Population Health News Roundup: April 2023

IAPHS Members in the News

Marc Adams from proceedings of the 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility:  “Inaccessible urban infrastructure creates and reinforces systemic exclusion of people with disabilities and impacts public health, physical activity, and quality of life for all.” (October 22, 2022)

Anjum Hajat in BMC Infectious Diseases: “Individuals with UHCs are at significantly increased risk of COVID-19-associated hospitalization regardless of age. Our findings support the prevention of severe COVID-19 in adults with UHCs in all age groups and in older adults aged 65 + years as ongoing local public health priorities.” (March 30, 2023)

Diana Grigsby-Toussaint received a 2023 Seed Award for her project with co-PI Kevin Mwenda entitled “Workshop on Nature and Health: A Cells to Society Approach.”

Mark Hayward in Brain, Behavior, & Immunity:  “…we found strong associations of greater inflammation and worse immune functioning with having CIND [cognitive impairment without dementia] or dementia when compared to being cognitively normal.” (December 22, 2022)

Roland J. Thorpe in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society: “Numerous, multilevel barriers to dementia diagnosis persist among minoritized older adults living with dementia.” (March 13, 2023)

Shannon Monnat was awarded the Faculty Excellence and Scholarly Distinction award from Syracuse University on April 21, 2022.

Health Equity and Disparities

Disaggregating data to help Native Hawaiians: To address structural racism, data from Native Hawaiians should be disaggregated from other Pacific Islander groups. These groups experience different health disparities. (From Stanford CARE via YouTube, March 31, 2023)

How poverty and racism accelerate illness and aging: Marginalize groups experience “weathering” and “constant stress from living with poverty and discrimination, which damages their bodies at the cellular level and leads to increasingly serious health problems over time.” (NPR, March 28, 2023)

More Black doctors, longer life expectancy:  Counties with a higher representation of Black primary care providers had better population health measures for Black individuals. (JAMA Network Open, April 14, 2023)

Benefits for Black vets with PTSD were more likely to be denied: An internal Veterans Affairs report showed that “Black veterans were more often denied benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder than their White counterparts.” (The Black Wall Street Times, March 17, 2023)

Environmental Health & Justice

Sending American trash to Mexico is “waste colonialism:” Phoenix plans to send PET thermoforms (egg cartons, salad boxes, and similar containers) to be recycled in Mexico. Critics say the plan is greenwashing and colonialism. (Grist, March 31, 2023)

Home pests cause energy injustice and health problems: Cracked walls increase energy costs and allow wildlife to enter and contaminate homes, worsening asthma and stress. The problems are more common in lower-income neighborhoods. (Environmental Health News, February 17, 2023)

Exposure to pollution in the prenatal period is linked to lung function later in life: Air pollution exposure in mothers is associated with their children’s reduced lung function in early childhood. (Environmental Epidemiology, April 2023)

Built Environments, Spaces, and Places

In rural Minnesota, substance abuse treatment is hard to find:  A surge in Fentanyl availability and a lack of drug and alcohol counselors are affecting treatment in places like rural Kanabec County, Minnesota. Some Minnesota counties have no licensed counselors at all. (Kaiser Health News, April 3, 2023)

Seattle juggles urgent housing need with need for tree canopy: Seattle’s Land Use Committee is aiming to protect its urban forest while balancing housing and “a high quality of life for all Seattle residents.” (Capitol Hill Seattle blog, March 30, 2023)

Trauma-informed building design could facilitate healing: Designing for light, delight, and with an eye to natural surfaces and windows can help everyone—but particularly people who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and people who have been marginalized or incarcerated. (Bloomberg CityLab, April 10, 2023)

Heart failure risk higher in rural areas, especially for Black men: Rural residents “had an increased risk of heart failure compared with urban participants.” The risk was highest for Black men. (JAMA Cardiology, January 25, 2023)

Policy & Programs

Fifteen million Americans lose Medicaid coverage on April 1: Medicaid coverage is associated with positive benefits like better health and lower mortality, but millions will lose coverage anyway when the pandemic ban on termination expires. (WFYI, April 3, 2023)

Will insurance still pay for preventive services?:  A recent district court ruling agreed that pre-exposure prophylactic treatment for HIV violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. For other preventing screening and care, the future remains uncertain, and coverage may depend on your employer and your state. (Kaiser Health News, April 7, 2023)

Encampment sweeps of people experiencing homelessness cause harm and offer no benefit: Involuntary displacement is linked to an increase in hospitalization as well as overdose mortality, and “under no model were the results of displacement beneficial or even neutral to health and safety.” (JAMA Editorial, April 10, 2023)