kkrisberg | December 3, 2015In 2011, a group of researchers embarked on a national study to measure burnout among physicians. They found that 45 percent of U.S. doctors met the criteria for burnout, which manifests as emotional exhaustion, a loss of meaning in one’s work, feelings of ineffectiveness, and a tendency to see people as objects rather than fellow humans. Less than a handful of years later, the problem has gotten significantly worse.
In a study published this month in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, researchers report that more than half of U.S. doctors were struggling with professional burnout in 2014. More…
kkrisberg | December 1, 2015I usually shy away from getting too personal in my work. But in the spirit of Thanksgiving and as a new mom, I was thinking about things for which I’m particularly grateful. One of the first things that came to mind as a public health reporter? Vaccines. So, in that vein, let’s celebrate some new and promising numbers on the worldwide effort to eliminate measles.
Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new data on progress toward measles elimination since 2000. That’s the year the United Nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals, which included a goal to…
lborkowski | November 30, 2015As many of us indulged in Thanksgiving meals last week, NPR’s Planet Money podcast and WAMU’s Metro Connection shared stories on ways food banks are using technology to improve food distribution.
The Planet Money story focuses on how Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, distributes the donated food it gets from farmers, manufacturers, retailers, and government organizations. Until a few years ago, the headquarters staff didn’t know enough about what kinds of food local organizations most needed or could arrange to get – which is why a food bank in Alaska missed out on a…
cmonforton | November 27, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship is in its eighth week. Ken Ward, Jr. of the Charleston Gazette continues to provide updates from the courtroom, but far fewer now that most of the action is behind closed doors where the jury is deliberating.
Ward explains that Blankenship’s attorneys have yet again asked “the judge to declare the jurors deadlocked and order a mistrial.” Judge Irene Berger disagreed. Ward writes:
“Noting that the trial was lengthy and involved complicated charges, Berger said that the jury’s deliberation time to date was not unreasonable. ‘I think…
kkrisberg | November 25, 2015Public health insurance programs often get a bad rap, despite a growing positive evidence base on their patient care, quality and outcomes. Earlier this month, another study emerged that found Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program not only outperform private insurance when it comes to children’s preventive care, they can serve as a model of comprehensive children’s coverage.
Published in JAMA Pediatrics, the study is based on data from the U.S. National Surveys of Children’s Health between 2003 and 2012 — a sample of more than 80,000 children up to age 17 living in households…
kkrisberg | November 24, 2015Maquiladora workers (manufacturing workers) in Ciudad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, are at the center of a growing worker rebellion in border factories, which employ more than 69,000 people, are nearly all foreign-owned, and pay some of the lowest wages along the border, reports David Bacon in The Nation. In fact, manufacturing workers in Juárez typically make 18 percent less than the average manufacturing worker in one of Mexico’s border cities. Bacon reports:
Ali Lopez, a single mother at the planton outside the ADC CommScope factory, describes grinding poverty. “…
cmonforton | November 24, 2015Earlier this month, a few dozen individuals and organizations submitted comments to OSHA on its proposed rule to protect beryllium-exposed workers. The lightweight and super strong metal is associated with lung cancer and causes chronic beryllium disease. I've spent some time browsing through many of the submissions and there was one that especially caught my attention. It came from the business consulting group ORCHSE Strategies, LLC. What had me looking twice at the firm's comments was not their views on this provision or that provision. It was something else. ORCHSE Strategies called out…
lborkowski | November 23, 2015Last week was World Antibiotics Awareness Week, and a new study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases showed just how dire the antibiotics situation has gotten. Authors from the South China Agricultural University, the China Agricultural University, and other institutions identified a gene that confers resistance to a last-resort antibiotic, and then found that gene in E. coli isolates from 15% of raw meat samples, 21% of pigs about to be slaughtered, and 16% of hospital patients with infections. (The study is behind a paywall, but there's a helpful summary here.)
The authors warn that given…
cmonforton | November 20, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its seventh week. The jurors listened to the prosecution’s 27th (and final witness) and heard the defense team rest its case. Thanks to the reporting from the federal courthouse in Charleston, WV by Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert of the Charleston Gazette, I can share some of my favorite quotes from the week.
The week started with a bang when Blankenship’s lead defense attorney--without calling a single witnesses--- announced: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defense rests.”
Ward talked with legal scholars to shed…
kkrisberg | November 20, 2015It’s not surprising that food insecurity has a negative health and academic impact on young children — numerous studies have come to that conclusion. However, a new study has begun to dig a little deeper into the topic, zeroing in on the lingering aftermath of the Great Recession, when food insecurity and child poverty reached record levels, and examining the particular effects of transitioning from not worrying about having enough food to living in a household with limited or uncertain access to food.
Published this month in Health Affairs, the study looked at transitions in food security…
7-Eleven workers organize against workplace violence: ‘Convenience store workers deserve to be safe’
kkrisberg | November 20, 2015In February 2015, a group of 7-Eleven night shift workers in Buffalo, New York, filed a complaint with OSHA. Sick of enduring regular bouts of verbal harassment, racial slurs and even death threats from customers — threats they often experienced while working alone with no security guard — they hoped OSHA could help bring about safer working conditions. Unfortunately, the agency decided not to investigate.
With no help from OSHA, the workers sought out guidance at the Western New York Worker Center, a project of the Western New York Council on Occupational Safety and Health (WNYCOSH). There…
lborkowski | November 18, 2015A few of the recent pieces I've liked:
Laura Ungar in USA TODAY: Found too late: Cancer preys on rural Americans
Priya Batra on the Huffington Post blog: Confidentiality Is Key: To Reduce Teen Pregnancy, the U.S. Must Ban Parental Notification Laws for Contraception
Henry Wismayer at Vox: I got typhoid. Then dengue fever. Here’s what it taught me about my love of travel.
Heather Rogers at The Intercept: Erasing Mossville: How Pollution Killed a Louisiana Town
Jamie Smith Hopkins at the Center for Public Integrity: Unequal Risk: Disease victims often shut out of workers’ comp system
Amber…
kkrisberg | November 17, 2015For the first time since 2006, cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are on the rise, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency reports that while the sexually transmitted diseases continue to impact young people and women most severely, the recent increases were driven by rising disease rates among men.
Released just today as part of CDC’s Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance 2014 report, the data finds that chlamydia cases are up 2.8 percent since 2013; primary and secondary syphilis (the most infectious stages of the disease) are up 15.…
cmonforton | November 13, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its sixth week. Jurors heard from a financial expert and an FBI special agent. Thanks to the reporting from the federal courthouse by Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert of the Charleston Gazette, I can share some of my favorite quotes from the week.
The prosecution called Frank Torchio, an expert at analyzing changes in stock prices in response to favorable and unfavorable public information. Torchio examined Massey Energy’s financial performance, in particular, following the April 5, 2010 disaster at the company’s Upper Big…
kkrisberg | November 13, 2015According to a new, first-of-its-kind survey of the nation’s public health workforce, 38 percent of workers are planning to leave their current positions before the next decade. On its face, that’s a deeply worrisome number. But Brian Castrucci is an optimist — “where there is change, there is opportunity,” he says.
Castrucci serves as chief program and strategy officer at the de Beaumont Foundation, which along with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, recently released the findings of the Public Health Workforce Interests and Needs Survey. The survey, referred to as PH…
cmonforton | November 11, 2015Tim Cooper, 49, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Wednesday, October 28 while working at Independence Tube in Decatur, Alabama. The Decatur-Daily reports:
"...Cooper was handling steel coils when one coil, which weighed about 6,000 pounds, fell on him."
The coil "...was held on a cart designed to support the coil’s weight."
"Cooper, who was working with a team that slits the coils into narrower pieces, was preparing to band the smaller pieces when the coil fell off the cart, according to a police statement."
The Decatur-Daily also notes that Cooper had worked for Independence Tube since…
cmonforton | November 11, 2015Davide Nascimento’s work-related death could have been prevented. That’s how I see the findings of federal OSHA in the agency’s recent citations against his employer, A. Martins and Sons Construction.
The 28 year-old was working in July 2015 at a sewer-line replacement project contracted by the Town of Longmeadow, MA. The initial press reports indicated that Nascimento was trapped inside a trench when it began filling with water. I wrote about the incident shortly after it was reported by local press.
Federal OSHA conducted an inspection at the worksite following the fatal incident. The…
kkrisberg | November 10, 2015Workers who get injured on the job already face significant challenges when trying to access the workers’ compensation system. But for workers who suffer from occupational illnesses related to chemical exposures — illnesses that can develop over long periods of time — the workers’ comp system is nearly useless, according to reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins at the Center for Public Integrity.
In another installment of the center’s eye-opening investigative series “Unequal Risk,” Hopkins explores the often insurmountable barriers that sick workers face — barriers so insurmountable that most people…
lborkowski | November 9, 2015Last week, the CDC published a report on multistate foodborne illness outbreaks that occurred in the US from 2010 – 2014, and the news is sobering. During that five-year period CDC received reports of 120 multistate foodborne disease outbreaks with an identified pathogen and food or common setting. While these outbreaks accounted for only 3% of the 4,163 foodborne outbreaks during that time period, they were responsible for 34% of hospitalizations and 56% of deaths associated with these outbreaks.
Salmonella bacteria were responsible for the majority of hospitalizations in multistate…
cmonforton | November 6, 2015The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship went into its fifth week. Among others, the jurors heard from a veteran federal mine safety inspector, and a former Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) ventilation expert who went to work for Blankenship at Massey Energy following his retirement from the agency.
Thanks to the reporting by the Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. and Joel Ebert, I present some of my favorite quotes from this week’s proceeding in the federal courtroom:
The prosecution put veteran mine safety inspector Harold Hayhurst on the witness stand to…