RWJF News Digest - Vulnerable Populations

Bucks clinic serves uninsured workers

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

March was a weird month for Mae O'Brien to begin her new job as executive director of HealthLink Medical Center, a free clinic serving the working uninsured in Bucks and Montgomery Counties. That's because March was the same month that President Obama signed the federal Affordable Care Act, with its promise of increased access for all.

College Students Hide Hunger, Homelessness

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

For many college students and their families, rising tuition costs and a tough economy are presenting new challenges as college bills come in. This has led to a little-known but growing population of financially stressed students, who are facing hunger and sometimes even homelessness. UCLA has created an Economic Crisis Response Team to try to identify financially strapped students and help keep them in school.

OPINION: Long-Term Economic Pain

webmail@rwjf.org — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The pain coursing through American families is all too real and no one seems to know what to do about it. A rigorous new analysis for the Rockefeller Foundation shows that Americans are more economically insecure now than they have been in a quarter of a century, and the trend lines suggest that things will only get worse.

OPINION: Long-Term Economic Pain

webmail@rwjf.org — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Equity of Test Is Debated as Children Compete for Gifted Kindergarten

webmail@rwjf.org — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Chase took the city test for the public schools’ gifted and talented kindergarten program, but missed the 90th-percentile cutoff, she said. Ms. Stewart, a single mom working two jobs, didn’t think the process was fair. She had heard widespread reports of wealthy families preparing their children for the kindergarten gifted test with $90 workbooks, $145-an-hour tutoring and weekend “boot camps.”

Report Details Plight of Mentally Ill Detainees

webmail@rwjf.org — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Thousands of mentally disabled immigrants are entangled in deportation proceedings each year with little or no legal help, leaving them distraught, defenseless and detained as their fates are decided. Their plight is detailed in a report issued Sunday by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, who exhort federal authorities to do better.

Poll Finds US Hispanics Seek to Fit In, Keep Culture

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Hispanics are eager to blend into American society while still maintaining their cultural identity, a paradox that reflects the complex beliefs of the nation’s fastest-growing minority. And most don’t expect the United States to elect a Latino president in the next 20 years. Those are some of the findings from an Associated Press-Univision poll of more than 1,500 Latinos. In addition, the survey suggests Hispanics worry more than most Americans about losing jobs and paying bills. They place a high importance on education and expect their children to go to college.

Eating Nutritiously a Struggle When Money is Scarce

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Alex Williamson, 8, doesn't look very hungry — in fact, he's a little chubby. But Alex, who lives in Carlisle, Pa., is one of 17 million children who live in U.S. households where getting enough food is a challenge. The Obama administration has pledged to end childhood hunger in America by 2015. A key element of that challenge is to make sure the food hungry children eat is nutritious. They're lofty goals that will be difficult to achieve.

OPINION: Hiring and Fairness

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Boston, Chicago and San Francisco set a welcome example earlier in the decade when they abandoned counterproductive policies that often barred former offenders from municipal jobs, no matter how minor their crime nor how distant in the past. Connecticut, New Mexico and Minnesota have recently passed laws protecting the employment rights of former offenders. Other states should quickly follow.

Difficult Births: Laboring and Delivering in Shackles

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

It's a practice so hidden, many don't realize it exists: the shackling of incarcerated women during childbirth. Across the U.S., there are stories of women going from jails or prisons to hospitals, where they labor and sometimes even deliver while restrained with handcuffs, leg shackles or both.

Cuts in Home Care Put Elderly and Disabled at Risk

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

As states face severe budget shortfalls, many have cut home-care services for the elderly or the disabled, programs that have been shown to save states money in the long run because they keep people out of nursing homes. Since the start of the recession, at least 25 states and the District of Columbia have curtailed programs that include meal deliveries, housekeeping aid and assistance for family caregivers, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research organization. That threatens to reverse a long-term trend of enabling people to stay in their homes longer.

Texting, Apps Can Turn Cellphones Into Health Tools That Work

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

"I call it medical minutes," says Dr. Richard Katz of George Washington University Hospital in the nation's capital. He's testing whether inner-city diabetics, an especially hard-to-treat population, might better control their blood sugar—and thus save Medicaid dollars—by tracking their disease using Internet-connected cellphones, provided with reduced monthly rates as long as they regularly comply.

Recess Coaches Hired to Make Play Productive

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

For years, recess at Grout Elementary School in Portland, Ore., was fraught with the same sort of playground woes common around the country.Some kids would play, some wouldn't. Some roughhoused and got into tussles. Resolving those tussles, teachers said, ate into post-recess classroom time. "Kids are not inherently kind to each other," said Principal Susan McElroy. The pattern was broken about a year ago when McElroy hired a recess coach to help children do what they used to do naturally: play. Now, Grout has its own professional coach on school grounds all day who not only organizes and supervises playground games, but also trains kids to be junior coaches, teaches conflict resolution and serves as a mentor, McElroy said.

Program Aims to Help Black Men Succeed in Higher Education

webmail@rwjf.org — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

They have their eyes on twin prizes: first college degrees, then careers in law, medicine, education or business. But they know it's going to take hard work to get there. That's why these 22 students have traded a summer of hanging out with friends for.

Female Veterans Struggle to Stay Off Streets

webmail@rwjf.org — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

More than 240,000 female service members have been deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but for many, reintegrating into civilian life and trying to find employment is not within their reach. The Department of Veteran Affairs has acknowledged that women are nearly four times as likely as men to end up homeless.

Mainstreaming Elderly People

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Williams and Hadler acknowledge the grim reality of most for-profit nursing homes-- “walled communities” where the elderly quickly lose their autonomy, in a place that “lies somewhere between a homeless shelter and a hospital; a smelly, run down, unattractive warehouse filled with mentally and physically impoverished , half-dead people.” Care is very expensive, but often not very good.

Poll: Fewer Opportunities Seen for Minority Kids

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Minority children have fewer opportunities than their white peers to gain access to high-quality health care, education, safe neighborhoods and adequate support from the communities where they live, according to a nationwide survey of professionals who work with young people.

Parenting And Elder Care Can Be A Tough Balancing Act

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Raising kids and a family can be a handful for parents. It can be especially overwhelming when also caring for an elderly loved one as many families discover that providing care for aging relatives can be challenging. In this week’s weekly parenting segment, Host Michel Martin speaks with author and veteran geriatric specialist Marion Somers about balancing family life with elder care. Also joining the conversation is Jolene Ivey, a regular parenting contributor and mother of five who also cares for her elderly father.

Low-Income Homeowners Fear Lurking Foreclosures

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Families with lower incomes have been especially hard hit by this recession, and the lowest-priced homes have suffered the deepest drops in value. All of that has meant even more pressure on the poorest homeowners. NPR's Joshua Brockman has our report.

The Race Gap in the Economic Recovery

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve released an immense report detailing evidence of the nation's ongoing economic recovery. The collective net worth of American households and non-profits rose $6.3 trillion since the first quarter of 2009 (generally considered the low point of the Great Recession). And the value of household real-estate grew by well over $800 billion. But we are still billions of dollars down from where we were when the economy collapsed in late 2007. And for many Americans, the recovery has not yet begun—least of all for poor communities of color.

Graduation Is the Goal, Staying Alive the Prize

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Last school year, 258 public school students were shot in Chicago, 32 fatally, on their way to or from school, traveling through gang-infested territory and narcotics wars on the South and West Sides. In an effort to get ahead of the next killings, the schools conducted an analysis to identify the 250 students most at risk of being shot (by studying profiles of 500 recent victims). Since December, each of those students has had an advocate like Ms. Tinajero on call to offer caretaking and support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Inside A Psychopath's Brain: The Sentencing Debate

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Kent Kiehl has studied hundreds of psychopaths. Kiehl is one of the world's leading investigators of psychopathy and a professor at the University of New Mexico. He says he can often see it in their eyes: There's an intensity in their stare, as if they're trying to pick up signals on how to respond. But the eyes are not an element of psychopathy, just a clue. Officially, Kiehl scores their pathology on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, which measures traits such as the inability to feel empathy or remorse, pathological lying, or impulsivity.

Supreme Court Extends 2nd Amendment Protection to State, Local Levels

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and states must abide by the 2nd Amendment, strengthening the rights of gun owners and opening a new chapter in the national debate over gun control. In a 5-4 decision, the justices said the right to have a handgun for self-defense is "fundamental from an American perspective (and) applies equally to the federal government and the states."

More Than 300 Aim to Be 'Promise Neighborhoods'

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

More than 300 communities around the U.S. have submitted applications to the Department of Education to receive grants under a federal program designed to revitalize troubled neighborhoods. The "Promise Neighborhoods" program will award grants to 20 organizations and institutions of higher education to plan for a range of academic, health and career programs in distressed neighborhoods.

Preparing More Care for the Elderly

webmail@rwjf.org — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

With a nudge from the new health care law and pressure from Medicare, hospitals, doctors and nurses are struggling to prepare for explosive growth in the numbers of high-risk elderly patients. More than 40 percent of adult patients in acute care hospital beds are 65 or older. Seventy million Americans will have turned 65 by 2030. They include the 85-and-older cohort, the nation’s fastest-growing age group.

Gun Control Means Nothing to My Students

webmail@rwjf.org — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Talk about firepower. Supreme Court Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas loaded up all kinds of judicial ammo to shoot down the arguments from Justices Stevens and Breyer in the Second Amendment case known as McDonald v. City of Chicago. When the smoke cleared and the 5-4 ruling was announced on Monday, Chicago's (and a Chicago suburb's) ban on personal handgun possession was a goner. While a lower federal court in Illinois will now appraise the local bans in light of the Supreme Court's guidance, municipal attempts to restrict possession of handguns are now an easy target for Second Amendment absolutists.

Community Colleges Cutting Back on Open Access

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

In this economy, community colleges are widely seen as the solution to many problems. Displaced workers are registering in droves to earn credentials that might get them back in the game. Strapped parents, daunted by the cost of four-year universities, are encouraging their children to spend two years at the local community college. President Obama has announced an American Graduation Initiative to produce five million more community college graduates by 2020.

Administration Broadens Effort to Fight Homelessness

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The Obama administration released a strategy Tuesday to end homelessness by expanding programs to secure housing for veterans and families with young children and by building on efforts to help chronically homeless people. With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq highlighting the needs of veterans and the economic crisis straining more families, the administration's plan widens the role envisioned for the federal government in curbing and ending homelessness.

OPINION: Why Your Kids Need Recess

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

There is a paradox when it comes to improving education in America: The system is failing to prepare many kids for success, but we have so much invested in the system that starting over isn't practical, let alone in a time frame that works for today's kids. We need to put a premium on simple, practical changes that have a big impact on teaching and learning within our existing schools.

Health aid urged for low-wage workers

webmail@rwjf.org — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Thousands of uninsured Massachusetts workers in low-wage jobs are ineligible for state-subsidized health coverage, but they will qualify for these low-cost plans under the new national health care overhaul — in 2014. Now, some consumer advocates, arguing that the wait is unfair and a black eye for the state, want the Patrick administration and legislators to launch a program to cover at least part of this group. Administration officials, already facing huge budget deficits, say the state can’t afford the tens of millions of dollars it would cost to subsidize additional workers’ insurance.

Tough Times Ahead for Children of the Great Recession, Report Finds

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

More children will live in poverty this year. More will have two parents who are unemployed. Fewer children will enroll in prekindergarten programs, and fewer teenagers will find jobs. More children are likely to commit suicide, be overweight, and be victimized by crime. These are the children of the Great Recession, a cohort that will experience a decline in fortunes that erases 30 years of social progress, contends a report. Known as the Child and Youth Well-Being Index, the report measures the impact of the recession on the current generation.

Colleges Enroll Record Number

webmail@rwjf.org — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The nation’s colleges are attracting record numbers of new students as more Hispanics finish high school and young adults opt to pursue higher education rather than languish in a weak job market. A study released yesterday by the Pew Research Center highlights the growing diversity in higher education amid debate over the role of race in college admissions and controversy over Arizona’s new ban on ethnic studies in public schools.

Families in Homeless Shelters Increased 7% in '09

webmail@rwjf.org — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The recession continued to take its toll as more families with children became homeless for the second straight year, a U.S. government report shows. The number of families in homeless shelters increased 7% to 170,129 from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2009, a report released today by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found.

STUDY: How Homicides Affect Test Scores

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

School reformers who say that poverty and family circumstance are only excuses for poor student performance might do well to look at a new study which found African-American children in Chicago scoring a lot lower on reading and vocabulary tests within a week of a homicide in their neighborhood -- even if they did not directly witness the violence.

The study was conducted by Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New york University, who analyzed 6,041 homicides between 1994 and 2002 in Chicago and testing data of about 1,100 African-Americn children from ages 6 to 17.

Employers Increasingly Expect Some Education After High School

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The number of jobs requiring at least a two-year associate’s degree will outpace the number of people qualified to fill those positions by at least three million in 2018, according to a report being released Tuesday by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. The report makes clear that some education after high school is an increasing prerequisite for entry into the middle class.

The Language of Care

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

I am Latino and fully bilingual, but my native language is Spanish, and in life or death situations—either at the doctor's office or in court—I would rather hear the diagnosis or the sentence in Spanish. Along with half the 47 million Latinos in the United States whose mother tongue is Spanish, I wonder, "Will I understand what the doctor said, or when I should take the medication?" These are not minor questions when your health is involved.

More Than 1 in 5 Kids Live in Poverty

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

The rate of children living in poverty this year will climb to nearly 22%, the highest rate in two decades, according to an analysis by the non-profit Foundation for Child Development. Nearly 17% of children were living in poverty in 2006, before the recession began.

New Program Aims to Battle Schoolyard Bullies

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Playworks is a Bay Area-based school program that actively engages kids on the pavement, grass and hardwood of low-income schools throughout the country. It wasn't until 2009 that it debuted in the Los Agneles area. WIth a dozen schools already on board, parents may be excited to implement the program in their own kids' schools.

When a Child Gets Hurt, a Sibling May Be at Risk

webmail@rwjf.org — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Summer is trauma season for children—everyone outside, out of school, riding bikes, climbing trees, playing around bodies of water, and all too often getting hurt.In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 9.2 million children a year had visited emergency rooms for unintentional (non-abuse) injuries in the period 2000-06. Such injuries were the leading cause of death among children: 12,000 fatalities a year.

Among City Teens the Talk is of Fear, and How to Fight it

webmail@rwjf.org — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

In some parts of Boston, seventh and eight-graders live side by side with gang members and criminals wielding guns. It is an environment, they say, that forces them to think about what streets to avoid, how to flee if someone starts shooting, and how to avert your gaze so the gunman won't turn on you. They talk about such subjects with the same frequency and nonchalance that teenagers elsewhere might discuss their favorite Red Sox player or pop star.

Budget Cuts Hit a Brooklyn Area Over and Over

webmail@rwjf.org — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

When Mr. Bloomberg unveiled his budget a few weeks ago, he warned that no neighborhood would be spared in his struggle to plug a $5 billion gap. But in making steep across-the-board cuts to dozens of agencies and programs, it was almost inevitable that they would fall heaviest on some neighborhoods. And if there is one place that for sheer density and variety of affected services is the epicenter of budget pain, it is a tiny slice of Brooklyn covering six blocks by eight blocks, straddling Gowanus, Carroll Gardens and Boerum Hill, according to an analysis by The New York Times of the location of the facilities already singled out for closing.

S.F. Cuts Will Put More Mentally Ill on Streets

webmail@rwjf.org — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Why is Mayor Gavin Newsom proposing cuts to mental health treatment for those with the most serious mental illness? One block from where the mayor announced that cuts to mental health programs would be small, at the offices of the Citywide Case Management and Community Focus, we learned that we would lose 38 percent of our total budget.

Talk to Relatives About Caregiving Before They Need It; Resources That Can Help

webmail@rwjf.org — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Before my grandfather died of cancer, I helped my grandmother care for him in their home. For more than a decade, I managed health care and other financial issues for my disabled brother until his death. I also assisted with some of my grandmother's financial affairs in the years leading up to her passing. I'm currently the trustee for an older aunt. With this experience, you would think it would be easy to talk to yet another adult about his care. But it's often not easy to get someone who has been living independently to open up, especially about finances.

Free Books Block 'Summer Slide' in Low-Income Students

webmail@rwjf.org — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:00:00 EDT

Can a $50 stack of paperback books do as much for a child's academic fortunes as a $3,000 stint in summer school? An experimental program in seven states may help answer that question this summer as districts from Nevada to South Carolina give thousands of low-income students an armful of free books.