“If you’re not able to provide food, it makes it difficult to feel like you’re living a dignified life,” researcher Darcy Freedman said. “It’s a basic need and the mental health implications are very real. ‘If I can’t provide food for my kids or partner, who am I?’”
The effect of squalid housing on people’s health is difficult to determine in California's Sonoma County, since there is no study, stockpile of data or government agency that tracks illness in connection with living environments.
This week brought news of a compromise in the battle over new school lunch standards. It comes quick on the heels of new research that questions critics' claims of tossed food and lost revenues.
In reporting her series on mental illness in Shasta County, Alayna Shulman didn't find the data she was hoping for. Instead, she highlighted that lack of data in her story. It was one of several lessons she took away from working on the project.
Thousands of babies are born every year in Bexar County, Texas, to mothers who receive no prenatal care. Those women are more likely to give birth prematurely, increasing the odds that their newborns will develop immediate and long-lasting health problems that can be both costly and fatal.
Take a Saturday morning bike ride along the Kansas side of the state line and you’ll see plenty of people playing tennis, soccer and jogging in Johnson County. Ride a bit farther north to Wyandotte County, though, and it’s clear that outdoor recreation is a much rarer phenomenon.
Johnson County’s high income and education levels are typically associated with health-promoting activities like exercise, preventive care and nutritious diets. But alcohol abuse is another aspect of life in the county, often tucked away from view.
At his lowest point in prison, Simeon U‘u, a broad-shouldered man with tattoos down one arm and a thick silver chain around his neck, doubted he would get his children back. “I felt like I was a bad parent, that I abandoned them.”
In Johnson County, for every 1,000 infants born in recent years, fewer than five don’t make it to their first birthday. In Wyandotte County, the number is closer to eight.
For years, the percentage of Native Hawaiians in the state’s foster care system has significantly exceeded their share of the overall population of the state’s children. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser delves into the underlying causes and potential solutions to the problem.
