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Bipartisan Senate Majority Calls for Nearly 50% Increase in YouthBuild Funding
A
bipartisan majority of the Senate has called for a nearly 50 percent increase
in the appropriation for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s YouthBuild program in two separate letters to the Senate
appropriations subcommittee for HUD, Veterans Affairs and Independent Agencies.
http://www.youthbuild.org/061104appropriation.html
SIECUS
Releases New Groundbreaking Publication: 'SIECUS State Profiles: A Portrait of
Sexuality Education and Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs in the States'
The
Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) released
"SIECUS State Profiles: A Portrait of Sexuality Education and Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage
Programs in the States." The report
is the result of over two years of research into federally funded
abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. This new resource details the amount, type,
and use of federal abstinence-only-until-marriage funds in all 50 states and
the District of Columbia. The publication also
chronicles controversies related to sexuality education in each state, lists
relevant state statutes, and provides contact information for state-based
organizations involved in sexuality education and sexual health issues.
http://www.siecus.org/policy/states/
New
York City Study Shows Newborns More Susceptible to Pollution than their Mothers
A study from the National Institutes of Health of the effects of
combustion-related air pollutants in New York City reveals that babies in the womb are more susceptible
than their mothers to DNA damage from such pollution. Despite the protection
provided by the placenta, which reduces the fetal dose to an estimated
one-tenth the dose of the mother, the levels of DNA damage in the newborns were
similar to those found in their mothers.
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/news/nycnewb.htm
**Community Development
How Kid-Friendly Is Your
City? Population Connection Releases its Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card
The Population Connection
releases the ninth edition of its report on children and cities. Its mission is
to present the best available data on the social, economic, educational and
physical environment in our cities--exactly where our children live, grow, learn
and play. Population Connection is America's largest grassroots population organization working
to educate people about the impacts of rapid population growth on all aspects
of peoples' lives and their environment.
http://www.kidfriendlycities.org/2004/
An Equitable Housing
Strategy for the District of Columbia
A policy brief from the Urban
Institute reviews critical challenges facing DC’s housing policy makers in the
years ahead, and outlines a citywide strategy for tackling these
challenges. Beginning in the late 1990s,
DC has experienced a surge in housing demand, bringing more fiscal, economic,
and social resources to the city as a whole. Unless this growth is properly
managed, it may fail to benefit the city's most vulnerable residents and
neighborhoods.
http://www.urban.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&NavMenuID=3&Template=/TaggedContent/ViewPublication.cfm&PublicationID=8901
Further Action by HUD
Needed to Halt Cuts in Housing Assistance for Low-Income Families
The Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities has released a paper explaining that further action by HUD is
required to bring an end to the voucher assistance cuts that are resulting from
the department’s policy for funding state and local housing agencies in fiscal
year 2004. The paper includes examples
of agencies that are already being forced to cut back their voucher
programs.
http://www.cbpp.org/4-26-04hous.htm
Fact Sheet: http://www.cbpp.org/4-27-04hous-fact.htm
**Disabilities
Landmark
Disability Survey Finds Pervasive Disadvantages
According to the 2004
National Organization on Disability/Harris Survey of Americans with
Disabilities, Americans with disabilities are at a critical disadvantage
compared to other Americans in ten key areas of life. Continuing a trend, the survey found slow and
modest progress in the indicators, which Harris has tracked since 1986.
http://www.nod.org/content.cfm?id=1537
**Economic Security
Employment Rates For Single Mothers Fell Substantially During Recent Period
Of Labor Market Weakness
The Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities reports that between 2000 and 2003, single mothers'
employment rate fell more than the employment rates of other parents or the
overall population.
http://www.cbpp.org/6-22-04ui.htm
Food Stamps Should Not
Go Down For Seniors And People With Disabilities Who
Sign Up For Medicare Drug Cards
A paper from the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities describes recently-revised food stamp policy on
how states should ensure that people who receive food stamps that sign up for
the new Medicare discount cards do not see their food stamps reduced as a
result of receiving the new benefit.
http://www.cbpp.org/6-23-04fa.htm
**Education
Moving Forward: Head Start Children, Families, and Programs in
2003
A policy brief from the
Center for Law and Social Policy offers the latest data available from Program
Information Reports submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services by all federal Head Start grantees. In 2003, Head Start continued to
serve a diverse population of low-income children, mostly in working families.
Head Start provided early education and a range of services to poor children
and their families, including developmental and mental health screenings and
special education and early intervention services. In 2003, more Head Start
children had access to continuous medical and dental care than in previous
years. Early Head Start children showed a particularly dramatic increase in
access to dental care, rising from 47 percent in 2002 to 64 percent in 2003.
PDF: http://www.clasp.org/DMS/Documents/1088017582.58/HS_brf_5.pdf
High
Schools Producing the Most Dropouts Identified
A
new study by researchers at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at
The Johns Hopkins University finds that graduation is hardly a given for
freshmen in 2,000 of America's public high
schools. The results gathered in their
report indicate that the dropout crisis is fueled by the 20 percent of high
schools in which graduation is not the norm. These schools have "weak
promoting power," or 40 percent or fewer seniors than the number of
freshmen they enrolled four years earlier. Nearly half of the country's African
American students and two out of five Latino students attend one of these
"dropout factories," compared with just 11 percent of America's white students.
Press
Release: http://www.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/spew4th.pl?ascribeid=20040624.093412&time=09%2042%20PDT&year=2004&public=1
Full
Report – PDF: http://www.csos.jhu.edu/tdhs/rsch/Locating_Dropouts.pdf
**Health
Young
Adults' Stress Reaction Predicts Middle-Age Blood Pressure Risk
According to a report in
Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association young adults who react
to psychological stress with spikes in blood pressure are
more likely to have high blood pressure when they are in their 40s. Assessing blood pressure changes in response
to stress may be a useful additional tool for determining a person’s future
risk of high blood pressure.
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3022863
Medical Debt a Symptom of
Unstable Coverage
A Senior Program Officer from
the Commonwealth Fund told a congressional hearing that recent reports of
hospitals billing uninsured patients at higher rates than insured patients and
using aggressive collection practices are symptoms of two underlying trends in
the U.S. health care system—growing instability in insurance
coverage and rapid growth in the cost of care.
http://www.cmwf.org/programs/insurance/collins_impact_test_760.asp
States
Breaking New Ground in Efforts to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Health
Disparities
A
Commonwealth Fund report outlines a range of initiatives that states and
localities are using to end racial and ethnic health disparities, and offers
practical strategies for state policymakers and health leaders seeking to
improve health care coverage, access, and outcomes for minorities. The report provides a comprehensive review of
such promising practices as states using their purchasing power to promote
change, targeting insurance coverage expansion to low-income families, and initiatives
targeting health conditions -- like asthma and diabetes -- that
disproportionately affect minorities.
http://www.cmwf.org/media/releases/mcdonough746_release06242004.asp
Long
History of Missed Opportunities Plague Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit
An historical analysis by
researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of California, San
Francisco
chronicles the 38-year struggle to provide a prescription drug benefit to
seniors as part of Medicare. The report
examines the series of missed opportunities, financial constraints and
political divides that delayed the benefit for years, as well as the unusual
circumstances that ultimately resulted in the current Medicare prescription
drug legislation.
http://www.jhsph.edu/Press_Room/Press_Releases/PR_2004/Oliver_Medicare.html
**Substance Abuse
Too Few
Doctors Ask Teens About Smoking
According to a University of
Wisconsin-Madison study, doctors are failing to identify smoking status in
about half of the adolescent patients seen.
Physicians addressed tobacco use even less with younger teens, missing
an opportunity to intervene with those experimenting with tobacco use.
http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/9905.html
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