Photo: MartinHots via Flickr
A significant percentage of older women are struggling to stay out of poverty, according to a new issue brief from Justice in Aging.
The report looks at reasons more women are aging into poverty than men, discusses the support systems that are in place to help older women, and recommends ways to strengthen and expand those support systems. Continue reading
When it comes to health care disparities and cardiovascular disease (CVD), the divide widens early. A spate of studies published recently illustrates how social factors influence CVD outcomes from our earliest years.
For example, a report published in Pediatrics found that the increased obesity prevalence among U.S. adolescents is happening almost entirely among those in low- and middle-income families. Smoking, diet quality, and physical activity levels also tracked with household socioeconomic status for these children, based on the NHANES data used in the study. The only equal-opportunity metabolic derailment among teens in the United States appears to be prediabetes and diabetes. Risk factors for CVD overall declined for adolescents from 1999 to 2014, but significantly so only for those from high-income households. Continue reading
Photo: Len Bruzzese/AHCJAHCJ President Ivan Oransky, M.D., presents Kerry Klein with an Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism during Health Journalism 2018.
Kerry Klein, from Valley Public Radio, won first place for Health Policy (small outlet) in the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism for her series “Struggling for care,” looking at the physician shortage in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Health coverage has vastly expanded in California through the state’s concerted effort to support the Affordable Care Act, expand Medicaid, and get people signed up. But it hasn’t solved access problems in places like the Valley. Continue reading
Photo: Omar Bárcena via Flickr
During a two-week U.S. fact-finding tour, Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said he observed scenes of suffering from coast to coast: in homeless encampments in California, in storm-ravaged enclaves in Puerto Rico, and in marginalized communities of the deep South and West Virginia.
A shortage of healthcare, infrastructure and sanitation services in low-income and minority communities are taking a serious toll, Alston said during a Dec. 15 press conference in Washington, D.C., at the conclusion of the tour. Continue reading
Photo: Spider via photopin (license)Georgia-based freelancer Carolyn Crist has written about health and travel. Her interests intersect in this tip sheet on the impact of geography, and its link to poverty, on health.
Carolyn Crist knows a little something about place.
A freelance journalist based in Georgia, Crist specializes in health, science … and travel writing.
The graduate of University of Georgia’s College of Journalism and Mass Communication spent several years assisting UGA’s Travel Writing in Prague program, in addition to writing about the uninsured, obesity, aging and other health issues. Continue reading
Photo: via photopin (license)More communities are looking for ways to close the health care gap in 2016.
Perhaps 2016 will be the year of the gap – tackling the issue of the working poor who fall between Medicaid and subsidized health insurance on the health care exchanges.
While the Affordable Care Act allowed for the expansion of the Medicaid – the joint federal-state insurance program for the poor – 31 states have broadened the program, while 16 states have not, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That can leave many of the working poor in some states effectively still uninsured. Continue reading