Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com

Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com: "
Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said."


This article was so well-written, it was impossible to edit.  Instead I left many links back to the author to be sure he is credited with the writing of the article.

Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities | syracuse.com:


Public health expert: American Indians cannot be ignored in discussions of ethnic health disparities
Published: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 4:10 PM Updated: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 4:40 PM
By James T. Mulder / The Post-Standard

"Michael E. Bird has spent much of his career in public health shining a light on health problems that devastated his family and many other American Indians.

Bird, the first Native American to serve as the president of the American Public Health Association, visited Syracuse University today to give a talk about American Indian health disparities. The free lecture, open to the public, is at 6 p.m. in Room 001 of the Life Sciences Building."

Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said.

Bird said he’s battled with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other groups to include American Indians along with blacks and Hispanics in discussions of and research into ethnic health disparities.

“Any discussion about populations that have been marginalized has to be about all of us or none of us,” Bird said.

Bird, 59, is a Santo Domingo-San Juan Pueblo Indian from Albuquerque, New Mexico. He has master’s degrees in social work and public health, and worked for many years for the Indian Health Service, an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The American Public Health Association, the world’s oldest organization of public health officials, elected him president in 2001. He’s now working as a consultant to Kewa Pueblo tribal officials in New Mexico, helping them develop a tribally owned and directed health center.

He and other delegates of the American Public Health Association have been invited to the White House later this month.

Bird jokingly said a fitting title to his life story would be: “From the outhouse to the White House.”

Bird grew up in a poor family. His mother had a seventh grade education and was 17 when she gave birth to him. His father was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis. That family dysfunction steered him to a career in social work, then public health.

“I wouldn’t be who I am today if it were not for that experience,” Bird said. “I understand what it’s like to have that hurt and pain, but I’ve learned not to be overwhelmed by it, to control it and direct it.”

American Indians and Alaska Natives die at higher rates than other American from tuberculosis (500 percent higher), alcoholism (514 percent higher), diabetes (177 percent higher), car accidents and other unintentional injuries (140 percent higher), homicide (92 percent higher) and suicide (82 percent higher), according to the federal government.

Bird said the disparities are the consequences of Native American being removed from their ancestral lands, racism, poverty and other factors.

Despite the statistics, Bird said he sees encouraging signs.

Many tribes like his own are taking control of their health centers to improve services. The Urban Indian Health Institute is doing research to focus more attention on the health needs of American Indians who live in urban communities, he said.

Bird said he was encouraged when the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People in 2007 which affirmed the equality of the world’s more than 300 million indigenous people.

“It’s not legally binding, but it provides visibility to issues faced by indigenous populations all over the world who share the same socioeconomic deficits of high morbidity, high mortality and high incarceration,” he said.

Even though he considers tobacco use a major health problem, Bird sees cigarette sales as a necessary evil for the Onondaga Nation  and many other Indian reservations.

If the United States had kept its promises to Indian people to provide adequate health services, education and many other benefits in exchange for their lands, reservations would not need to sell cigarettes or operate casinos, he said.

“It’s sort of like being in the middle of a lake and there’s a storm coming,” Bird said. “If those are the only oars you have, you are going to use them.”



Related topics: Syracuse University Michael E. Bird

 Submitted photo

Michael E. Bird, a national expert on Native American public health, visited Syracuse University Wednesday.

Disparity

Even though alcoholism, diabetes and other diseases kill American Indians at much higher rates than other minority groups, the disparity is often ignored because American Indians account for less than 2 percent of the population, Bird said.

Imagine

A wise man changes his mind, a fool never”
- Spanish Proverb quotes


The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
-Carl Sagan


“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
- Albert Einstein


“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan

Fundamentalism

“A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan


“A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan



“Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.”
- Dr. Carl Sagan

Video: The bitter price to pay for Mexico's bloody drugs war - Telegraph

Video: The bitter price to pay for Mexico's bloody drugs war - Telegraph:



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Curry Eating Competition Lands Two People in the Hospital

Curry Eating Competition Lands Two People in the Hospital:

"...restaurant in Edinburgh recently held a spicy curry eating competition that wound up being a "shambles," as several people got sick and two were hospitalized.
An American student was one of the regretful contestants who ate the "killer curry" for the charity competition. It will be her last time doing so:"

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This Automated Pizza Vending Machine Has a Built-In TV

This Automated Pizza Vending Machine Has a Built-In TV: "

Behold, the ne plus ultra of American innovation: Pizzametry, an automated machine capable of making 150 different types of pizza in mere three minutes, while you watch TV. Let us marvel at the pneumatic glory of Pizzametry spinning dough, slicing pepperonis, squirting sauce, and sprinkling cheese.

Pizzametry has a flat-screen TV mounted on it, so you can learn about your pizza and watch a music video or two while you wait. Someday, all Americans will be born with Pizzametry machines glued to their ..."




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Oral Sex Virus May Surpass Smoking as Cause of Throat Cancer - Businessweek

Oral Sex Virus May Surpass Smoking as Cause of Throat Cancer - Businessweek:

...may cause more cases of throat cancer in men than smoking, a finding that spurred calls for a new large-scale test of a drug used against the infection.

Researchers examined 271 throat-tumor samples collected over 20 years ending in 2004 and found that the percentage of oral cancer linked to the human papillomavirus, or HPV, surged to 72 percent from about 16 percent, according to a report released yesterday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. By 2020, the virus-linked throat tumors -- which mostly affected men -- will become more common than HPV-caused cervical cancer, the report found.

HPV is known for infecting genitals. The finding that it can spread to the throat and cause cancer may increase pressure on Merck & Co., the second-largest U.S. drugmaker, to conduct large-scale trials to see if its vaccine Gardasil, which wards off cervical cancer in women, also prevents HPV throat infections.

“The burden of cancer caused by HPV is going to shift from women to men in this decade,” Maura Gillison, an oncologist at Ohio State University and study senior author, said in a telephone interview. “What we believe is happening is that the number of sexual partners and exposure to HPV has risen over that same time period.”

Gillison said she worked with researchers at Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck several years ago to design a study in men. After Merck acquired Schering-Plough Corp. in 2009, though, the trial “was canceled,” she said.
 

HPV-linked throat cancers, or orophyaryngeal cancer, are increasing so rapidly that by 2020 there will be 8,700 U.S. cases, with 7,400 cases in men, versus 7,700 cases of cervical cancer, the study said. Male cases alone will outnumber cervical cancer cases soon after 2020, Gillison said. The Ohio State study is based on tumor samples from several U.S. states.

HPV Infections

Roughly 20 million Americans have genital HPV infections, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least half of sexually active women and men get it at some point in their lives, the CDC says. Most of the time it doesn’t cause health problems.

Until recently, head and neck cancer mainly occurred in older patients and was associated with tobacco and alcohol use. The HPV-linked head and neck cancers, usually of the tonsils, palate or tongue, hit men their 30s, 40s, and 50s, Gillison said. It is unclear why women are affected much less often than men, she said.

Treatment involving chemotherapy, radiation and sometimes surgery, “is very nasty,” said Gillison. “It can leave people with permanent physical disfigurement, difficulty with speech and swallowing and poor dental health.”

In a 2007 epidemiology study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gillison and her colleagues found that having a high number of oral or vaginal sex partners are risk factors for HPV-associated throat cancer. The cancer may also be spread by open-mouth kissing, Gillison said in the interview.

“Nobody paid attention to oral HPV infections until 2007,” she said. “We are about 15 years behind in the research” compared with the data on cervical cancer and HPV, she said.
 



--Editors: Chris Staiti, Reg Gale.
reporter on this story: Robert Langreth in New York at rlangreth@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

How To Find Greater Resilience

Finding The Bright Side Can Equal Greater Resilience:



When dealing with challenges in life, we tend to find situations
more stressful if we have less control over our circumstances. Often, we may feel that we have virtually no control in some of the situations we face, but we always have some control over our responses to these situations. the one thing we can control is our thoughts. We can control our thoughts, and on what we focus on in any situation, which can help control how we react.

Because the body's stress response is triggered by perceived threats as opposed to objectively verifiable ones, we know that shifting our focus away from seeing everystressor as a threat, and toward seeing stressors as challenges or even potential opportunities, can make a significant difference in how stressed we feel. However, it can be difficult to find a way to alter our thoughts and patterns of thinking about things, especially when stressed. It helps to know what to do.

That's where positive psychology research can help. One study in particular shed some light on a few areas of how to change your perspective and feel less stress and depression. The study, built upon previous research that showed that finding the hidden benefits in a difficult situation can be an effective way to reduce depressive symptoms and associated stress, examined a couple of unique ways to achieve this state of mind.

Specifically, the researchers looked at two routes to gaining a 'benefit-finding' frame of mind: optimism, and maintaining a good mood (also known as 'positive affect') in patients who had been diagnosed with MS. In this randomized clinical trial, 127 MS patients were given telephone counseling, and assessed at the beginning of the study, at 8 weeks, and 16 weeks into counseling sessions, using four separate assessments. After adjusting for time since MS diagnosis and type of treatment, assessments affirmed that decreased depression was associated with increased benefit-finding over time, and that benefit-finding was affected by both increased positive affect and increased optimism. This study not only affirms that finding the positive in a negative situation can indeed bring real benefits for mood, but sheds some light on effective ways of altering your perspective long-term.

Source:

http://stress.about.com/b/2011/09/29/finding-the-bright-side-can-equal-greater-resilience.htm

‘Porn widows’ decry smut as a relationship killer | Wellbeing | Life | National Post

‘Porn widows’ decry smut as a relationship killer | Wellbeing | Life | National Post:



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Smoking has allure for impressionable young people.

Smoking is ruinous to your health.

If children are considered the future, why the smoking?

For Chinese Students, Smoking Isn’t All Bad - Businessweek: "In dozens of rural villages in China’s western provinces, one of the first things primary school kids learn is what helps make their education possible: tobacco. The schools are sponsored by local units of China’s state-owned cigarette monopoly, China National Tobacco. “On the gates of these schools you’ll see slogans that say ‘Genius comes from hard work—tobacco helps you become talented,’” says Xu Guihua, secretary general of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, a privately funded lobbying group. “They are pinning their hopes on young people taking up smoking.”

Anti-tobacco groups say efforts in China to reduce sales.... "




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