prevention" hreflang="en">Prevention</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health" hreflang="en">public health</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/snap" hreflang="en">SNAP</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/food-0" hreflang="en">food</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/healthcare" hreflang="en">healthcare</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/obesity" hreflang="en">obesity</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/regulation" hreflang="en">regulation</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> </div> </div> <section> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1872635" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1416338442"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>you just saved my homework assignment thank you so much</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1872635&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="0tOp4DMkZuHnNEPT9yrmlso9Hwo_22ww4MS5ePiEJNI"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">Jacob (not verified)</span> on 18 Nov 2014 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/14566/feed#comment-1872635">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> <article data-comment-user-id="0" id="comment-1872636" class="js-comment comment-wrapper clearfix"> <mark class="hidden" data-comment-timestamp="1427108974"></mark> <div class="well"> <strong></strong> <div class="field field--name-comment-body field--type-text-long field--label-hidden field--item"><p>Im so tired of ignorant people claiming it DOES not cost more to eat healthy. It sure does! Think of it this way, not everyone is able to do large grocery shops. Say someone has a $20 food budget for the week. What will they buy? 5 boxes of kraft dinner, or they buy a package of chicken and some vegetables that may last two days tops?...I think the answer is obvious. Survival wins every time.</p> </div> <drupal-render-placeholder callback="comment.lazy_builders:renderLinks" arguments="0=1872636&amp;1=default&amp;2=en&amp;3=" token="4HhtozrIavMIJA1Kj_SvFVl4erhD-YGnPepGJnT3IY0"></drupal-render-placeholder> </div> <footer> <em>By <span lang="" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">Jamie (not verified)</span> on 23 Mar 2015 <a href="https://scienceblogs.com/taxonomy/term/14566/feed#comment-1872636">#permalink</a></em> <article typeof="schema:Person" about="/user/0"> <div class="field field--name-user-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field--item"> <a href="/user/0" hreflang="und"><img src="/files/styles/thumbnail/public/default_images/icon-user.png?itok=yQw_eG_q" width="100" height="100" alt="User Image" typeof="foaf:Image" class="img-responsive" /> </a> </div> </article> </footer> </article> </section> <ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2013/12/13/new-study-confirms-that-eating-healthy-does-indeed-cost-more%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul> Fri, 13 Dec 2013 13:58:24 +0000 kkrisberg 61986 at https://scienceblogs.com Report: Despite their service, many veterans struggle with affordable housing https://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/11/15/report-despite-their-service-many-veterans-struggle-with-affordable-housing <span>Report: Despite their service, many veterans struggle with affordable housing</span> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>While homelessness among U.S. veterans is on the decline, significant housing challenges remain, according to a new report from the <a href="http://www.nlihc.org">National Low-Income Housing Coalition</a>.</p> <p>Released this week just a day after Veterans Day, the <a href="http://nlihc.org/veterans">report</a> finds that in 2011, more than a quarter of the nation’s 20 million veteran households experienced a housing cost burden (defined as spending more than 30 percent of income on housing costs and utilities) and more than 1.5 million veterans were severely cost burdened (spending more than half of their incomes on housing costs and utilities). Within those numbers, certain groups of veterans were more at risk to experience housing instability. More than 50 percent of black veteran households with incomes between 50 and 80 percent of the area median were considered housing cost burdened, compared to only 36 percent of white veterans and 48 percent of Hispanic veterans. The numbers are based on data from the 2011 American Community Survey.</p> <p>“These findings confirm that veterans with low incomes suffer from the shortage of affordable, decent housing just as low-income non-veterans do,” stated the report. “Despite their sacrifice and status as people who have served in the armed forces, they are at risk of housing instability and homelessness.”</p> <p>Women were also at higher risk, as veteran households headed by single women were more likely to experience a housing cost burden than single male veteran households and married households. Veterans living with a service-related disability that Veterans Affairs (VA) ranks at 70 percent or higher make up more than 25 percent of severely housing cost burdened households. In addition, veterans who recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan were more likely to be housing cost burdened than other veterans. Veteran households with children were more likely to face housing cost burdens and, unfortunately, more than 60 percent of VA-funded transitional housing programs don’t accept children or limit their numbers.</p> <p>The housing statistics vary by geography as well. For example, while 71 percent of extremely low-income veteran households were severely cost burdened overall, that number went down to 37 percent in South Dakota and as high as 82 percent in Nevada, Oregon and Washington, D.C.</p> <p>The report does note that homelessness among veterans is in decline, with 2012 numbers down by more than 7 percent from 2011 and more than 17 percent since 2009.</p> <p>While housing instability among those who’ve put their lives on the line for the country seems especially troublesome, the report notes that affordable housing is a problem across populations. Report authors Althea Arnold, Megan Bolton and Sheila Crowley write:</p> <blockquote><p>Finding decent, affordable housing is a challenge for too many households in America. For every 100 (extremely low-income) renter households, there are just 30 affordable and available units (NLIHC, 2013). While veteran households overall have higher employment rates and median incomes than non-veterans (VA, 2013b), many still face housing problems. Increasing rents, stagnating wages, and the extreme shortage of affordable housing are affecting veteran households nationwide.</p></blockquote> <p>Housing is just one of many critical social determinants that shape veteran health. For example, according to the <a href="http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412577-Uninsured-Veterans-and-Family-Members.pdf">Urban Institute</a>, about 1.3 million veterans went without health insurance as of 2010, and more than 900,000 adults and children within veteran families were uninsured. Also, about <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&amp;id=4009">900,000 veterans</a> participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), though recent congressional proposals to slash the program’s budget could put the food security of 170,000 low-income veterans at risk.</p> <p>To download a copy of “Housing Instability Among Our Nation’s Veterans,” click <a href="http://nlihc.org/veterans">here</a>. And to read our previous coverage of the growing gaps between wages and affordable housing, click <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/03/29/growing-gap-between-wages-rents-means-healthy-housing-is-increasingly-out-of-reach/">here</a>.</p> <p><i>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.</i><i></i></p> </div> <span><a title="View user profile." href="/author/kkrisberg" lang="" about="/author/kkrisberg" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">kkrisberg</a></span> <span>Fri, 11/15/2013 - 09:45</span> <div class="field field--name-field-blog-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline"> <div class="field--label">Tags</div> <div class="field--items"> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/government" hreflang="en">government</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health-general" hreflang="en">Public Health - General</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/regulation" hreflang="en">regulation</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/warveterans" hreflang="en">War/Veterans</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/affordable-housing" hreflang="en">affordable housing</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/healthy-housing" hreflang="en">healthy housing</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/homelessness" hreflang="en">homelessness</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/housing-instability" hreflang="en">housing instability</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/low-income-communities" hreflang="en">low-income communities</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/prevention" hreflang="en">Prevention</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health" hreflang="en">public health</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/veteran-health" hreflang="en">veteran health</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/regulation" hreflang="en">regulation</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> </div> </div> <section> </section> <ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2013/11/15/report-despite-their-service-many-veterans-struggle-with-affordable-housing%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul> Fri, 15 Nov 2013 14:45:22 +0000 kkrisberg 61967 at https://scienceblogs.com Study: Public health spending saves lives and money, especially in low-income communities https://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2013/11/11/study-public-health-spending-saves-lives-and-money-especially-in-low-income-communities <span>Study: Public health spending saves lives and money, especially in low-income communities</span> <div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field--item"><p>Larger investments in public health equal better health, fewer deaths and reduced medical spending — and the effect is especially pronounced in the communities that need it most, according to new research.</p> <p>The <a href="http://works.bepress.com/glen_mays/119/">findings</a> are the latest in a series of studies that researcher Glen Mays and his colleagues at the <a href="http://www.publichealthsystems.org/">National Coordinating Center for Public Health Services and Systems Research</a> (PHSSR) are conducting on the health and economic value of public health spending. While Mays has authored previous research on the topic — such as this 2011 <a href="http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/early/2011/07/19/hlthaff.2011.0196.abstract">study</a> that found public health spending is associated with reduced mortality rates from preventable causes of death — this most recent research was the first to examine how those benefits vary across communities. The findings were released last week at the 141<sup>st</sup> Annual Meeting of the <a href="http://www.apha.org">American Public Health Association</a> in Boston.</p> <p>Mays found that health gains from public health spending were 21 percent to 44 percent larger in low-income communities than in more affluent communities, and 17 percent to 38 percent larger in communities that invested in a broader range of public health activities. While Mays told me that he and his colleagues had a “strong hunch” that some communities would benefit more from public health investments than others, the “strength of the patterns we saw were quite surprising.”</p> <p>“The major finding is that spending targeted toward low-income communities has a significantly larger effect than in other types of communities,” he said. “It makes sense because these communities are facing larger socioeconomic burdens, larger socioeconomic threats to health…but the magnitude of the difference was certainly surprising.”</p> <p>Specifically, the study, which used data from a 17-year period, found that infant mortality and deaths due to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and the flu fell by between 0.5 percent and 4.3 percent for each 10 percent increase in public health spending over 17 years, with the larger gains experienced by low-income communities. More public health spending was also tied to decreases in the per-person growth rate in medical care spending. In addition, the study found that the cumulative effects over a 10-year period were nearly twice as large as the short-term effects.</p> <p>“If we compare that 17 years to the incubation period of many of the chronic diseases that public health is targeting…that’s a reasonable time frame,” said Mays, who is also a public health professor at the University of Kentucky, where the National Coordinating Center for PHSSR is housed. “We know if we’re going to be effective it’s going to take time, so 17 years is not that long to wait for benefits. On the other hand, it’s not instantaneous and that’s important for policymakers and the public to recognize — we have to be wiling to invest over the long term to realize the full benefits.”</p> <p>To conduct the study, Mays and colleagues linked organizational and financial data from the nation’s thousands of public health agencies to mortality rates and medical care spending estimates over a 17-year period (1993 to 2010). He noted that the study was painstakingly designed so researchers could isolate the health gains associated to public health versus those associated with other factors, such as medical care.</p> <p>“Prior research looked at the average effects (of public health spending) across the nation, so to really differentiate and detect different levels across communities required quite a lot more statistical analysis to tease those effects out,” Mays told me. “We invested a lot in a very strong research design and analytic technique that helps us control for many different factors…so we’re about as confident as you can be that the effect we’re measuring is purely attributable to investments in public health.”</p> <p>And while the study can’t shed light on which specific public health activities — direct health services, health promotion, policy, etc. — led to the health benefits, it did find larger health gains in communities that support a more comprehensive array of services as envisioned in the Institute of Medicine’s <a href="http://iom.edu/Reports/1988/The-Future-of-Public-Health.aspx">report</a> on the core functions of public health.</p> <p>Mays said he hopes policymakers at all levels of government can use the findings when deciding how to allocate often limited and strained funding, and to help target resources where they’ll reap the biggest health returns.</p> <p>To download findings from “Who Benefits from Public Health Spending and How Long Does It Take: Estimating Community Specific Spending Effects,” visit <a href="http://works.bepress.com/glen_mays/119">http://works.bepress.com/glen_mays/119</a>.</p> <p><i>Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.</i><i></i></p> </div> <span><a title="View user profile." href="/author/kkrisberg" lang="" about="/author/kkrisberg" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="">kkrisberg</a></span> <span>Mon, 11/11/2013 - 09:53</span> <div class="field field--name-field-blog-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-inline"> <div class="field--label">Tags</div> <div class="field--items"> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/apha-annual-meeting" hreflang="en">APHA annual meeting</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/government" hreflang="en">government</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/healthcare" hreflang="en">healthcare</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health-general" hreflang="en">Public Health - General</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/apha" hreflang="en">APHA</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/budget-cuts" hreflang="en">budget cuts</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/infant-mortality" hreflang="en">Infant Mortality</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/local-public-health" hreflang="en">local public health</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/low-income-communities" hreflang="en">low-income communities</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/medical-spending" hreflang="en">medical spending</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/prevention" hreflang="en">Prevention</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health" hreflang="en">public health</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health-funding" hreflang="en">public health funding</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health-spending" hreflang="en">public health spending</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/public-health-systems-and-services-research" hreflang="en">public health systems and services research</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/return-investment" hreflang="en">return on investment</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/apha-annual-meeting" hreflang="en">APHA annual meeting</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/healthcare" hreflang="en">healthcare</a></div> <div class="field--item"><a href="/tag/research" hreflang="en">Research</a></div> </div> </div> <section> </section> <ul class="links inline list-inline"><li class="comment-forbidden"><a href="/user/login?destination=/thepumphandle/2013/11/11/study-public-health-spending-saves-lives-and-money-especially-in-low-income-communities%23comment-form">Log in</a> to post comments</li></ul> Mon, 11 Nov 2013 14:53:14 +0000 kkrisberg 61964 at https://scienceblogs.com