Category: Health and Wellness - Part 9

Opinion: Churning isnât just for butter anymore

By Donna Smith It isnt often that I learn a new word in the health care system discussion, but this week I did. Churning. I was at a meeting here in Colorado where I have taken on a new role in advocating and administering for a publicly financed, universal, single-payer system with Health Care for All Colorado.And the definition of churning I learned is a sad commentary on a system that still allows access to care based on inequality of coverage that leaves so many people suffering and tens of thousands dying in America every year. Churning is the policy…

Medicaid patients struggle to access dental care

By Jeffrey A. Roberts I-News Network When she was 3, Torrie Smith tripped on an uneven sidewalk, fell face down onto some steps and broke four front teeth. An emergency room doctor stopped the bleeding and gave her something for the pain, but Torrie didn’t get to a dentist for six months – her first time ever to a dentist – because her parents didn’t have dental insurance and didn’t have cash to pay for an examination. Now 4, Torrie’s dental problems are so severe she has to go to an operating room, not a dentist’s chair, to have them fixed….

Less money for health, more for preschool

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Spend less on health care and much more on preschool. Thats the prescription that an international expert on health disparities gave Thursday in Denver to help reverse inequities that leave low-income racial and ethnic minorities much sicker and facing shorter life expectancies than wealthier whites. Health care should get less (funding) and education should get more, said Dr. Paula Braveman. Early childhood development should get the lions share. Having a strong social safety net would make health indicators look a lot better. Braveman is director of the Center on Social Disparities in Health at the University…

Health disparities in Colorado huge, persistent, complex

By Kevin Vaughan I-News Network Lucero Barrios is Latina and a new mother circumstances that place her squarely in a group of people affected by a shocking reality in Colorado: A Hispanic baby born in this state is 63 percent more likely than a white baby to die in the first year of life. And Latinos arent alone the disparity is even more stark for Colorados African Americans, who experience an infant mortality rate three times that of Caucasians. The gap in theinfant mortality rate is just one measurement by which the states largest groups of ethnic and racial minorities…

Kennedy launches health battle against pot

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Citing his own history of addiction and asserting that todays marijuana is not your Woodstock weed, Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, launched a new national public health battle against pot legalization in Denver Thursday. The new group is called Project SAM, Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The founders are trying to appeal to both the left and the right with Kennedy attracting progressives and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum appealing to conservatives and libertarians. The group aims to disseminate the latest research on health impacts of marijuana, to speed access and…

Red meat linked to cancer, heart disease, shortened lifespans

By Mary Winter Few foods say good times like a sizzling 16-ounce rib eye. For generations, Americans have celebrated milestones, successes and summer get-togethers with a juicy slab of fat-marbled beef, and for most of us, a trip to a pricey steak house is still an occasion. If that occasional steak were the only red meat we ate, many health experts would be thrilled. But today, Americans consume an average of 74 pounds of red meat (beef, veal, pork and lamb) per person each year much of it in the form of fast-food burgers and processed meats such as bacon,…

Frankenchicken fooling foodies

By Mary Winter Many Americans are turning to new meat-like foods made of soy and other plant proteins but with the approximate taste and appearance of traditional chicken, burgers, bacon and ground beef as alternatives to animal flesh. Some do it for environmental and ethical reasons as a protest against factory-farm methods commonly used to raise poultry and livestock, which they consider inhumane. But many are also incorporating the so-called meat analogues into their diets for health reasons. Soy alternatives generally are free of fat and cholesterol or contain low levels of them. Soy products also can provide essential fatty…

Opinion: Easier to buy a gun than to access mental health care in Colorado

By Moe Keller The staff and board of directors of Mental Health America of Colorado (MHAC) send our most profound condolences to those who lost their loved ones in the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn. No words can justly describe the loss they have suffered. We can never know what was happening in the mind of the young man who committed the shooting in Newtown. What we can and must do is remember that our collective response to atrocities like these defines us. At MHAC we believe the key to keeping our children—and all of us—safe from acts of mass…

Colorado proposal aims for universal health care

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, unveiled legislation on Wednesday that would establish universal health care in Colorado. Aguilar designed her bill as an amendment to the Colorado Constitution. That means she would need to get support from two-thirds of members in the state Senate and House along with the governor’s signature. Then, at the soonest, Coloradans would weigh in on the referendum next November. “I want to put something on our ballot in front of our voters. We can try to do it in a different way in Colorado,” Aguilar said. “Here’s the conundrum…when people come to…

‘Design thinking’ offers new approach to tackling childhood obesity

By Diane Carman For organizations and individuals working to address the epidemic of childhood obesity, the biggest challenge is to make it fun. Or at the very least to avoid making it humiliating, frustrating, boring and punitive. We need to bring back creativity. Creativity is crucial to solving the obesity crisis, said Chris Waugh, director and co-founder of the design innovation consultancy IDEO. Waugh spoke Friday at an event called Symposium Unplugged, sponsored by the Colorado Health Foundation. Waugh presented 10 steps to designing effective approaches to solving problems and offered vivid examples of how they have been employed in…