Rural Health

McDonald’s Advertising

By Casey Duncan, AmeriCorps member working at Community to Community in Bellingham, WA

As part of my service as a Community Health Promoter I volunteer with Community to Community’s youth empowerment program, Raices Culturales (Cultural Roots). Raices Culturales is a bi-lingual, multi-cultural program for Latino farm worker youth in Whatcom County, ages 6 to 12 years.  It provides a structured and safe space for healthy play and educational activities around healthy food and sustainable lifestyles. The youth are allowed to grow and feel whole within themselves by gaining pride in their cultural identity and exploring the interconnectedness of all peoples in Whatcom County.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to participate in a Capoeira lesson with the Raices Culturales youth.  A Capoeira Master came up from Seattle to teach the youth about Capoeira.  He began by telling us of his memory of seeing people “play Capoeira” in the streets of Brazil growing up. He casually stood on his head and explained the history of this martial art form.  Capoeira was derived from the music, dance and traditions from the African slaves in Brazil.  The originators of Capoeira disguised this martial art as a dance in order to practice and eventually used Capoeira to defend themselves from their oppressors and free themselves.

The Capoeira Master asked the youth to explain what a slave was.  What was slavery?  Do slaves have rights?  Are slaves paid?  Are slaves happy?  All of the youth emphatically answered, "No, No, NO!"  And then the Capoeira Master asked, “Where does slavery exist today? Are there slaves in the United States?  Can you be a slave sitting watching Television?”  The youth all listened, but were unsure how to answer.  He imitated a person watching T.V., stuffing his face with imaginary potato chips and his head and neck craned forward to watch an imaginary screen.  He then commented, “They are telling you how to think, just pay attention.”  I thought to myself, is this message sinking in with the kids?

We spent the next hour learning the different movements of Capoeira and how to play a few of the instruments together.  We encouraged each other to try the different movements: walking on our hands, making small cartwheels and ducking under kicks.  We all had a great time, laughing and playing Capoeira.  After thanking the Capoeira master and the Western Washington University Capoeira club for spending the afternoon with us, the youth ran energetically into the van.  We immediately talked about how much physical work Capoeira was just as the youngest member of our group requested to go to McDonald’s because he was “SO hungry."  My heart sunk.  Monica, another AmeriCorps member, and I have been making healthy lunches for the Raices Culturales group since September.  Was I naïve to think that this would influence their food choices?  How could an experience as small as eating a healthy meal from scratch, outweigh the influence of the collectable “Happy Meal” toys and McDonalds Playpens?  I was at a loss of what to say, so I thought back to my days as a preschool teacher where I was trained that the role of the teacher is not to provide the answers or tell a child how to think, but rather to provoke the thoughts and ask the questions.  Children are the best teachers of their peers.

So as we drive home, I asked the youth: What do you think about what the teacher about watching TV making us slaves? What do you think he meant by this?

12 year-old: Well he didn’t mean this literally.  T.V. doesn’t exactly tell you what to think but, advertising can influence you.  It can influence you in a good way or a bad way.  Like, it’s good when advertising tells you to exercise.
Me: That makes me think about all those ads that tell us how smoking is bad for us. That’s an example of advertising that can influence a person in a positive way.  What’s an example of some advertising that can influence us in a negative way?
12 year-old: Well, McDonalds.
7 year-old: See, I told you! Let’s get McDonalds.
12 year-old: No, that’s not what I said! McDonalds is bad for you.
7 year-old: Why?
12 year-old: Because if you drink a milkshake it has like 200 calories.
Me: So why is that bad for you? What are calories and how do they affect your body?
12 year-old: Well it can make you fat, like if you eat too much of it. And those hamburgers have a lot of fat in them and they can give you diabetes.
Me: What is diabetes?
12 year-old: It’s when you get fat and you eat too much junk food your sugar (he gestures to the veins on the underside of his forearm) goes up.
Me: What causes people to get diabetes? Can anyone get diabetes?
10 year-old: My cousin has diabetes, and when he had to have the surgery, they said it was because of the oil.
12 year-old: Yeah, the grease, like the grease in the food we eat.
Me: What can people do to prevent getting sick? 
9 year-old: Eat more vegetables!

All the kids then listed off all of the junk foods that should be avoided.  And the 12 year-old concluded with: Don’t eat McDonalds, well maybe only sometimes like once in a while.

After this conversation with the youth, I am reassured. These youth are the Health Promoters of their generation. I am proud they are questioning the world around them.  They have been paying attention all along and they are not convinced that advertisers are always telling the truth.  

Come to Bridgeport, Mr. President

"This year's graduating class at tiny Bridgeport High School in north central Washington has a chance to be sent off into the big, wide world by none other than President Obama. 

But, Bridgeport, one of six finalists nationwide for the honor, needs your vote to get into the final three--a challenge since the rural Douglas County school is up against schools from much larger cities, such as San Diego, Newark and Pittsburgh."

 We are happy to see Bridgeport High School getting the recognition it deserves.  It successfully prepares its students for the future and has a dropout rate of only 4% while 100% of students are on the free and reduced lunch program and 90% are learning English as a second language. 

View all 6 high schools videos here--but make sure to vote for Bridgeport! We all can vote up until 4/29. 

 

Building Community Together - Creating Opportunities for Better Health

October 17 – 18, 2011
Vancouver Convention Center
Vancouver, Washington

It’s a difficult balance – learning to cut back budgets while responding to health reform and myriads of other changes in our communities. The 18th Annual Washington State Joint Conference on Health will include sessions on all of these topics and more for public health professionals and their partners.

Those interested in presenting at the conference are invited to submit abstracts by Friday, May 27th.

Questions? Contact Laura Nalbandian, Conference Coordinator ~ (206) 930-7613, lnalbandian@wshpa.org

Never Underestimate the Power of Doing Simple Things Well

 
May 19, 2011 – Hilton Seattle Airport & Conference Center

From the intriguing title of its keynote by Michael Leonard, M.D., to small sessions on topics including Identifying Vulnerable Populations at Heightened Risk for Medical Error, Challenges at the Intersection of Patient Safety and Patient Preference and Hospital Transition Management this year’s Northwest Patient Safety Conference sounds like another excellent learning opportunity for clinicians and medical system leaders.

See Conference Agenda here--Northwest Patient Safety Conference Agenda

County Health Rankings for 2011 – No Big Surprises

By Lorna Stone, Vice President of Programs

Last month the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute issued 2011 County Health Rankings, with new data illustrating both health factors and health outcomes rankings for every county. 

The rankings are snapshots of the health of counties throughout the nation, based on a wide variety of measures from mortality and quality of life to high school graduation, unemployment, obesity, and air quality.

Like the Report Card of the Healthiest State Campaign, the rankings model emphasizes that health care is just one of the many determinants of our health. This year the website includes a new a tool – a county health calculator. The tool demonstrates the relationships among two key indicators and an outcome - education, income and premature deaths. 

 

This map shows how Washington counties rank on health factors, including behaviors, clinical care, social and economic factors, and physical environment. Details about the factors for each county are available on the interactive map on the web. 

One of the things we notice is not a surprise: the counties ranking lowest in health factors all have high rural populations. In rank order , numbers 39 to 30 are Ferry, Grays Harbor, Pacific, Adams, Pend Oreille, Yakima, Cowlitz, Okanogan, Skamania, and Mason.

Hoofin & Woofin Time

By Racie McKee, Project Director/Grant Writer for Omak School District

We are quickly approaching the SECOND Annual Hoofin & Woofin event. In case you are wondering what Hoofin & Woofin is here is a little brief…

Hoofin & Woofin 2011 --- 1 mile and 5k walk/run event for you and your dog! All proceeds to benefit KEYSTONE ANIMAL RESCUE, our area’s only canine shelter. Please join us April 30th at the Riverside Park in Riverside, WA for a doggone good time! Check-in starts at 8 a.m. and the walk/run starts at 10 a.m. Pre-registration is required by April 20th. Forms can be downloaded from www.omaksd.wednet.edu. The cost is $15 person/dog pair and pre-registration includes an event t-shirt and bandana, with the balance supporting the charity. Prizes will be awarded to the fastest 5K male and female with additional prizes for the fastest male and female for each age group. Another exciting contest is the cutest dog small breed and cutest dog large breed – last year’s competition was really stiff! Don’t let the fact that you do not have a dog keep you from attending. Keystone Animal Rescue has some loaner dogs for the walk/run and you may decide to take your new friend home with you! Last year, three dogs were adopted :)

This event is promoted by Omak School District and the Fit for Life Community Coalition. For more information call Racie McKee at 509-826-7680, Renee Calkins at 509-826-7688 or e-mail Haley at hmckee@omaksd.wednet.edu.

Handily attached is the registration form which we need back by April 20th (this is so we can order the t-shirts and bandanas in time for the big event). Checks are made payable to OCS. New this year are some special raffle drawings – tickets are $1 each and you place your ticket into the jar for the item(s) you are interested in: Jar 1 – a stay at Sun Mountain Lodge; Jar 2 – a tattoo of your choice by 509 Ink; and Jar 3 – a hand-made 16” collectable doll. All proceeds from the raffle go directly to the Keystone Animal Rescue. Contact Racie or Renee for raffle tickets.

Living in Community

By Tara Rigby, AmeriCorps member & Community Health Promoter for Mason Matters

The Health Home tools have been helpful to me in several ways.  The biggest has been reinforcing a core value I adopted nearly 20 years ago.  The term we used then was Living in Community.  We as human beings are made to live our lives with close relationships.  Some of those relationships change due to circumstances.  I am not talking about bad circumstances, but life changing circumstances.  Specifically, I mean moving across the country.  Something I have done twice in my life now.  The first move was from my home town in California to the Nashville, TN region.  Almost 8 years later I moved back to the west coast, but yet again to a brand new state – Washington.  So naturally, some of my Health Home partners had to change both times --  physician, dentist, chiropractor, church, and employer.  All of these relationships are important to me and all of them play varying roles in one's overall health.  I could write a short book on how each of these is important, but I want to focus on one set of relationships that I believe play a major role in ones overall health, ones personal relationships. 

Family members can be important partners in our Health Home community as well as can we be in theirs. I am blessed to have a close family and even though we have had our differences at times I know I can count on 4 or 5 of them to be there for me in a time of need.  I have 2 cousins who are like sisters and they both dropped everything to be with me during a very devastating loss in my life.  Now one of those cousins is dealing with some very serious health issues with her infant son.  Even though I live over 850 miles away I can be part of her Health Home by sending out email updates and organizing meals and people to take care of her plants and animals while she is at the hospital with her baby.

Friends can be important members in our Health Home community, and again so can we be in theirs.  When I lived in TN my husband and I were involved with a home group and one of the couples we were becoming closer friends with became pregnant with their second child.  She had a very difficult first pregnancy and this second one turned out to be even more taxing on her body.  She ended up in the hospital 6 or more times due to dehydration from morning sickness. Each time she needed her husband to take her to the hospital I went and stayed with their 5 year old until she was released.  When their baby girl was born, I was there in the delivery room to see this new life enter the world.  A little more than a year later my, now very close, friend was there with me when my first child was born.  Then just over 6 years later my dear friend flew from TN to WA to help me when my youngest was in the hospital battling a massive staph infection in her knee.

Entire groups of friends can be a part of each others Health Homes as well.  For a number of years now I have been involved in Mother’s of Preschoolers group better known as MOPS.  The main focus of MOPS is that “Mothering Matters”.  It is a place where moms come together to get moral and spiritual support.  We talk about any and all aspects of mothering from sleep schedules to potty training, from love languages to spousal issues.  One of the things we do as a group is provide meals for a mom when she has a new baby or has a serious illness.  We stand together to support one another in the good times and hard times.

So far during my term as a Community Health Promoter I have been able to share with individuals and several groups some of the knowledge I have gleaned from the Health Home tools.  The information has been received openly and I hope that it is helping them build stronger communities.

AED Training

By Kim King of Odessa Public Development Authority

The importance of Automated Electronic Defibrillator (AED) and CPR training became all too real when an AED saved Steve Jantz’s life during a high school volleyball game last October.  Jantz is a 1981 graduate of Odessa High School.  The AED, located in the school’s gymnasium, and the quick actions of another Odessa graduate, Brandi (Deife) Maioho, saved his life.  The Odessa High School volleyball team was scheduled to play Wilbur that evening and witnessed Jantz suffer cardiac arrest and crumple to the gym floor.  Maioho started using the defibrillator, giving Jantz the first shock within 90 seconds.  When the students heard the good news that Jantz was alive and would recover, they all agreed that everyone should receive AED training. 

AEDs have been a focus of The Odessa Healthcare Foundation (OHF) as well.  Statistics show that if the first shock is given within a minute, the survival rate is 90 percent.  With this statistic in mind, the OHF foundation has raised funds and placed AEDs throughout the Odessa community.  The locations include the US Post Office, Old Town Hall, and the Odessa Community Center.  There is also an AED located in the basement of the high school gym.  

The Odessa Healthcare Foundation and the Odessa High School Future Business Leaders of American (FBLA) combined forces to train over 90 high school students and 12 adults in the proper use an AED and apply CPR to save a life.  There was no charge to the recipients and the costs were paid in part by money from a grant the Odessa Healthcare Foundation received from the Washington Health Foundation.