What happens when a family runs out of food stamps, By Emily Badger, December 9, 2015, Washington Post: “Toward the end of every month, hospitals in California see a curious uptick in admissions for hypoglycemia, the kind of low blood sugar that can affect diabetics. The pattern, detected in a recent study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, is almost entirely driven by low-income patients. The non-poor don’t show much change in admissions at all. The researchers suspect this trend may point to an underlying challenge for the poor: Food stamps, given out in a lump sum at the start of each month,run out for many families before they reach the end of it. Grocery stores in poor neighborhoods often report a rise in business when food stamps are electronically debited, and hospitals may see the result when they run out…”
Tag: Disease
Medicaid and Preventive Care – Kentucky
Preventive care rises among Kentucky Medicaid patients, By Laura Ungar, August 5, 2015, Louisville Courier-Journal: “Kentuckians on Medicaid were far more likely to get cancer screenings, physicals and dental check-ups after the state expanded the government program for the poor and disabled through the Affordable Care Act, new state data shows…”
Child Poverty and Health
- How to cut the cost of child poverty, to the health of kids and the community, By Brie Zeltner, June 16, 2015, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Cleveland is awash in poor, sick kids. Poverty and poor health go hand in hand, and they’re costly — to the children and the rest of the community. Cleveland’s child poverty rate is 54 percent, second in the U.S. only to Detroit’s. Poor kids face assaults to their health that begin in the womb, and can last a lifetime. Many never make it past their first year; in some East Side neighborhoods the infant mortality rate exceeds Third World levels. They are more likely to be born premature; to die young; to be poisoned by lead, to suffer from asthma, diabetes and obesity…”
- Cost-effective way to prevent chronic asthma in kids has Cleveland roots, By Brie Zeltner, June 17, 2015, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “For decades, some of Cleveland’s most vulnerable children — those with severe, chronic asthma — have been caught in an expensive cycle of fear and frustration. They live in substandard housing surrounded by mold, cockroaches, dust, lead and secondhand smoke. They have expensive inhalers, drugs and breathing machines, but still they suffer potentially lethal asthma attacks…”
- Home visits clean up triggers for kids with chronic asthma, By Brie Zeltner, June 17, 2015, Cleveland Plain Dealer: “It’s a cold day in mid-December, and Akbar Tyler stands in the kitchen of a two-story colonial in the West Side Brooklyn Centre neighborhood. He points to a line of white powder along the counter and floorboards. Roach poison. The oven is on, its door hanging open, in an attempt to heat the drafty room. ‘This is a problem,’ he says. Tyler is the healthy housing manager at Environmental Health Watch, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group based in Cleveland. For the past 15 years, he and a team from Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals, as well as local housing officials have used federal funding to help clean up breathing hazards in Cleveland homes…”