Paul Soglin: Waxing America

2015 Public Health Awards

Recently, Public Health Madison and Dane County held their annual Public Health Awards at Olbrich Gardens. The Public Health Awards are intended to recognize community members who have made significant contributions and demonstrated exceptional commitment to promoting public health. Gloria Reyes, mayoral assistant, attended to present the awards on my behalf.

Congratulations to the below individuals and organizations who were this year's award recipients:

• Leadership Award: David Gundersen, DDS, MPH, Oral Health Coalition of Dane        Co. and First Choice Dental
• Advocacy Award: Covering Kids and Families-Wisconsin
• Leadership Award: Jason Garlynd, MS, Vocational Horticulture Program at Oakhill Correctional Institution
• Distinguished Service Award: Randall Brown, MD, PhD, UW School of Medicine & Public Health, Department of Family Medicine

Our Madison community is very fortunate to have such dedicated community members and organizations diligently working to promote quality public health practices and remove access barriers for all residents.

Check out some photos of our winners below!

News 3 Affordable Care Act Phone Bank-March 18

Do you have, or do you know someone else who has questions or concerns on the Affordable Care Act?  As I hope you know, the deadline for signing up for coverage is March 31.

 I am pleased at a group of experts from around the area are working together on Tuesday March 18 from 3:00-7:00 p.m. for the News 3 Affordable Care Act Phone Bank.  You can ask questions and get assistance with the sign up for the Affordable Care Act.

 Since there are only two weeks left for people to select a plan or leave themselves open to a possible tax penalty, it is important to make sure that lingering questions are answered, misperceptions are cleared up and people know how to get help to enroll.  That is why a team of experts is collaborating with WISC TV, Channel 3 on the Affordable Care Act Phone Bank. 

 The phone bank team is comprised of volunteers from 12 local organizations working on health insurance awareness and enrollment.  Several volunteers also speak Spanish and Hmong.

The Health Insurance Marketplace is part of the Affordable Care Act that offers private insurance plans to US citizens and legal residents under age 65 who need affordable coverage.  The plans are full service and cover preventive care like screenings and vaccines, as well as doctor visits, hospital stays, mental health care and prescriptions.  In the Dane County area, four familiar insurance companies offer plans with different coverage levels to meet different budgets.

 After March 31, people will not be able to enroll in any Marketplace health insurance plan unless they have a life change, like marriage or divorce, losing insurance through work or BadgerCare+, adopting or having a child, or moving out of a plan area.

 The call-in number for the phone bank is 608-274-4000.  It will be active from 3:00 to 7:00 pm on Tuesday, March 18.  Visit channel3000.com (www.channel3000.com/ACA) and the Channel 3000 mobile app for more information about the Affordable Care Act. 

I am grateful that so many experts and advocates as well as the staff at WISC TV are working together on this project.  I look forward to a productive afternoon and evening as many individuals and families are provided with important information and assistance.

Healthy Food Contributes to Healthy Lives

Recently four area hospitals released the results of a community health needs assessment in launching healthydane.org.  From this data, “organizers hope that the website will encourage visitors to find solutions to existing health needs.”  In order to begin that process, we must first understand where we are as a community. 

 There are some well-publicized figures that demonstrate areas of great concern:

• About one-half of our students in MMSD are eligible for Free or Reduced Lunch; 86.1% of our African-American students are eligible.
• 36.9% of African Americans in Dane County are at or below the poverty line; compared to 9.3% of White, non-Hispanics.

We know that there are families in Madison that struggle to obtain not only a nutritiously adequate meal, but enough food in general.  I recently heard an anecdote about a child at one of our community centers who said the only meal he eats during the day is the one provided by the center.  It is well documented that if kids are not getting adequate food and nutrition, they will fall behind in school.  Considering a child of color is four times more likely to be born into poverty than their white peers, this is of significant impact on the achievement gap. 

Here are some eye-opening statistics that the community health needs assessment pointed to as areas of concern:

• Hospitalization rate due to long-term complications of diabetes
  • 6.6 hospitalizations/10,000 population (18+ years old)
• Hospitalization rate due to diabetes
  • 11.3 hospitalizations/10,000 population (18+ years old)

 Most concerning though,

• Death rate due to diabetes by race/ethnicity
  • Overall:  13.1 deaths/100,000 population (18+ years old)
  • White: 12.6 deaths/100,000 population (18+ years old)
  • Black:  41.3 deaths/100,000 population (18+ years old)

Those who are in poverty rely, often solely, on food assistance programs, namely SNAP.  One alarming indicators of the deficit in access to nutritious food  is the number of SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) certified stores per 1,000 population – in Dane County less than .6% per thousand.).  Wisconsin also has the second lowest average for the monthly assistance provided from our food assistance program per person in the country.  With few accessible, healthy, and affordable choices to redeem food assistance for many families, the choice is often made in favor of what is affordable rather than what is healthy.  

Madison is one of the most highly educated cities in this country, so we should be well aware of the connection between diet and health and diet and education.  We are also blessed with one of the richest agricultural regions in the world.  Given that fresh produce begins losing its nutritional value almost immediately after harvest, it is in our best interest to have our regionally produced food consumed and processed locally. 

As a community, we must get creative to provide healthy, affordable meals to those who need it the most.  There are some great examples of success.  The Madison Freshmobile, our network of farmers’ markets, and the work of our local food banks are just a few.

There are other great examples outside of Madison.  There are extremely successful incentive programs, offering a dollar-for-dollar match of food assistance at farmers’ markets; there are communities “prescribing” fruits and vegetables; there are efforts to curb fast-food and sugar-based beverages.  Here in Madison, there is much to be done.  The work that remains is a shared responsibility between our school districts, government, and other community providers.  It is time that all of us get serious about food and nutrition. 

Guns: What We Knew For Decades

Put a gun in a home and it is seven times more likely to be used:

• In a suicide by a member of the family
• To shoot a member of the family either purposefully or by accident.
• To shoot the owner of the weapon.

than used to defend the household.

 

 

Rod Nilsestuen Will Be Missed

When I first came to Wisconsin in January 1980, one of the first road trips I took was to Whitehall, the Trempealeau County seat. There was a mild snowstorm (6-9 inches), and my new boss, Art Krival, insisted that I needed to go meet some folks who had built a cable television cooperative there and help plan its local access channel structure. The snowstorm would help Art decide whether I had the right stuff to stick at the UW-Extension, and the meeting would give me a sense of what I was getting into. We stayed mostly on the road, and the folks I met included the coop's manager, Rod Moen, later State Senator Rod Moen, and a father and son who had helped to organize the coop, Gerhard and Rod Nilsestuen.

I don't remember adding much to the discussion, but I must have said something useful, because the Trempealeau Cable Coop folks kept asking me for advice and assistance.  I wound up working with Rod Moen on any number of issues over the years, and as Rod Nilsestuen rose to head the Wisconsin Federation of Cooperatives and later the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, we periodically connected on telecommunications consumer topics and more recently on farmers' market development.  The last three years I worked often with Rod's son Joel, a key aide to Senator Kathleen Vinehout, on cable and telecom legislation. Working with three generations of the same family over 30 years is a privilege one doesn't get too often in a lifetime.

Jane Burns in the Wisconsin State Journal has a good summary story on Rod's tragic accidental death here. Some good tributes to Rod are here, here and here. Update: Bill Berry's Cap Times tribute.

Condolences to his family.  May his memory be for a blessing.

- Barry Orton

Gulf Oil Spill, A Test for Voters: Which Rand Paul Horse Do We Back?

If there is one message from Rand Paul, it is that we have too much government regulation. We all know where he stands and we all know that he needs to bob and weave, especially in light of:

Bad cement jobs plague offshore rigs

Federal regulators don't regulate what type of cement is used, leaving it up to oil and gas companies. The drillers are urged to simply follow guidelines of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.

Far more stringent federal and state standards and controls exist on cement work for roads, bridges and buildings...

...An AP review of federal accident and incident reports on offshore wells shows that the cementing process has been implicated at least 34 times since 1978. Many of the reports, available from the U.S. Minerals Management Service that regulates offshore wells, identify the cause simply as "poor cement job."

Rand Paul is going to switch horses and get off the nag that brought him through the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky. No more decrying government regulation, in all instances.

Now Rand Paul will acknowledge that there are moments when proper and reasonable government regulation is appropriate. That is a horse of a different color.

While Rand Paul navigates this shady steed through the troubled waters he will choose the most convenient road to victory. That is not a challenge.

The challenge is for the voters to decide if they are going to buy this ride by the seat of his pants.

Cymbalta: Brilliant and Manipulative TV Commercial Hurts

There are a lot of offensive television commercials that make one push the 'off' button on the remote control, but Cymbalta may be the best.

These people are brilliant. Spend a few minutes a day watching their commercial and you cannot help but become depressed. The woman's droning voice accompanied by the images infects the happiest person with misery.

If people do not need your product, manipulate them and make sure they do.

The Cruel Irony of Earth Day: Lesson Learned, Or Not

Clearly the environment is far better off as a result of Wisconsin's Gaylord Nelson's efforts to create Earth day. Unfortunately the challenges grow with time.

Oil rig blast prompts environmental concerns

As the Coast Guard searched for 11 crew members missing after a drilling rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, authorities turned their focus to controlling an oil spill that could threaten the fragile ecosystem of the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.

The Deepwater Horizon had burned violently for nearly two days until it sank Thursday morning.

And here in Wisconsin  from the Associated Press:

Wis. renewable energy bill dies on Earth Day

As outdoor lovers celebrated Earth Day's 40th anniversary, state lawmakers pulled the plug on a bill that would have set aggressive new renewable energy standards.

The state Senate finished its two-year session Thursday without voting on the bill after Democratic leaders balked at reports that the measure would drive up utility rates. Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, has signaled for days the measure had little support.

Earth Day Looking Into the Future : Earth Day at 40

Forty years ago Tom Smith was a University of Wisconsin student. He was also the student organizer for the first Earth Day event which kicked off on April 17, 1970 and ran for an entire week.

Today Professor Thomas W. Smith is organizing the anniversary Earth Day at Forty. It is a good thing that some things do not change.

Then, as now, Tom was kind enough to invite me to speak Tuesday at Monona Terrace. It was a heady experience sharing the dais, on the eve of Earth Day, Tuesday night April 21, 1970, with Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), Senator Mike Gravel (D- Alaska), Boyd Gibbons, Secretary to U.S. Council on Environmental Quality and of course the rock band, Oz.

I made my own small effort by introducing a resolution in the city council that proposed banning the internal combustion engine. That went nowhere.

I suggested using methane as an alternative fuel. That is finally making some progress.

Our fledgling movement to create a pedestrian, bicycle, and transit mall of State street took a small step forward as the blocks between Park Street and Lake Street were shut down for fair exhibitors.

Unfortunately the issues, as learned over the past four decades, are even more challenging. The oceans rise from global warming and those oceans are filled with thousands of square miles of floating debris, mostly plastics which are gradually degrading from the effects of sun and water into the seas that feed much of the world's population.

At the time, Senator Nelson was asked who could we afford to clean up the environment. He responded by asking "How could we not afford to clean the environment?'

Today our society is divided. One side looks at the externalities. They examine the  price of contamination that entire nations pay for an unregulated environment.

The air and the water are not free. Not when the cost of obtaining clean air and water is mounting daily for most people.

For centuries, in every nation it was recognized that while a stream might run through private property the landowner had no right to poison the water that an entire community needed for survival.

It is time for modern society to conserve that principle. That is what I will say this coming Tuesday. Some things do not change.

 

Kindergarten: Early Childhood Development or Baby Sitting?

The first kindergarten was founded in the United States in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1856 by Margarethe Meyer Schurz.

The first comprehensive municipal program of certification and training for child care schools was started in Madison in 1974.

Over the years, depending upon the nature of the program or the organizational structure, we might refer to the instruction of children five years and younger as early childhood development, day care, or kindergarten.

No matter what the title, we can be proud of the decision of the Madison Metropolitan School District Board's decision to institute kindergarten for four years old as a success. Madison schools to begin 4K in 2011-2012

The Madison school board on Monday deadlocked 3-3 on approving a four-year-old kindergarten program for 2010-11, but voted 5-1 to implement it for the following school year...

...Seventy percent of Wisconsin school districts already have four-year-old kindergarten, touted by supporters as a way to give all students, regardless of income, a preschool experience that better prepares them for success in elementary school and beyond.

While much progress was made in the past century and a half in understanding the importance of early childhood development and success later in life, there are still the skeptics. The documentation of the success is irrefutable.

When we invest wisely in children and families, the next generation will pay that back through a lifetime of productivity and responsible citizenship.

Opponents to the program have three arguments, two of which are pure nonsense. We hear that the early educational training does not work and that kindergarten is no more than baby sitting.

Come on, say what you really mean - "I do not want to pay for the program no matter how effective."