As one mom put it: “If it were short-term, sure, we can endure that level of suffering, but for a year or two? I feel like I have to take a bit of a risk.”
Influential epidemiologist Michael Osterholm and New York Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli offer an unvarnished view of what testing can do right now.
Childhood obesity is a particularly difficult public health problem because if left unchecked, it will lead to many significant medical issues later in life.
“Toxic City: Sick Schools,” a three-part Inquirer investigative series, won the $5,000 Gannett Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism, which will be presented to The Inquirer at IRE’s June conference in Houston.
Gov. Tom Wolf traveled to Taggart Elementary School in South Philadelphia to tout his proposed four-year, $4.5 billion Restore Pennsylvania initiative to fix crumbling schools, eliminate blight, repair storm damage, and expand high-speed internet across the state.
“I have to meet this guy and have sex with him. If I don’t, then he and his friends are going to rape my little sister,” a student at Frank Ballou High School in Ward 8’s Congress Heights told her teacher.
These are some questions and answers about what city, state, and school officials have accomplished in the wake of the Inquirer’s “Toxic City” investigation, and some shortfalls that remain.
To help combat the obesity epidemic, school districts are joining with local agencies – often for the first time – to work out a way to open their gates to the public after hours.
On a clear night in the southern Valley towns of Tulare, Huron and Tranquillity, you sometimes can see a full moon over the thousands of miles of agriculture. On a warm, summer evening, these harvest moons are brilliant to see. However, disturbing to this brilliant scenery is the stench of spray drift from pesticides that linger at night and the choking thickness of particulate matter, the smog considered one of the worst in the nation, that engulfs the Valley on warm days.
Oakland's superintendent doesn't just want to close schools. He wants to radically alter how the school district and the city educate kids.
