Insights

<p>Through three separate stories I will delve into some of Wisconsin's most poignant health disparities, including infant mortality rates that are worse than those in some third-world countries, one Madison African-American community's grassroots campaign to combat smoking through photodocumentation and support groups, and the lack of health care faced by many Latino dairy workers, who now help prop up the state's farming industry.

<p>The yearning for a male child in some Asian cultures -- Indian, Korean and Chinese in particular – runs deep. A male child is perceived as someone who will be a breadwinner when he grows up and take care of his parents in their old age, someone who will also continue the family line. In India, a girl child is viewed as a net loss to the family, mostly because when she is given away in marriage, she is expected to bring with her a dowry, a practice that still persists, despite the fact that it was banned in that country many years ago.</p>

<p>Recently, at a meeting of social workers serving African immigrants, I brought up the issue of mental health. “We don’t have a problem with mental illness in the African community,” a caseworker told me, citing the resilience of a population largely familiar with extreme poverty, human rights abuses, and instability.</p>

<p>A little known Oregon law requires hospitals to provide written notification of serious adverse events to all victims (or families of victims). The law is largely ignored; last year 40 such written notifications were recorded, though national studies of medical errors predict there likely were over 1,000 such events at Oregon hospitals.</p>

<p>Clair Jordan, the executive director of the Texas Nurses Association for the past 30 years, has seen nurses in a lot of difficult situations.

<p>An intriguing New York Times blog <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/the-fries-that-bind-us/?sr…; today highlights a geo-coded map created by <a href="http://www.weathersealed.com/">blogger</a&gt; Stephen Worley showing that the farthest away any American in the contiguous 48 states can get from a McDonalds is a mere 107 miles — a mere two-hour drive from a <a href="http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutrition_facts.html#0… Big Mac</a>.</p>

<p>We've all done it at some point or another. Waking up after a fitful night of sleep, we've pumped ourselves full of caffeine and sugar to get through the day. Despite our efforts, we remain on the verge of exhaustion, struggling to concentrate on any topic for more than about 12 seconds. Fortunately, there's lots of help. Stephen Covey's phenomenally successful The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Covey and Roger Merrill's First Things First are just two of the many avalable time management books and seminars.

<p>Nurses have one of the toughest jobs in health care.</p> <p>Anyone who has delivered a baby in a hospital knows how much work they do, only to see all the credit go to the doctor who comes in for the final few minutes. How many photos have you seen of a nurse holding a brand new baby?</p>

<p>The year 2010 will mark an important milestone: the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Through photos, audio and video clips and thoroughly-reported copy my project, "The Children of Katrina: Five Years Later," would provide a status update on the youngest victims of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, as it relates to health, education, housing, economics, crime and family in New Orleans, La.

I'm thrilled to have been selected to receive a Dennis A. Hunt Health Journalism grant, and look forward to meeting my fellow fellows at the upcoming October conference. As a freelancer, this grant will, quite simply, enable me to do in depth reporting that I could not have otherwise. My project will examine the history of industrial contamination in a small California city, and a unique effort by federal and local officials to forge solutions. The work is slated to be published in the Christian Science Monitor, and a chain of bi-lingual, Hispanic-English newspapers.