Culture of Health Blog

We know that in order to address health disparities head on, we'll have to implement changes to the systems that influence where we live, learn, work, and play. Oscar and Jose's stories show us that it's possible.   

In the quote above, Steven Teske, a Juvenile Chief Judge in Clayton County, Georgia is describing the first time he encountered 15-year-old Oscar Mayes as he entered the courtroom in handcuffs. Judge Teske noticed that Oscar was an extremely bright young man and that he had no prior run-ins with the law. Yet Oscar was facing five years in the state’s long term lock up—five years that could have ruined his future.

Fortunately, Oscar literally got a Second Chance. This Clayton County initiative gives youth facing prison an opportunity to redeem themselves through intensive supervision, participation in evidence-based treatment programs, and weekly check-ins with the court. Judge Teske and others in his community had realized that too many of their students were falling out of school and heading into the criminal justice system. To address this, the Juvenile Court partnered with local schools and law enforcement to find ways of disciplining youth while keeping them “in school, out of court, and onto a positive, healthy future.”

Interventions like this have yielded impressive statistics in Clayton County: School arrests have gone down 83% and school attendance has gone up 86%. Clayton County’s approach to juvenile justice reflects the transformational impact that changing a system can have.

By Najaf Ahmad, MPH, Communications Associate, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Human Capital Portfolio

Walking through Barnes & Noble recently, a book on the “New Arrivals” rack stopped me in my tracks. So despite being in a rush, I was immediately drawn to Sugar Nation.

Imagine reuniting with a father you haven’t seen in years, finding him in an unrecognizable condition—a “human body in the process of cannibalizing itself”—on death’s door with a missing limb. Author Jeff O’Connell begins with this moving story of how he learned that his estranged father was slowly dying from the ravages of type 2 diabetes.

Despite having learned of his father’s leg amputation weeks earlier, O’Connell—former editor-in-chief at Muscle & Fitness magazine and executive writer at Men’s Health magazine—was certain he had nothing to worry about. He worked out, was lean and appeared healthy. His thin physique didn’t fit the stereotype of someone predisposed to developing type 2 diabetes.

A sobering visit with his doctor shook O’Connell to his core. He was diagnosed with pre-diabetes and headed down the same path as his father. Rather than accepting this fate though, he embarked on a mission to fight back against the enemy lurking within him. In doing so, he unearthed crucial information on how lifestyle factors influence diabetes.

More interestingly, he discovered the troubling manner in which health care providers are (or are not) responding to this burgeoning problem, going so far as to say that many “seem clueless when it comes to diagnosing this disease, let alone treating it.”

Although genes play a prominent role in predisposing someone to type 2 diabetes, lifestyle is a major influence. O’Connell underscores how type 2 diabetes stems from “the sum total of a very long trail of personal choices, made over a lifetime.” We pay a heavy price for our love affair with sugar, as massive quantities from processed foods shock our bodies. It shouldn’t be surprising then that one in three adults in the United States now has a blood sugar abnormality that predisposes them to diabetes-related complications such as heart disease, kidney failure and blindness. Sadly, many do not know they are affected until they develop these complications.

Najaf Ahmad, M.P.H., is a Communications Associate with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Human Capital Portfolio. She has contributed to RWJF’s efforts in the areas of health insurance coverage and nursing since joining the Foundation in 2004, and is currently working on initiatives to build capacity in the health and health care workforce.

I’m obsessed with sugar and so is my husband. It wasn’t always this way; we used to spend many evenings sharing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s curled up in front of the TV.

That was until we became neurotic new parents.

In our quest to become good—and healthy—parents, nutrition became a new-found obsession. Our determination to model healthy behaviors for our child meant, among other things, reassessing our diet. To guide our efforts, we spent many evenings voraciously reading up on diet and nutrition–this time without Ben & Jerry.

It was right around then that I first heard of award-winning science journalist Gary Taubes. He had just published Good Calories, Bad Calories, his magnum opus examining the relationship between carbohydrates and obesity. A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator in Health Policy Research, Taubes has rediscovered the relationship between excess consumption of sugar, chronic health problems, obesity and food policy. He is one of only a few journalists that the Investigator program has funded.