Year: 2010

School water fountains a problem for kids trying to ‘Rethink their drink’

It isn’t always easy to find a drink of water at school. Unfortunately, this is a comment we hear a lot when we talk to children about the health benefits of drinking water instead of sugary, high-calorie drinks. Such a refrain is obviously a concern for a network of nutrition professionals, so this year we set out to learn more about the water situation in schools, how it shapes children’s drinking habits and water’s role in the fight against obesity. We found that water sources on North Coast campuses are sometimes limited to dirty or poorly functioning drinking fountains or water that sells for as much as $1 a bottle. Kids told us the scarcity of appealing or free drinking water at school makes it difficult to follow a key message of our “ReThink Your Drink” lessons, which is to choose water over sugar-sweetened drinks.

Wellness Goes to School: Shasta County’s Healthy Students Initiative

By Margaret T. Simpson

If you live in Shasta County, you’re more likely to die than people in 57 of California’s 58 counties, even after adjusting for age. The Healthy Shasta collaborative is trying to change that. An initiative of health experts and local leaders willing to incorporate healthy lifestyle changes into their own policies and working environments, the collaborative offers options like free health club memberships, on-campus bicycles and healthy food vending machines to their employees, students and customers. And one of the collaborative’s projects is focusing intently on child obesity and the schools.

California cities, counties begin to plan for health and wellness

By Margaret T. Simpson and Daniel Weintraub

Local governments across California are beginning to integrate health and wellness goals into their land-use planning. When the economy recovers and developers start building again, many new communities will be more pedestrian-friendly, hospitable to bicycles and built with an eye toward keeping people healthy.

Success of refugee students threatened by budget cuts

By Robert Knauf and Megan Burks

The San Diego Unified School District, which spans affluent coastal communities and troubled inner-city neighborhoods alike, faces a $142 million deficit next school year. With the recent failure of Proposition J, a tax measure that would have helped bridged that gap, district officials are looking for places to make deep cuts. Laying off counseling staff and teachers, asking schools to share principals, and compounding magnet complexes into comprehensive schools are among the suggestions. This, coupled with state cuts to mental health services in schools, has students and teachers at the Crawford Educational Complex in City Heights worried their funding will be slashed in ways that ignore the special needs of the many refugee and immigrant students in the community.

Bleak budget forecast: $25 billion shortfall

By Daniel Weintraub

California’s fiscal outlook is even worse than legislators and most Capitol observers assumed when lawmakers patched together a budget in October 100 days after the start of the current fiscal year. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office, widely respected for its work on budget issues, projected Wednesday that the state will face a $25 billion shortfall in the budget for the fiscal year that begins next July. And the problem could be worse, if court cases break against the state or Congress and President Obama extend estate tax relief that would indirectly cost California’s treasury nearly $3 billion.

My advice to Jerry Brown: Fix the DMV

By Daniel Weintraub

Fix the DMV. That’s my advice to Gov.-elect Jerry Brown. Why start with the Department of Motor Vehicles, when there is so much wrong in state government, so many problems, up to and including another massive budget deficit? Because nothing could do more to instill confidence in government among Californians, starting with teenagers who are still too young to vote.

Fighting the common cold…..naturally

By Joanne Neft

It’s the season for cold damp weather. As the rains fall and chilly nights become more common, local elementary schools and the work place seem to quietly breed the first of the year’s sniffles and common colds. Fortunately, Mother Nature blesses us at this time of year with the perfect natural remedy. Within a few weeks time mandarin orange trees will have ripened fruit that provides relief to those who suffer from a head cold and runny nose. A recent study by the U. S. Department of Agriculture titled Synephrine Content of Juice from Satsuma Mandarins confirms that Placer County’s popular Owari Satsuma mandarins pack a big jolt of synephrine, a natural decongestant that relieves common cold and allergy symptoms.

A Wellness Program with Something for Everyone

By Margaret T. Simpson

La Mesa, with a population of nearly 60,000, sits on a series of hills just east of San Diego. Its scenic character masks health statistics that are the worst in San Diego County, with 40 percent of the adult population overweight and an additional 23 percent considered obese. The area also has the highest rates of adult diabetes and heart disease. But now the city has written a strategic wellness plan that engages schools, health providers, businesses and faith communities in an ongoing effort to create the healthiest city in the region.

State doing little to track hospitals with severe seismic safety risks

By Christina Jewett

State authorities and hospital officials have discovered serious structural weaknesses at more than a dozen hospital buildings, but they have taken few steps to notify the public about the facilities or require a detailed inventory of hundreds of other potentially dangerous sites. More than a dozen hospital buildings in the Bay Area and Southern California face the highest-known chances of crumbling during an earthquake, based on a complex mash-up of each building’s structural strength, distance from a fault line and expected ground motion, California Watch has learned. While the problem of hospital safety has been widely debated, few people know how little California is doing to detect its riskiest hospital buildings. Regulators do not require hospital owners to determine a collapse risk for every building they own, making it impossible to know which should be fixed first.

Issuing a call not just for doctors, but leaders

By Ronald Fong. M.D.

We need to address our medical students as paladins, and not as squires. We must show them that their patients and circles will view them as leaders, regardless of their self-assessment. And, we must impart to them that leadership is not a burden, but a legacy to be forged. We will choose our students for this trek based not primarily on test scores or letters of recommendations. Rather, we will seek those who demand challenges, shatter comfort zones, and stoke their passions by the advancement and of others.

Year: 2010

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