Public Health Practice | The Pump Handle

APHA Annual Meeting Chinese factory-fire victim turned activist to be honored by world’s largest public health group

July 26, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 3Comment

Yuying Chen transformed from a 15 year old girl who worked in a factory making toys for export, to a woman empowered by a workplace disaster, to an internationally recognized human rights leader. She will receive the American Public Health Association’s International Health & Safety Activist’s award at the group’s annual meeting to be held October 27-31, 2012 in San Francisco.

Injury Control & Violence Gun violence is a U.S. public health problem

July 23, 2012 Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH 44Comment

Gun violence is uniquely an American problem compared to other industrialized countries. Firearm-related fatality rates in the U.S. are four times the rates in other industrially advanced countries. We continue to relegate this social ill it to our criminal justice system when it needs a public health solution.

Affordable Care Act No feminine mystique here: Women’s health care problems glaringly clear

July 20, 2012 The Pump Handle 3Comment

Legislative attacks on women’s health care are so commonplace these days that they make proposals that don’t include a state-mandated vaginal probe seem moderate. In fact, so many legislators are introducing proposals under the guise of protecting women’s health, that it was pretty refreshing to read how the Affordable Care Act will actually protect women’s health. Like, for real.

Food Safety & Nutrition Hunger games: Congress targets food assistance for the most vulnerable, despite the nation’s growing food insecurity problem

July 13, 2012 The Pump Handle 3Comment

Hunger in America can be hard to see. It doesn’t look like the image of hunger we usually see on our TVs: the wrenching impoverishment and emaciation. Talking about American hunger is hard because, well, there’s food all around us.

Infectious Diseases & Vaccines Sunshine law helps reporter expose major TB outbreak in Florida

July 12, 2012 Liz Borkowski, MPH 1Comment

Stacey Singer of The Palm Beach Post used Florida’s sunshine law to request info on the state’s extensive tuberculosis outbreak, which hadn’t been explained to the public.

Injury Control & Violence Houston, we have a workers’ rights problem: Profile of a worker justice center in Texas’ biggest city

July 9, 2012 The Pump Handle 3Comment

Last month, more than 70 ironworkers walked off an ExxonMobil construction site near Houston, Texas. The workers, known as rodbusters in the industry, weren’t members of a union or backed by powerful organizers; they decided amongst themselves to unite in protest of unsafe working conditions in a state that has the highest construction worker fatality rate in the country.

Public Health Practice Happy birthday, Freedom of Information Act!

July 4, 2012 Liz Borkowski, MPH 2Comment

President Johnson may not have intended to sign the Freedom of Information Act on Independence Day, but July 4th is a fitting birthday for a law that helps citizens know what their government is doing and hold it accountable.

Affordable Care Act Public health reacts to Supreme Court’s ACA ruling: ‘Surprised and then ecstatic’

June 28, 2012 The Pump Handle 2Comment

There were few better places to hear about today’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act and its individual insurance mandate than at a meeting of the American Public Health Association.

Public Health Practice As National HIV Testing Day approaches, communities struggle with cuts to HIV prevention, screening services

June 26, 2012 The Pump Handle 1Comment

Just a few years ago in Butte County, Calif., it wasn’t unusual for public health workers to administer more than 1,000 free HIV tests every year. In true public health fashion, they’d bring screening services to the people, setting up in neighborhoods, parks and bars, at special community events and visiting the local drug treatment facility and jail. The goal was prevention and education, and no one got turned away.

Injury Control & Violence Austin project successfully integrating workers’ rights into larger sustainability goals

June 18, 2012 The Pump Handle 2Comment

When most of us think of sustainability and construction, the usual suspects probably come to mind: efficient cooling and heating, using nontoxic building materials, minimizing environmental degradation — in other words, being green. But in Austin, Texas, a new effort is working to expand the definition of sustainability from the buildings themselves to the hands that put them together.