Washington, D.C. (October 30, 2009) – The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) Director Robert Lawrence, MD, issued the following statement today regarding the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Dr. Regina Benjamin:
“On Thursday, the United States Senate confirmed Dr. Regina Benjamin as Surgeon General of the United States. CLF applauds the Senate’s unanimous vote confirming Dr. Benjamin as our next Surgeon General. Dr. Benjamin, whom I know from our time together on the board of Physicians for Human Rights, is a compassionate physician with deep experience in primary care, rural health, and public health preparedness.”
“Dr. Benjamin is the founder and CEO of the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, where she has served patients from all income groups. She also has served as President of the Medical Association of the State of Alabama.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said of Dr. Benjamin, “She will be an integral part of our H1N1 response effort, and America can expect to see her very soon communicating important information about how to stay healthy and safe this flu season.”
Lawrence said, “CLF looks forward to Dr. Benjamin’s leadership on the H1N1 outbreak, and on issues of childhood and adult obesity. CLF has been pleased to share its expertise on antibiotic resistance and other issues related to public health and food safety and looks forward to supporting the Surgeon General in these and other public health efforts.”
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) focuses on the interactions among diet, food production, environment, and human health as elements of a single complex system.
Learn more about our latest research, education and community efforts at http://www.jhsph.edu/clf.
Join the discussion at http://www.livablefutureblog.com.
Upon leaving the 2009 National Environmental Public Health Conference, one of the important themes that will stay with me is the need to routinely branch out to other disciplines to solve public health problems. For example, city planners, architects and transportation departments need to be at the table with public health professionals more often to address human health problems impacted by the built environment. (This concept is one being embraced by CLF—for one, the center is working with Baltimore planners on the city’s food policy task force to improve healthy food availability.)
As Catherine Ross, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development said, we need to learn to speak each others’ language. On the local level, this collaboration is even more important. When local zoning departments work together with environment and public health offices to maximize natural resources and engage in smarter design of our roads and buildings, it makes it easier for the feds to do so, she said. Read More >
There’s an interesting opinion piece on CNN today-“Eating Animals is Making Us Sick”-by Jonathan Safran Foer, author of “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” It’s a great prelude to his upcoming book–his first nonfiction entry–called “Eating Animals.” The book will be available next week. Foer zooms in on antibiotic resistance and the whopping volume of antibiotics fed to farm animals-17.8 million pounds! He also discusses the link between factory farms and the H1N1 outbreak. “Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn’t be more lucid,” he writes. “The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America’s most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.”
There aren’t exactly celebrities in the field of public health, but a few of the biggest names are in Atlanta this week for the National Environmental Public Health Conference (NEPHC). For one, Thomas Frieden, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control, got a rock star reception when he addressed the 1,100 conference attendees primarily from academia, nonprofit organizations and government entities on Monday.
Frieden, formerly the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health, was recently appointed by the Obama administration to head the CDC, based on his successes in New York. Menu labeling laws, trans fat bans, increased cigarette taxes and smoke-free bars and restaurants all were enacted on his watch (with the support of his former boss Mayor Mike Bloomberg, himself a champion of public health). In Frieden, it’s clear we have not only an advocate for environmental health, but also a skillful leader who understands the policy process and the best strategies for achieving meaningful changes.
Other representatives from federal agencies spoke about their efforts to reduce potentially harmful chemical exposures in food, air and water. The deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan, spoke of her desire for a more regional food system and improved food safety and school nutrition standards. She even mentioned the agency’s commitment to organic produce, showcased at an organic garden at the USDA headquarters in Washington. Hmmm, I wonder if USDA got the same backlash from the pesticide industry that Michelle Obama received after planting her organic garden at the White House? Read More >
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) is an interdisciplinary academic center that promotes research and communicates information about the complex interrelationships among diet, food production, environment and human health. Some of CLF’s work focuses on understanding food environments and the influence they have on eating behaviors; identifying what helps people adopt healthier eating behaviors; and creating food environments so that people have access to nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate, and healthy food on a regular basis.
CLF serves as a scientific advisor to the non-profit initiative, Meatless Monday , serving as a primary source for evidence-based health and nutrition information. Meatless Monday was developed following the release of Healthy People 2010 in 2000 by then U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher. One of the goals for the nation was to reduce the consumption of saturated fat by at least 15 percent by 2010 – a goal that is consistent with the dietary recommendations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the American Heart Association. Read More >
It is disappointing to see members of the media spread misinformation due to their own ignorance, gullibility, or, worse, disinterest in digging for the truth — especially when it has to do with the health of children. Case in point, a reporter from a South Dakota talk radio show apparently believes that Baltimore City Public Schools’ Meatless Monday meals are lacking in protein. Last Friday, Tom Riter asked U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack a rather leading question (notice how many times he said “bother”) during a USDA news conference to preview the Obama administration’s priorities for the Child Nutrition Act Reauthorization:
“Mr. Secretary, I was wondering if it bothered you… that… you were talking about the importance of the nutrition for the school children… and I was wondering if it bothered you that school districts like Baltimore, Maryland institute Meatless Mondays… not letting the children have protein in the diet by doing that. Does that bother you?”
Seriously? He thinks Baltimore City Schools are denying kids their recommended daily allowance of protein? I hate to break it to you Mr. Riter, but meat isn’t the only food that contains protein. Read More >
An op-ed in the October 7th Wall Street Journal by Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent inspired me to do some fact-checking. In the article, “Coke Didn’t Make America Fat, Americans need more exercise, not another tax,” Mr. Kent defended his industry as being an easy target in the debate over obesity and its cause: “Sugar-sweetened beverages have been singled out in spite of the fact that soft drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and sweetened bottled water combined contribute 5.5% of the calories in the average American diet, according to the National Cancer Institute.”
While I’ve yet to confirm or refute Mr. Kent’s claim, his 5.5% figure seems extremely low compared to estimates from recent research. According to a 2004 study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, soft drinks alone contributed an estimated seven percent of total caloric intake in the average U.S. diet. A 2004 study out of UC Berkeley, drawing from the same data, found soft drinks were the top contributor to U.S. caloric intake at 7.1%, followed by “cake, sweet rolls, donuts and pastries” at 3.6%. Read More >
by Amy Peterson, DVM, and Meghan Davis, DVM, MPH
In a Sept. 29th prepared floor statement, Senator Chuck Grassley spoke in response to an August 21st Time magazine article by Bryan Walsh. An important point raised by Mr. Walsh concerned the non-therapeutic use of antimicrobials in food animals and the impact of use of antimicrobials on the emergence of drug-resistant strains of bacteria. The PEW commission report on industrial food animal production (IFAP) cites several studies supporting a connection between the use of antimicrobials and development of drug resistance in both pathogenic (disease-causing) and non-pathogenic bacteria on and around industrial animal farms. A major component of Senator Grassley argument is captured in his quote of a response to the PEW report released by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) on August 17th. The response states that “[a] scientific human/animal nexus, connecting antimicrobial treatments in animals with foodborne or environmentally-contracted human disease, has not been proven.” Read More >
Baltimore City Public Schools' Great Kids Farm
Sometimes change happens in the most unexpected places. When I learned that Baltimore City Public Schools was on a mission to change the way its more than 80,000 students thought about food, I have to admit, I was surprised. The cash strapped school system has long faced difficult challenges and the last place I expected to see noticeable reform was with its food services department. To top that off, you could have bowled me over, when I heard that the City Schools’ new chef/dietitian, Mellissa Mahoney, convinced her boss, Tony Geraci, to let her develop her own Meatless Monday lunch menus. To be honest, I doubt that Mahoney needed to do a lot of convincing. When it comes to dreaming up innovative and cost effective ways to feed kids healthy, tasty, whole foods, Geraci isn’t shy about pushing the envelope. It’s Geraci’s bold and sometimes brash entrepreneur spirit that has captured the attention of food policy experts across the country, including the White House.
Read More >
