Pearl 1
Essence Pearl
Dr. Youssef
English 101 H-33
26 October 2018
Greatest Challenges Facing the United States Today
This country was built on the backs of black people and
women.https://magazine.jhsph.edu/2017/spring/features/5-challenges-foramerica/index.html
Once upon a time, the phrase “environmental hazards” referred mostly to
threats like toxic chemicals and radiation exposure. Well Those problems still
exist. But today’s researchers must consider broader environmental issues
across five large categories: climate change, land use, energy, water and food.
Each of these has profound consequences for sustainability—and for
individual and community health. And all are inextricably intertwined, for
good and for ill.
Consider climate change and energy, for example.
Brian Schwartz, MD, MS, a professor in Environmental Health and
Engineering, points out that the energy problem posed by the finite nature of
conventional fossil fuels led to the exploitation of unconventional ones—such
as oil extracted from tar sands and natural gas released through hydraulic
fracturing.
The process for recovering, producing and distributing unconventional
natural gas or tar sands oil is dirtier and more carbon-intensive than for their
conventional counterparts, worsening climate change. That, in turn, could
exacerbate the water shortages that some American cities are already facing,
as rising temperatures contribute to more frequent droughts. And since water
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is used in both energy and food production, the negative consequences just
keep piling up.
The U.S. food system relies on the inefficient use of vast amounts of water
and fossil fuels to produce beef, pork and chicken, creating negative impacts
on the environment and human health.
And cities that were designed for cars rather than for pedestrians and
bicyclists not only burn more carbon, thereby contributing to climate change,
but they also produce more air pollution and discourage physical exercise,
exacerbating health problems.
“These are real things affecting our lives now, not just in 10 or 20 or 50
years,” says Keshia Pollack, PhD, an associate professor in Health Policy and
Management.
Fortunately, addressing any one category of environmental challenges yields
rewards in other areas, as well. “A single set of solutions can address all of
them,” Schwartz says.
Pollack, for instance, notes that transit and land use policies that encourage
people to drive less—and to walk and bike more—not only benefit the
environment, but also improve physical and mental health.
By the same token, “green streets” and high-performance infrastructure that
manage and filter storm runoff can make communities more resilient and
sustainable. As climate change leads to more heavy precipitation events on
one hand and more water shortages on the other, responses like these can
help protect groundwater supplies from contamination while simultaneously
replenishing them.
Obesity rates have skyrocketed over the past several decades, as have
associated costs—from the physical and psychological toll on individuals to
the billions of dollars in related health care expenses and lost productivity. (In
addition to being at higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, obese people
also miss more days at work.)
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Many people continue to view obesity as a cosmetic problem or a simple
failure of self-control, says Bruce Y. Lee, MD, MBA, executive director of
the Global Obesity Prevention Center. Yet the evidence points in a different
direction.
“Obesity is a systems problem,” says Lee, an associate professor
in International Health. “It arises from many different systems gone awry,
and it affects many different systems.”
It is also driven by a bewildering array of interrelated factors. A partial list
includes everything from our basic metabolism to how we exercise, what we
eat and the advertising we are exposed to—not to mention the cultural biases,
government policies and economic incentives that influence what winds up
on our plates.
And if all that weren’t complicated enough, says Joel Gittelsohn, PhD, a
professor in International Health, obesity is more common among some
groups than others. Low-income ethnic minorities such as Latinos, American
Indians and African-Americans experience obesity at higher rates than the
population at large and consequently must deal with higher rates of related
chronic disease, as well.
Yet because the obesity epidemic contains such a long and convoluted list of
ingredients, past efforts to address the problem through narrowly targeted
policies and interventions have had little success.
There is hope, however.
The public health community is turning increasingly toward multilevel
interventions that address several factors at once. Examples include programs
that not only coax food wholesalers to supply more fruits and vegetables to
urban convenience stores but also encourage retailers to promote those
healthier options while simultaneously using community outreach and social
media to persuade people to cook and eat them.
Researchers have also begun to use sophisticated computer models to
simulate the many interacting parts of the obesity epidemic in much the same
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way that meteorologists simulate the complex systems that drive climate and
weather. That, in turn, allows them to virtually test interventions and policies
like urban farm tax credits in order to predict how they might ripple through
the food system—and whether they could help fix it.
Homicide. Sexual assault. Bullying.
Violence comes in many forms. And research shows that it can’t be
prevented by law enforcement alone. That makes finding novel solutions all
the more urgent—even if the most effective responses aren’t necessarily the
first that come to mind.
“Sometimes, they’re not so obvious.” says Daniel Webster, ScD ’91, MPH,
a Health Policy and Management professor who directs the Center for Gun
Policy and Research and co-directs the Center for the Prevention of Youth
Violence.
Webster therefore judges potential interventions with a simple question:
What does the data say?
For example, the Baltimore Police Department has tried for many years to
reduce violent crime by enforcing drug laws. But Webster’s research has
shown that this approach either had no impact, or was at times even
counterproductive, since disrupting the market for illegal drugs can have the
unintended consequence of breeding more competition among dealers,
thereby leading to even more violence. The police department is now
working with Webster on alternative approaches to deter illegal gun
possession and remove the most violent offenders from communities.
Webster has also studied the impact of Safe Streets, a Baltimore City Health
Department initiative that relies on community outreach workers to prevent
shootings among high-risk youth. Based on an intervention that has been
replicated in dozens of cities worldwide, Safe Streets utilizes outreach
workers to identify and build trusting relationships with youth ages 15 to 24.
In addition to serving as positive role models and connecting youth to job
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sand educational opportunities, outreach workers can rapidly intervene in
disputes that have the potential to lead to gun violence. Webster’s research
indicates that participants become more open to nonviolent forms of conflict
resolution—and that, on average, Safe Streets neighborhoods experience a 27
percent reduction in nonfatal shootings.
In addition, Webster points to research demonstrating that a program aimed
at providing summer jobs to high-risk teens in Chicago reduced violent crime
arrests among participating youths by 43 percent over 16 months—despite
the fact that the jobs themselves lasted only 8 weeks. The teens, who attended
public high schools, were employed by nonprofits and government agencies
and were provided with mentors. But while the investment required to run the
program was relatively modest, the effect was not.
“These are the kinds of things we need to do in order to create change,”
Webster says.