Vision Circle

Health: NAACP and Pfzer

Pfizer, NAACP Unite to Impact Black Health Care and AIDS Prevention

A DVD promoting HIV/AIDS prevention among black women is one of the first national projects developed in an unprecedented collaboration between the NAACP and Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug company.

Pfizer, according to NAACP executives, will also serve as the exclusive sponsor of the Health Fair at the NAACP's national convention in July, providing free health screenings and health information to the more than 12,000 blacks expected to be in attendance.

The three-year, $1 million partnership between Pfizer and the nation’s oldest civil rights organization formalizes a long-standing relationship and will now accelerate distribution of health-care research and development of national advocacy programs for black Americans, officials said.

“This partnership is important because racial and ethnic health disparities disproportionately impact African-Americans,” Lucy Perez, national health director for the NAACP’s Health Advocacy Division, told BlackAmericaWeb.com last week.

Technically A Virgin?

Presented without comment.

Study: Risks Remain for Teens Who Pledge Abstinence

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 18, 2005; 8:05 PM

Teenagers who take virginity pledges -- public declarations to abstain from sex -- are almost as likely to be infected with a sexually transmitted disease as those who never made the pledge, an eight-year study released yesterday found.

Although young people who sign a virginity pledge delay the initiation of sexual activity, marry at younger ages and have fewer sexual partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and more likely to experiment with oral and anal sex, said the researchers from Yale and Columbia universities.

"The sad story is that kids who are trying to preserve their technical virginity are, in some cases, engaging in much riskier behavior," said lead author Peter S. Bearman, a professor at Columbia's Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy. "From a public health point of view, an abstinence movement that encourages no vaginal sex may inadvertently encourage other forms at sex that are at higher risk of STDs."

The findings are based on the federally funded National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a survey begun in 1995 that tracked 20,000 young people from high school to young adulthood. At the start of the project, the students were 12 to 18 years old and agreed to detailed, sexually explicit interviews. They were re-interviewed in 1997 and again in 2002, when 11,500 also provided urine samples.

...

Conservative academics said the paper overlooked earlier important findings about adolescents who take virginity pledges, most notably that they have fewer pregnancies and out-of-wedlock births.

"It's hugely successful on those variables," Rector said. "Bearman has focused in on the one variable he thinks can show they [pledgers] don't do better."

21K in California

Right now in California, there is a health care crisis. It is a crisis of supply. It is also an extraordinary opportunity, and I am perplexed about it.

The simple fact is that California has a nursing shortage. We are 21,000 nurses short, which places us 49th out of 50 states. Over at Monster.com I found 405 openings for RNs in Los Angeles alone. On the radio yesterday they were talking about how the Phillipines is one of the greatest outsourcers of medical personnel in the world. So what I want to understand is how it happens that Americans are not interested or are unwilling to do nursing.

How does it happen that, especially as regards black Americans, the abundant opportunities in health care are not being exploited? Let me say it plainly, if you believe that black America has an unemployment problem, the answer is written in capital letters (and in blood). Get your black butt into medical school!

AIDS In The Last Decade

No comment necessary.

HIV Infection Rate Among Blacks Doubles Updated: Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 - 7:08 PM

By JEFF DONN
Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) - The HIV infection rate has doubled among blacks in the United States over a decade while holding steady among whites _ stark evidence of a widening racial gap in the epidemic, government scientists said Friday.

Other troubling statistics indicate that almost half of all infected people in the United States who should be receiving HIV drugs are not getting them.

Clear Skies

From David Whitman:

As might be expected, green advocates criticized the Bush bill and its regulatory heir, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, for failing to go far enough or fast enough in reducing pollution. But in a novel twist, environmentalists have also asserted that Clear Skies is actually weaker than the existing Clean Air Act—and would thus allow millions of tons of added pollution and inflict tens of thousands of needless deaths during the next decade. John Kerry summed up the conventional wisdom on the left during his second debate with President Bush by observing that Clear Skies is “one of those Orwellian na- mes. . . . If they just left the Clean Air Act all alone the way it is today—no change—the air would be cleaner than it is if you passed the Clear Skies Act.” In fact, this oft-repeated green bromide turns out to be false. But the dispute over the bill's impact is only part of the story of how the perfect has become the enemy of the good in the clean air wars. The battle over Clear Skies has shaped up as a classic Washington tale of a creditable endeavor hopelessly mismanaged by its sponsor, demagogued by its opponents, and tainted from the start by the administration's well-earned reputation as handmaidens of industry. The resulting gridlock could delay attempts to clean up the environment and cost thousands of Americans their lives.

Blacks, AIDS, Beliefs

Ummmm....
I'm lazy.

Can someone point out the details of the study concerning Blacks belief about AIDS?

I was just told that the study was not a country-wide, but a study of opinions done in one city.

The Power of Prayer

I haven't talked about spirituality much here. I think Craig has that subject on lock. Easily. But besides that while I consider myself a Believer, I am definitely NOT a modern Christian. I believe that faith is a crock and easily used by people who have the breath of the Spirit...but absolutely NOTHING more. Whenever I read the New Testament, what I see is Jesus consistently rolling his eyes at the idiocy of his discipiles.

And don't get me started on Paul.

But yet and still I recognize the strength and power of people to use the Spirit in wondrous ways. To say that the power of prayer has been understudied is an understatement. My father, also a critic, sent this to me.

Postnatal health disparities

Even when controlled for education and wealth, black babies are more likely to die than white babies. Oakland County is one of the wealthiest counties in Michigan, with a wealthy black population. Black babies there die more often than they do in Detroit.

Story here.