Chicago Physician and Authority on Premature Births: Racism is a Stressor that Can Trigger Pre-Term labor

It doesn't matter if you're well off financially. It doesn't matter if you have a college education. It doesn't even really matter if you've had adequate health care.

If you are a black woman living in the United States, you are much more likely to have a premature baby than a white mother in the same socioeconomic category.

What is causing this gap?

Dr. James Collins, a physician and researcher from Chicago and an authority on premature births, believes the culprit is racism.

"Racism exists, and racism is a stressor" that decreases the immune system and can trigger pre-term labor, Collins told an audience of medical professionals and community leaders Wednesday.

The event was sponsored by the Berrien County Health Department and Lakeland HealthCare.

Upward mobility for black women does reduce the rate for low-weight births, the leading cause of infant mortality, Collins said.

The rate of infant mortality is higher for poor, black single teenage mothers, especially if the mother was a low birth-weight baby.

If you live in poverty and were a low birth-weight baby "you're pre-programmed to have a low birth-weight baby," Collins said.

The lives of 6,000 black babies could be saved each year if the infant mortality rate for blacks could be lowered to that of whites, Collins said. For those who survive, low birth weight leads to health problems later in life.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/07/25/local_news/5755174.txt#comment

Branch Area Food Pantry Celebrates 25 Years at Annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner

The Branch Area Food Pantry (BAFP) held the annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner last Wednesday at the St. Charles activity hall, a time of fellowship and gratitude. There were 76 of the volunteers in attendance.

“I think Deacon Al (Provot) would be very pleased to see how far the pantry has come,” said Chuck Tippman, chair of the board. “This is the best-run organization of its kind I’ve been involved in.”

Tippman recalled when Provot recognized a need and began a pantry of sorts in a closet in the St. Charles office building 25 years ago.

www.thedailyreporter.com/news/x1009569270/Branch-Area-Food-Pantry-shows-gratitude-with-dinner

What "The Grapes of Wrath" Says about Today's Immigrant Workers

When John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, a reporter asked him if he thought he deserved the world’s most prestigious award for novelists. Reportedly, Steinbeck said, "Frankly, no."

Sadly for Steinbeck, this opinion was shared by many literary critics who thought that while he was a competent writer, he wasn’t worthy of the Nobel. Although he was a prolific writer, Steinbeck’s literary reputation rested primarily on one work that remains undisputed in terms of its contribution to American culture.

When The Grapes of Wrath was released in 1939, it caused a sensation that literature is probably no longer capable of provoking. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was the best-selling novel of the year. Just months later, in 1940, the book was turned into a film by John Ford that was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

For readers today, Steinbeck’s migration saga remains relevant as a piece of (dramatized) social analysis. It’s essentially a road novel about the Joads, a poor Midwestern migrant farming family. Throughout the novel, the Joads fight to keep their family intact while fleeing the 1930s Oklahoma Dustbowl for the hope of farm work in California...

(Today) It’s common to meet young men laboring on farms in the United States who haven’t been home in years. They keep sending their family money saved from their $9-an-hour wages, but there’s no human contact.

Even families that reconstitute themselves on the U.S. side of the border are not secure. The Urban Institute estimates that 100,000 immigrant parents of U.S. citizen children have been deported to Mexico over the past 10 years...

notes.bread.org/2011/07/the-grapes-of-wrath-revisited.html

Poverty study: 1 in 3 Michigan senior citizens struggles with money

A third of Michigan’s seniors are considered “economically insecure” — far more than the federal poverty limits would suggest, according to a new study.

Moreover, even in counties that are home to some of the most affluent suburbs where the wealthiest will buoy the overall median household income, at least one in four seniors on the other end of the economic scale struggles to make ends meet, according to the paper, “Invisible Poverty: New Measure Unveils Financial Hardship in Michigan’s Older Population.”

“There’s the popular perception that they have this nice car and their house is paid off and they travel the country. And that’s true for some,” said Thomas Jankowski, one of the study’s authors and associate director for research at Wayne State University’s Institute of Gerontology. “But others – many, many others – just skate on the edge of economic security.”

www.freep.com/article/20110720/NEWS06/110720009/Poverty-study-1-3-Michigan-senior-citizens-struggles-money-

"Injustices in the food sytem are abundant" - Niki Britton, Berrien County Health Dept

The goal of the Benton Harbor Farmers Market is to make fresh food available to all residents, particularly low-income people who might not have access to healthier choices.

"Injustices in the food systems are abundant, and this means that not everyone has the same access to affordable, healthy foods they need to live their best life," Nikki Britton, the Berrien County Health Department's epidemiologist, said in a press release.

Britton refers to neighborhoods without full-service grocery stores as "food deserts," where it is easier to get a bag of corn chips than an ear of corn.

This consumption of junk food can lead to diabetes and other illnesses.

Another entity trying to link small farmers to customers looking for healthy foods is the Conservation Fund. The organization recently announced that it had received a $400,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to help black and Hispanic farmers increase their production. The produce can in turn be sold at farmers markets.

"They are really the unsung heroes of local communities," said Peg Kohring of Sawyer, the Conservation Fund's Midwest coordinator and a member of the Berrien County Board of Health.

The grant will benefit farmers and markets in 11 southwest Michigan counties, including Berrien, Van Buren and Cass.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/07/20/local_news/5713273.txt

School Suspensions are Up Across the Board but are Significantly Higher for Minority Students

Researchers in Texas have released the most comprehensive analysis of school suspension and expulsion policies ever conducted. It's considered groundbreaking because of its scope and detailed examination of disciplinary policies that when misused often put students at greater risk of dropping out or being incarcerated.

The study, titled Breaking Schools' Rules, is extraordinary in that it looked at individual school records and tracked all seventh-graders in Texas — 1 million of them — for six years. One finding surprised even veteran educators: 60 percent of those students were suspended or expelled at least once between their seventh- and 12th-grade years.

Mike Thompson with the Council of State Governments Justice Center, which commissioned the study, said the frequency with which kids in Texas are suspended and expelled reflects a 20-year trend that has seen the rate double nationally.

"For example, in California in 2010 alone, nearly 13 percent of students were put in out-of-school suspension or expelled," he said. "In Florida, that was 9 percent."

Texas, though, is the only state that has been able to use this data to track kids and see what happens to them after they're suspended or expelled.

A Higher Rate Of Removal For Some Groups

Of the 1 million students in Texas who were tracked, 15 percent were disciplined repeatedly — 11 times or more. Half of them ended up in juvenile-justice facilities or programs for an average of 73 schooldays. These students were likely to repeat a grade and not graduate from high school.

Just as worrisome, Thompson said, is who is being suspended and expelled.

"African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities experience a disproportionately high rate of removal from the classroom for disciplinary reasons," he said.

One glaring example: 70 percent of black girls were suspended or expelled, compared with 37 percent of white girls, usually for the same offenses...

www.npr.org/2011/07/19/138495061/report-details-texas-school-disciplinary-policies

Do early-childhood programs enable poor parenting?

An oft-repeated perception among conservatives and libertarians is that early-childhood programs such as Head Start are counter-productive because they enable slacker parents.

The subject came up last week in an interview with House Speaker Jase Bolger when I asked him about state funding for early-childhood education.

Bolger acknowledged the research that shows the value of early intervention services, but also he sees it as an area where government programs enable the lack of personal responsibility. A quick excerpt from the story:

”It’s a very difficult balance,” he said. “Kids go hungry, so schools start feeding them. Kids get in trouble after school, so there’s after-school problems. Parents don’t read to kids at home, so we give reading help at school. Parents don’t get kids ready for kindergarten, so we need preschool.

We turn to schools to do the things that parents aren’t doing” and it builds an expectation in parents that it’s really the schools’ responsibility, Bolger said. “It’s an unintended consequence of government doing too much.”

So is there evidence that the good from early-childhood programs is offset by parents easing up on their own responsibilities?

www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/07/school_zone_blog_do_early-chil.html

Monday: Homeless Advocates to Discuss Tax Proposal in Downtown Kalamazoo

As they try to build momentum for a Kalamazoo County ballot proposal, homeless advocates are holding a public meeting Monday to unveil survey results that show whether there is public support for their plan.

The meeting will be held from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the Van Duesen Room at the Kalamazoo Public Library on Rose and South streets.

Last month, Kalamazoo County Public Housing Commission Chairman David Anderson asked for the Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners to put a 0.33 mill tax request on the Nov. 8 ballot. Anderson is a Kalamazoo city commissioner.

www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/07/homeless_advocates_to_discuss.html

Economist Magazine: Food Stamps are the "Most Effective" form of economic stimulus "increasing economic activity by $1.73 for every dollar spent"

WHEN the dismal news came on July 8th that the unemployment rate had risen fractionally to 9.2%, both Republicans and Democrats declared the data proof of the folly of the other party’s policies. How, Republicans asked, could Democrats even consider raising taxes when the economy is so weak? How, Democrats retorted, could Republicans advocate big cuts in the safety net when so many Americans are in desperate need? As the haggling over raising the legal limit on the federal government’s debt reaches a climax, the feeble state of the economy is making the budgetary trade-offs involved ever less appealing...

Take food stamps, a programme designed to ensure that poor Americans have enough to eat, which is seen by many Republicans as unsustainable and by many Democrats as untouchable. Participation has soared since the recession began (see chart). By April it had reached almost 45m, or one in seven Americans. The cost, naturally, has soared too, from $35 billion in 2008 to $65 billion last year. And the Department of Agriculture, which administers the scheme, reckons only two-thirds of those who are eligible have signed up.Advocates for the poor consider (cuts to food stamps) unconscionable.

Food stamps, they argue, are far from lavish. Only those with incomes of 130% of the poverty level or less are eligible for them. The amount each person receives depends on their income, assets and family size, but the average benefit is $133 a month and the maximum, for an individual with no income at all, is $200. Those sums are due to fall soon, when a temporary boost expires. Even the current package is meagre. Melissa Nieves, a recipient in New York, says she compares costs at five different supermarkets, assiduously collects coupons, eats mainly cheap, starchy foods, and still runs out of money a week or ten days before the end of the month.

It is also hard to argue that food-stamp recipients are undeserving. About half of them are children, and another 8% are elderly. Only 14% of food-stamp households have incomes above the poverty line; 41% have incomes of half that level or less, and 18% have no income at all. The average participating family has only $101 in savings or valuables.

www.economist.com/node/18958475

Goodwill Summer Youth Program puts teens, young adults to work

For more than 80 Battle Creek area youth, the Goodwill Summer Youth Program has made the bleak summer job market a bit less intimidating.

The program, which receives its funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, targets youth from the ages of 16 to 24 and trains them for employment. After training began June 27, the first wave of 76 employees began working July 5 and will continue for eight weeks.

"We're right on schedule of where we wanted to be," said Jerry Mainstone, VP of Workforce Development at Goodwill. "Actually, we're probably 10 to 15 youth being placed ahead of where we wanted to be."

Mainstone's goal was to employ 80 youth this summer and the program has almost already surpassed that number.

"Our goal was to get 80 youth employed, and if that required 80 worksites, then that's what we would have done," Mainstone said. "But we were able to find some worksites that took multiple kids because they had multiple departments to put them in."

www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20110715/NEWS01/107150309/Goodwill-Summer-Youth-Program-puts-teens-young-adults-work