By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Do you wear a seat belt when you drive? Do you recycle? Do you think smoking is unhealthy? Its likely your answers are yes, yes and yes again. But decades ago, cars didnt have seat belts, no one bothered to recycle and once upon a time, Americans viewed smoking as glamorous, not as a killer habit to be uniformly condemned. Education campaigns over years convinced people to change their attitudes. Thats the long-term goal of a new effort that is being launched today to engage Coloradans about important health coverage and care issues. The campaign, Project…
Category: Health and Wellness - Part 14
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorados adult obesity levels recently jumped at the second-fastest rate in the country, a disturbing increase for a state that has long bragged of being the leanest in the nation. Its not good news. If anything, its even more of a wake-up call. One of the things we know about obesity is its much easier to prevent than to reverse it. Weve got the opportunity to use prevention in Colorado. Were going to rapidly lose that, said James O. Hill, director of the Colorado Center for Health and Wellness at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical…
Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The 911 call came too late. Fresh out of rehab, Leo Espinosa told his mother he was ready to kick his heroin habit for good. “I had seen it in his eyes. That’s what he wanted. He wanted to be able to stay away from it. But he just yearned for it,” said Helen Alvillar. The two talked on a Tuesday morning in 2008. Espinosa sounded optimistic. He planned to look for a new job. That night, Alvillar got a call from the coroner’s office. They told her that her son had died from a drug overdose….
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Many Coloradans with jobs say they can no longer afford health insurance, a new analysis from the Colorado Health Access Survey has found. Nearly one-third of Coloradans more than 1.5 million people are either uninsured or underinsured, according to the initial survey results that were released in November. New analysis shows that 85 percent of uninsured Coloradans say they dont have health insurance because its too expensive. Job loss and poverty used to be the key causes for poor health coverage. But the landscape in Colorado is changing dramatically. Today, a good job no longer guarantees…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Solutions Hes 16 but his baby face makes him look a little older than 10, his age when he first tried marijuana. I smoke marijuana every single day all day long, the teen said during a lunch period spent hanging out in a park outside his downtown Colorado Springs high school. It develops brain cells. That is a complete and true fact, he said. It kills weak brain cells. It does affect your lungs but its better than smoking cigarettes. Dozens of students interviewed across Colorado as part of an investigation by Education News Colorado,…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Solutions Shes not the stereotypical stoner, zoned out in a haze of smoke and flunking out of school. Emma is a graduate of Palmer High School in Colorado Springs, known for its prestigious International Baccalaureate program and for attracting a diverse student body. But Palmer holds another distinction and so does Emma, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. The downtown Springs school posted one of the highest increases in drug violations reported by any Colorado school in the past four years. In 2007-08, Palmer reported two drug violations; in 2010-11, it was…
By Michael Elliott and Norton Arbelaez Staff Sergeant Mary McNeely joined the military, went to Iraq and served her country with honor. While there, she was injured in a car bombing. Upon returning to Colorado Springs, physicians at the Veterans Administration prescribed her narcotic pain medications to treat her various injuries. Nonetheless, her health kept deteriorating. The drugs did not effectively treat her pain, made her irritable, nauseous and unable to function. She grew distant from her daughter and husband. Through Colorados medical marijuana system, she discovered that cannabis controlled her pain and nausea with minimal side-effects. As a result,…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon of Solutions and Nancy Mitchell of Education News Colorado A handful of students from Denvers East High School recently spent a warm January lunch period huddled against a brick home two blocks from the school, passing a joint and discussing the merits of medical marijuana. It smells better than what you get on the street, they say, and is more potent. The buds are whole, not ground up like oregano. I get top shelf, boasts a 16-year-old boy. My cousin works at a dispensary. So he brings maybe two zips (plastic bags) a day that theyre…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon A sharp drop in employers who offer health insurance and Colorados ailing economy have led to a dramatic surge in the number of Coloradans who are either uninsured or underinsured. The Colorado Health Access Survey, a new report from The Colorado Trust and the Colorado Health Institute, has found that more than 1.5 million Coloradans or nearly one in three residents either have no health insurance or are underinsured, meaning they spend more than 10 percent of their income on out-of-pocket medical expenses. The number of Coloradans getting their insurance through employers dropped to 57.8 percent…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon More than 5,200 people are on a waiting list to receive primary care through Denver Health, and across Colorado at least 20,000 more low-income patients are waiting to receive care. In Denver, the waiting list at the citys safety net health system began in 2008 when the economy started its freefall. At its peak, Denver Health had 7,200 patients on its waiting list. About 80 percent of those waiting for care in Denver have no health insurance while the rest have either Medicaid, Medicare or private health insurance. The reality is that there are more patients…