Adventures of the Walking School Bus

Once upon a time 12-months ago, in a town called Seattle, WA, there was a group of children who started walking to school together. But this was no ordinary walk to school. These schoolchildren joined forces every morning to create a Walking School Bus, a program in which students and adult chaperones walk a route to school, picking up other children along the way. It’s like a boring, old school bus route, but without the bus!

Okay, so maybe the recent report doesn’t read like an adventure story, but it still has  a pretty exciting conclusion: after 12 months of this pilot program, 25% more urban, low-income elementary school students were walking to school, fighting for the forces of wellness and physical activity!

What’s interesting is that the number of students walking to school increased, but the number who used other means of getting to school didn’t change. Meanwhile, at other Seattle schools that didn’t have the Walking School Bus program, the number of students who walked to school decreased, with no change in the number of students who used other means of getting to school.

The report concludes that “a WSB program is a promising intervention among urban, low-income elementary school students that may promote favorable changes toward active transport to school.”

Read the full report, learn more about Walking School Bus programs.

Gallup shows us how Chicago and America feel today

Well-being across Chicago's congressional districts

We’ve been sending these three links around the office today, and we thought that you all might want to check out these awesome graphs and maps too.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index will collect and measure the “daily pulse of the nation’s well-being” over the next 25 years. You can look through the data they’ve collected so far and see how our nation’s health has changed over time and how it changes across our nation.

For instance, we weren’t feeling too well earlier this year. Up until May, our Well-Being Index was lower than it was at the beginning of last year. But, with the summer, our collective well-being rose above where it was last year by almost 1%.

Or, for us Chicagoans, here’s a map of our cities congressional districts, part of a national map made by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). With this data, we can see how our city feels what we need to do to make Chicago healthier.

NEHI: Cut costs with prevention campaigns

Earlier this month, research from the New England Healthcare Institute (NEHI) and the Boston Foundation showed the “vital importance” of wellness campaigns. By promoting health, fitness, and wellness, these campaigns would save Massachusetts from its increasing healthcare costs, which stem from preventable chronic diseases. These campaigns are especially important in times of economic recession, when people worry more about eating cheap than eating healthy.

A recent American Heart Association survey showed that more than half of the respondents said the economy is affecting their ability to take care of their health needs, while one quarter had cancelled their gym memberships and 40 percent were eating less healthy meals.

“These recession-related repercussions could not come at a worse time in the state’s battle against rising healthcare costs and preventable chronic disease,” said Valerie Fleishman, executive director of the NEHI. “Through unhealthy behaviors, people are becoming unnecessarily ill at a time when we can least afford it.”

Read the entire article from Healthcare Finance News.

Cost of obesity in California nearly doubled in 6 years

Yesterday, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA) released a study on the economic cost of overweight, obesity, and physical inactivity among adults in their state. This study found that, due to health care costs and lost productivity, these costs “had climbed to $41 billion in 2006, nearly double the amount reported in 2000.” According to their projections, that cost will rise to $52.7 billion in 2011, which is equal to nearly half of the state’s current budget.

To curb the rising cost of obesity, CCPHA suggests policies on national, state, and city and county levels:

At the national level, public health and prevention must be core elements of national health care reform.  At the state level, agencies that influence environments where Californians live, work, learn and play must promote health through their policy and funding decisions.  At the city and county level, local policies must be established to ensure that California communities are places where residents can easily make healthy eating and activity choices.

I wonder what the cost would be for us in Illinois, where our obesity and overweight rates are almost 2% higher than California’s.

Grocery stores and CSAs on the South Side

Chi-Town Daily News reported yesterday on the absence of grocery stores in Chicago’s South Side food deserts, talking about LaDonna Redmond on her new fresh produce store, Graffiti and Grub, and Community Supported Agriculture, or CSAs, in the South Side.

An initial report in 2006 showed more than a half a million Chicagoans live in food deserts, or areas where residents have no grocery store. African-Americans are primarily victims of food deserts, as the South Side has the largest food deserts. 

The original report stated that, “In a typical African-American block, the nearest grocery store is roughly twice as distant as the nearest fast food restaurant.”

The 2009 progress report states that the food desert on Chicago’s South Side has shrunk by roughly 24,000 people or approximately 1.4 square miles.

In comparison to the 2006 study, report author Mari Gallagher analyzed the health improvements that come with addition of a full-service grocer, and says it provides lots of benefits to the community.

“We predicate the additional life that would be brought back from debilitating diseases like diabetes if a grocery store moves in,” says Gallagher.

For example, the study cites that if a grocery store were added to 11500 S. Michigan, 15.46 lives would be saved from diabetes, 58.39 from cancer, 111.81 from cardiovascular disease and 12.90 from liver disease.

Read the full article here.

What am I drinking?!

Sometimes the easiest way to change your diet is through substitution, choosing the healthier of two similar foods or drinks. But–unless the nutritional values are listed on the menu–it can be hard to know what’s healthier without access to a state-of-the-art food testing laboratory. If safety goggles and a labcoat aren’t really your style, check out this  list of the worst drink options in America. It gives you some of the most important information about these drinks, and suggests some healthier alternatives.

And what did they say is the worst of the worst?

Baskin-Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake

• 2,600 calories
• 135 g fat (59 g saturated fat, 2.5 g trans fat)
• 263 g sugars
• 1,700 mg sodium

Is this the worst drink on the planet? All signs point to yes. First off, it has an ingredient list that reads like an organic chemistry final. Those 70-plus ingredients conspire to pack this shake with more sugar than 29 Fudgsicles, as much fat as a stick and a half of butter, and more calories than 48 actual Oreos. Oh, it also has 3 days’ worth of saturated fat and, most bizarre of all, as much salt as you’ll find in 9 bags of Lay’s Classic potato chips. Need more proof? Let’s hope not.

Employers fighting obesity can save money and lives

Costing $117 billion in 2000, obesity is a problem for America’s health and America’s economy.

In the rising medical costs between 1987 and 2001, diseases associated with obesity made up 27 percent of the increase. Obese employees cost their employers between 29 percent and 117 percent more in medical expenses than employees with a healthy weight.

To help employers calculate and lower these costs, CDC has launched LEAN Works!, a free resource to help employers plan, build, promote, and assess worksite programs to prevent and control obesity effectively.

D.I.Y. Dieting

The New York Times had a report over the weekend on the sliding scale of diet costs. Here’s their advice on how to lose weight without losing cash:

$0.00 D.I.Y. If you’re highly motivated but low on cash, this approach is for you. You will need to reduce the calories you consume, increase the amount you exercise and learn new eating habits.

Your primary care physician can give you basic guidelines for a healthy, low-calorie diet. You can also look at the dietary advice on the Weight-Control Information Network, a site developed by the National Institutes of Health (win.niddk.nih.gov), Mr. Brownell suggests.

Your new diet should include as much fresh food as possible, especially items high in fiber and low in fat. If you already eat well, you can just reduce your portion sizes. Weigh yourself regularly to keep track of your progress and try to get 30 to 40 minutes of exercise a day.

Hard? Yes. Possible? Of course. About half of the members of the National Weight Control Registry lost weight on their own, says Mr. Hill, who is also the director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado, Denver.

What do you think of their diet advice? Do you have D.I.Y. diet advice of your own?

Read the entire NY Times article here.

BHC Spotlight: Health and Medicine Policy Research Group

BHC is proud to call the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group (HMPRG) an essential component within our important initiative. HMPRG has operated for twenty-seven years as an independent, freestanding, non-profit center for health policy formulation, advocacy, and health systems development to enhance the health of the public, with a mission centering on the health of the poor and underserved.

HMPRG has long been familiar with the developments that have shaped the availability of health care to the poor in the region, and has maintained its influence by developing groundbreaking standards for public programs and providing the leadership for necessary change.

HMPRG’s core values include:

• Universal healthcare
• Quality and effective delivery systems
• Adequately funded and compensated primary health care providers
• Special role for county, other public sector, and other safety net providers
• Recognition that health is ultimately dependent on economic justice more so than medical care
• Elimination of health disparities

Get to know your country this 4th of July

As you celebrate the 4th of July this weekend, you may ask yourself, ”How are we doing, as a country? How healthy are we?” While this may not seem as simple as catching up with friends and family over Independence Day weekend, statehealthfacts.org actually makes it pretty easy.

Statehealthfacts.org,  a project of the Kaiser Family Foundation, has compiled a lot of useful health information into an easy-to-navigate website. In three clicks, I found the child obesity rate from state to state, and can see how Illinois compares against the rest of the country. (With more than one in five Illinois children obese, our state ranks second in the country, along with Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Georgia.)

So take a few moments from celebrating America’s birthday to catch up with your nation and see how it’s doing.