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Health

Public-Private Partnership In California Tackles Obesity, Hunger Epidemics

By Guest Blogger on Feb 14, 2012 at 4:27 pm

Our guest bloggers are Rebecca Friendly and Araceli Ruano from the Center for American Progress’ California office.

At all levels of government there has been a serious push for increasing access to food among low income households and fostering more nutritious eating habits in communities and schools.
Last July, First Lady Michelle Obama and the Partnership for a Healthier America secured pledges from Wal-Mart, Walgreens, SuperValu and several other stores to open or expand stores in “food deserts”, bringing healthy affordable food to approximately 10 million people over the course of five years. Any specific information on how many will be served in CA?

That same month the First Lady also announced the California FreshWorks Fund, a public-private partnership loan fund with $264 million available to support grocery stores and other healthy food retailers in low-income, underserved communities in California. The California Endowment and a team of partners that include banks, grocers, health care providers, and nonprofits lead this initiative. Modeled after a successful program in Pennsylvania, this loan fund provides grants to healthy food retailers willing to locate stores in “food deserts”, areas lacking access to fresh, healthy food.

On Feb. 1, the First Lady spoke at a community event in Los Angeles to celebrate the progress that the California FreshWorks Fund has made in bringing affordable and healthy food to neighborhoods around the city. As one of its initial projects, the California FreshWorks Fund committed more than $20 million in funding to Southern California grocer Northgate Gonzalez Markets for its first three projects: a San Diego location as well as stores in Inglewood and South Los Angeles. The President and CEO of the California Endowment, Robert K. Ross, MD, also spoke at this event and enthusiastically stated, “we all have a shared interest in ensuring our neighborhoods, grocery stores and school cafeterias contribute positively to the health of our communities. Today’s announcement marks the beginning of what we hope will be a robust effort to expand access to nutritious food for all Californians!”

These commitments are a step in the right direction in the effort to combat the country’s obesity and hunger epidemics. Approximately one in four children in the U.S. live in a household that experiences hunger. Additionally, 30 percent of children in the U.S. are overweight or obese and among African Americans and Latinos the number soars to an estimated 40 percent.

Although hunger and obesity are oftentimes viewed as two distinct problems, they are deeply interconnected. Hunger and food insecurity are key contributors to obesity as low-income Americans are forced to rely upon high calorie, low nutrition foods to quell hunger pangs. Notably, studies have consistently demonstrated the lack of supermarkets and other stores selling healthy, affordable food in low-income communities as compared to wealthier ones. Adults in California neighborhoods with low access to healthy food are 20 percent more likely to be obese than those in higher-access neighborhoods, increasing their risk of developing chronic diseases. The California Fresh Works Fund website features a very useful interactive map that displays “Grocery Gap” statistics for various counties throughout the US and can be broken down into detailed indicators. The California FreshWorks Fund was created to tackle these food access concerns, while also addressing additional challenges faced by communities in so-called “food deserts”. In addition to improving community health, drawing grocery stores into “food deserts” also creates opportunities for economic development. Grocery stores create jobs (an estimated 49 to 120 new jobs per store), attract other small businesses to the area, and increase the surrounding residential real estate values.

Additional benefits include increased property values in the surrounding communities and increased income and property tax. This increased economic activity and property value help relieve pressure on state and local budgets and increase community sustainability.

California’s Freshworks Fund serves as a model for an innovative public-private partnership loan fund with the potential to increase access to healthy and affordable food throughout the state. This new program is proving itself as a vital component in California’s fight against hunger and obesity, and as an important force in strengthening the economies of affected communities.

Katie Wilczak, CAP CA Intern, contributed to this piece.

NEWS FLASH

Study: Pictures Of Vegtables Encourage Kids To Eat More Vegetables | A research letter released by the Journal of the American Medial Association says that placing photographs of vegetables on the lunch trays of elementary-school students significantly increases not only the number of children who consume vegetables, but also the quantity of vegetables they’re likely to consume. The pictures, which featured images of green beans and carrots, were placed in two separate lunch tray compartments. The number of children who took green beans jumped from 6.3 percent to 14.8 percent, while the percentage of kids who ate carrots spiked from 11.6 percent to 36.8 percent. Researchers believe the experiment worked because the pictures played on kids’ sensitivity to societal norms, as “seeing the photos in the compartments gives kids the impression that “this must be where everyone puts their vegetables,” and that everyone is eating them[.]” As part of new USDA rules recently unveiled by First Lady Michelle Obama, schools are obligated to offer students more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains as part of their lunches. — Fatima Najiy

By Guest Blogger on Feb 2, 2012 at 4:35 pm

Security

Bill Gates: Development Assistance Must Continue Despite Global Economic Downturn

By Eli Clifton on Jan 25, 2012 at 1:49 pm

Bill Gates issued an appeal to policymakers to support foreign aid that tackles public health and poverty challenges in the developing world. Gates, writing in the the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter today, highlighted the importance of foreign aid in global development and raising living standards in the world’s poorest countries.

The letter acknowledged that the global economic and political climate puts foreign aid expenditures under pressure, but warned that a cut in these funds could have severe implications for populations struggling to pull themselves out of poverty:

The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively modest amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families. If we don’t, one in seven people will continue living needlessly on the edge of starvation. My annual letter this year is an argument for making the choice to keep on helping extremely poor people build self-sufficiency.

Gates argues that investment in poor farmers can “increase their productivity so they can feed themselves and their families,” and “contribute to global food security.” The past fifty years has marked dramatic improvements in poverty reduction — global poverty levels have dropped from 40 percent to 15 percent — but Gates is concerned that the historic improvements could slow if funding for irrigation and agricultural research dry up:

We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate.

The Gates Foundation — which has committed more than $25 billion [PDF] in grants since its inception in 1994 — has been an outspoken supporter of government funding of global public health and poverty reduction programs. Gates’s letter emphasized that development assistance programs “has a significant impact on people’s lives” and “modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference.”

NEWS FLASH

Study: Smoking Cessation Programs Produce $3 In Savings For Every $1 Spent | A new study from George Washington University found that a smoking cessation program in Massachusetts saved three dollars for every dollar spent. The study did not take into account the benefits of avoiding cancer, but did find that individuals who quit smoking produced savings in heart-related hospitalizations. A report released last year by the United Health Foundation found that smoking in the United States decreased by 3.4 percent between 2010 and 2011.

Health

Photons v. Protons: Show Us The Data!

By Guest Blogger on Jan 6, 2012 at 6:36 pm

Our guest blogger is Emily Oshima, a research associate/policy analyst with the Health Policy team at American Progress.

Earlier this week, CAP Senior Fellow and oncologist Zeke Emanuel co-authored an editorial that questions the increasing use of proton beam therapy to treat cancer patients, given the clear lack of clinical evidence on its efficacy and substantially higher costs.

In theory, proton beam therapy can zap cancerous tissue with much greater precision than conventional photon radiation treatment, minimizing damage to healthy tissue surrounding a malignancy and reducing side effects. Although proton beam therapy has been in use since the 1950s, randomized clinical trials for the treatment of prostate cancer -– which proton therapy is frequently used to treat — are completely lacking. Existing studies are smaller, single institution, and short-term, and are unable to evaluate long-term outcomes, including onset of delayed side-effects. Additionally, although proton beam therapy has been shown to effectively treat certain rare childhood cancers — mainly brain and spinal cord tumors — the treatment’s precision may actually miss potentially treatable disease that could be addressed through less-precise x-rays.

As major medical centers — including the University of Pennsylvania, M.D. Anderson, and the Mayo Clinic, among others –- invest hundreds of millions of dollars in building the football-field-size buildings needed to house the proton accelerators and in light of rapidly rising health care expenditures, we’re forced to ask, “It Costs More, but Is It Worth More?”

It seems that Mayo Clinic President and C.E.O. John Noseworthy might have an answer in several years, after spending more than $360 million building two new Mayo proton beam facilities, inevitably passing at least some of these costs on to cancer patients. Noseworthy states that Mayo, along with other proton centers in the U.S., will enroll patients in clinical trials once their proton facilities are up and running. But even if the results of the planned phase III clinical trials show that the protons are no more effective than photons, Mayo and others would still continue to use the machines, given their substantial up-front investment in the technology.

In his editorial, Noseworthy also claims that “hundreds of manuscripts” were reviewed over a six-year period to research the effectiveness of the treatment. Yet, he does not cite a single study, and doesn’t refute the lack of randomized clinical trials, the gold standard of clinical effectiveness assessments. If proton beam therapy does, in fact, produce more effective treatment outcomes, improve quality of life for cancer patients through reduced side effects and minimal damage to surrounding tissue, it may be a worthy investment for a wider population of cancer patients. But until then — show us the data!

NEWS FLASH

The GOP’s Obesity Hypocrisy | Eric Boehlert has a good piece pointing to the hypocrisy of Republicans who have characterized First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign as a big-government effort to control what Americans eat and how to eat. As he notes, while they regularly trash Obama, conservatives and their allies in the media sat on their hands as Tommy Thompson — George W. Bush’s Secretary of Health and Human Services — “urged every American to lose ten pounds as a patriotic gesture, and suggested Congress pass tax credits for people who thinned down.” “This is pure Obama Derangement Syndrome,” Boehlert explains. “Because many of the far-right Obama-hating pundits who routinely whip themselves into a frenzy denouncing First Lady Michelle Obama for her efforts to cut down obesity among children were the same ones who didn’t say boo when key players from the Bush administration did much the same thing.” It’s worth noting that GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has also touted an anti-obesity agenda, calling for mandatory physical education classes as a way to combat the epidemic.

NEWS FLASH

Study: Exercise Labels More Effective At Promoting Healthy Eating Than Nutrition Labels | Researchers at Johns Hopkins’s Bloomberg School of Public Health have found that packaging junk food with “exercise labels” that tell consumers “how much exercise is required to burn off the calorie and fat content within the products” led “teenagers to purchase fewer” bad foods. “Providing easily understandable caloric information — particularly in the form of a physical activity equivalent, such as running — may reduce calorie intake from sugar-sweetened beverages and increase water consumption among adolescents,” the study found.

Health

Report: America’s Health Deteriorated In 2011

By Igor Volsky on Dec 6, 2011 at 10:30 am

The United Health Foundation has released its 2011 America’s Heath Rankings report, which finds that overall, the country’s health did not improve between 2010 and 2011. Here are the top lines: annual improvement in health has declined by 69 percent over the last decade, 27.5 percent of Americans are obese, 17.3 percent smoke, and 8.7 percent have diabetes.

The bad news for 2011:

– 2.2 percent increase in obesity.
– 4.8 percent increase in diabetes.
– 3.9 percent increase in child poverty.

The good news for 2011:

– 3.4 percent decline in smoking.
– 3.4 percent decline in preventable hospitalizations.
– 2.8 percent decline in cardiovascular deaths.

Vermont is still the healthiest state, with New York and New Jersey showing the most improvement, particularly in smoking cessation. “Idaho and Alaska showed the most downward movement. Idaho dropped 10 spots, from number nine to 19,” the report finds:

Economy

Soda Companies Aggressively Target Black And Latino Kids, Fueling Childhood Obesity Epidemic

By Marie Diamond on Nov 30, 2011 at 11:55 am

It’s well known that America’s obesity epidemic disproportionately affects poor and minority children because of the country’s glut of cheap, unhealthy foods. Soft drinks are such a major culprit in the childhood obesity epidemic that some local governments have tried to levy taxes on them to reduce consumption. The Obama administration announced a plan to ban candy and sweetened beverages from schools.

Now, a new study reveals that soda companies have been targeting black and Latino children in high numbers, diminishing parents’ attempts to encourage their kids to eat right:

A new report from Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity has found that beverage companies are aggressively targeting black and Latino kids with ads to promote sports, fruit and energy drinks. The products that are promoted to kids of color happen to be among the least healthy of the 644 products studied by researchers at the university.

Black children and teens saw 80 percent to 90 percent more ads compared with white youth, including more than twice as many for Sprite, 5-hour Energy, and Vitamin Water.

From 2008 to 2010, Latino children saw 49 percent more ads for sugary drinks and energy drinks on Spanish-language TV. Latino preschoolers saw more Spanish-language ads for Coca-Cola Classic, Kool-Aid, 7 Up, and Sunny D than older Latino children and teens did.

Colorlines notes that the two largest soda companies, Pepsi and Coca-Cola, have repeatedly promised to market less to children, who are more susceptible to advertising: “Coca-Cola, for example, has previously stated publicly that they wouldn’t market ads in TV, radio and print programming aimed at kids under the age of 12.”

But the report found that soda companies have just shifted to using more sophisticated and insidious forms of advertising that promise kids rewards for purchasing sugary drinks. Kids are exposed to these messages “often without their parents’ awareness.”

Companies’ targeting of minority children is a social justice issue as well as an economic one. Just like mortgage companies that focused their predatory lending on minority communities, soda companies are preying on a particularly vulnerable group (poor children) who are already suffering the ill effects of their product and have the most to lose from consuming more. For instance, these children are less likely to have health insurance to cover the numerous medical problems associated with obesity.

Climate Progress

Climate Change Boosts a Lethal Disease: Hendra Virus

By Climate Guest Blogger on Nov 29, 2011 at 9:44 am

For 17 years, the Hendra virus smoldered in its host bat population, only rarely crossing to humans. Then it exploded, likely triggered by heavy rains and floods in Australia earlier this year. And that has public health doctors nervous about climate change.


by Nancy Bazilchuk, cross-posted from the Daily Climate

It started with Vic Rail’s horses, in September 1994. First one, then another, they died horrible deaths, 13 horses in all over the span of just two weeks, frothing from their noses and mouths, thrashing in agonizing pain. Then Rail died too.

Weeks later Australian officials isolated a newly discovered virus they ultimately named Hendra, after the Brisbane suburb where Rail and his horses died. For 17 years, Hendra virus smoldered in its host population of fruit bats killing nearly 50 horses and claiming three more human lives.

Then in May, something happened.

It was as if Hendra virus awoke from a slumber and roared fully into life. There have been more outbreaks of Hendra in 2011 – 18 at last count – than in the 16 previous years.

Veterinary epidemiologists hunting the virus now know definitively that Australia’s fruit bats (Pteropus sp.), also called flying foxes, spread the disease to horses, which then can infect humans. And while they don’t know the exact cause of the huge escalation in outbreaks, they strongly suspect it has something to do with the heavy rainfall and big floods that drowned northeastern Australia from November 2010 to February 2011.

And that has them looking nervously at climate change.

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