Moving beyond disease-specific approach, Health Equity Zones give Rhode Islanders opportunity to improve quality of life

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Test your Health IQ

The CDC asks: Are you as smart as the public health nerds?

 

Do you know the minimum SPF needed to protect yourself from the sun’s harmful rays? Or how many seconds you should wash your hands to kill germs? The national Centers for Disease Control has an app for that.

The CDC set its “game show scientists” loose to lead you through an exciting selection of trivia questions and word scrambles. Choose from three levels of difficulty, Easy, Medium, or Hard…or be surprised by selecting a Random mix.

Download the app. Go back again and again; the CDC has promised to keep adding new questions.

January ’18 Newsletter

Every month Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds & Director Susan Orban likes to connect you with current articles, events, and resources to help you keep your family healthy and informed!

Time to make some hot, nutritious soup with the kiddos

Ten recipes from ChopChop, from minestrone to harira

January is a great time for National Soup month, as will be February, March, and the rest of the year.

ChopChop, a nonprofit with advice for cooking with kids, offers 10 easy soups to make for these cold days. Even tonight.

Enjoy the detailed recipes as well as photographs of kids cooking and the soups themselves on ChopChop’s Pinterest page.

While you’re at it, make sure you buy healthy ingredients at the best price! 

(Some) rain or (some) snow, the young ones need to be out

Rhode Island has a “hike” for that

That’s only one-third of the one hour of moderate to vigorous physical time our 5-2-1-0 initiative strongly recommends – and only for young students. Many Rhode Island advocates, educators, and legislators declared victory in 2016 when the state passed a law requiring elementary schools to give their students 20 minutes of recess each day.

Let’s talk about weekends, then. Happily, lots of folks want to help you out with fun, healthy activity, even during the winter months.

Park Rx, in concert with the Rhode Island Land Trust Council and the Westerly and South Kingstown Land Trusts offer short hikes every Saturday morning. ExploreRI lists virtually every trail in the state with length, difficulty, and trailhead.

ExploreRI is the website to visit if you want to “got it alone” with your hike. 

Visit Park Rx, a partner to South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds, on our Facebook calendar or website calendar for regular updates on its Saturday hikes. Our calendars will also feature other activities around the region as we learn about them.

Check out the Physical Activity page on our website for dozens of ideas – some even indoors!

“Start with Hello” week Feb. 5-9 hopes to reduce isolation among kids

Families who lost loved ones at Sandy Hook hope to end the loneliness and isolation that lead to such acts.

Young people in the U.S. are increasingly feeling isolated, from their families, friends, schools, society, and perhaps themselves. The worst result could be that they harm themselves or others.

The issue will be in sharp focus in Rhode Island and across the country between February 5-9 during “Start with Hello Week”. The nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise is encouraging schools and youth organizations from across the country to design and take part in activities that week that aim to build connectedness and combat social isolation. Visit the Sandy Hook Promise website to sign the promise and look at year-round programs.

Learning First Alliance/Rhode Island is promoting Start with Hello Week in the state. Visit LFA/RI’s website for what it’s doing; go to its Facebook page for a new one-minute video and quick updates.

URI joins Mental Health First Aid movement

South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds works with the University of Rhode Island (URI) to teach “mental health first aid” classes, just like CPR, but for the mind.

When the South County Coalition for Children and the region’s school districts won a grant for Youth Mental Health First Aid a few years ago, they were rightly thinking of kids. The YMHFA training is like CPR or a basic first aids program, but to teach people who work with youth how to identify early signs of mental health distress AND how to respond quickly until the professionals can be called.

Six hundred teachers, camp counselors, juvenile police officers, children’s librarians, parents, and others later, YMHFA is making a dent in South County.

Such a dent that when URI thought it might adopt the program for its students – not youth, but adults – South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds and the Coalition added international Mental Health First Aid trainings to the mix.

Read the excellent front-page Providence Journal story by G. Wayne Miller for the URI initiative. (Graphic courtesy of ProJo)

6 Youth and Adult Mental Health First Aid trainings scheduled, February-May

A training you should include with your CPR, lifesaving, and first aid background

You are just as likely to encounter someone in mental health crisis as one who needs CPR, if not more so, points out South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds (HBHM) Director Susan Orban.

“The statistics are daunting in South County,” she notes. “We have high rates of substance abuse from teens to elders. As many as one in three youths experience depression at least once every year. We have psychiatric hospitalizations and, sadly, suicides.”

In response, HBHM works with the international Mental Health First Aid organization to train parents, afterschool programmers, educators, camp counselors, juvenile police officers, and others in the curriculum for Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA).

Free of charge, the 8-hour training focuses on being aware of early signs of concern and how to provide immediate support until professional help can be secured.

HBHM offers a similar program for adults helping adults: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).

5 tips for talking with your teen about mental health

One of five teens experiences a mental health or substance use challenge EVERY YEAR. You need to keep the lines of communication open if you’re going to be able to help.

Talking to your teen about his or her mental health or substance abuse may be even harder than opening a conversation about sex. But it’s essential you have such conversations, and on a regular basis, states Mental Health First Aid USA.

“The reality is that more than 22 percent of people between the ages of 13-18 will experience a mental health or substance use challenge every year,” writes Danielle Poole.

Poole’s five tips are straightforward, if not challenging:

  1. Be genuine. Teens can see right through an adult who is “faking it.”
  2. Be careful about using slang. Stick with language you’re comfortable using.
  3. Allow for silence.
  4. Switch up the setting. Where you have a conversation about mental health or substance use could make you or the teen you’re talking to more comfortable.
  5. Don’t trivialize their feelings.

 

Gay, lesbian, bisexual teens at higher risk for suicide

“Sexual minority teens might have been at increased risk because they experienced verbal harassment, physical bullying or felt unsafe at school.”

Interviews with nearly 16,000 teens across the nation suggest that gay, lesbian, bisexual and questioning (LGBQ) teens are more than three times likely to consider suicide than their heterosexual peers. In fact, the study reveals, one in four had attempted suicide in the previous year.

About 11% of the participants described themselves as LGBQ.

“We must recognize LGBQ teen suicide is a national public health crisis and bring extraordinary resources to bear to address the crisis,” senior study author John Ayers, a researcher at San Diego State University told Reuters.

Read the entire story. You can also read the abstract or purchase the study itself at the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA).

Exposing Richmond schoolkids to butternut squash

Butternut squash is on the school menu, and the kids love it!

Channel 10’s latest “exposé” is how local schools are “forcing” students to try healthy foods…and they’re loving them!

According to Barbara Morse Silva’s story, Richmond Elementary School’s Local Food Ambassador Program is trying to get kids to try new foods.

“We started the buzz a couple of days ago,” Principal Sharon Martin told Morse. “We’ve been doing morning announcements for the last couple of days getting the children ready, giving them some background knowledge about what butternut squash is. How it’s grown.”

The program is a partnership between food service provider Aramark, the Rhode Island Healthy Schools Coalition and Farm Fresh RI.

“We asked them to help us today because we want to know if it tastes good,” said Patricia Roth, a program associate with Farm Fresh RI. “We say, you know, we need to let the farmers know if they should keep growing it.”

So, the kids did just that, with some of them giving the samples the sniff test first, while others dove right in.

“It’s yummy,” said one of the students.

“It was awesome,” said another.

Visit Channel 10’s website for the whole story, the newscast, and a recipe for orange glazed butternut squash with dried cranberries.

December ’17 Newsletter

Every month Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds & Director Susan Orban likes to connect you with current articles, events, and resources to help you keep your family healthy and informed!

Holding your baby: it’s a molecular thing

The first-ever study of the biology of children who are hugged

More than 4-1/2 years ago, the University of British Columbia asked 94 families to carefully record their newborns’ behavior and how they, the parents, responded.

When the children were nearly 5 years old, the researchers took a simple mouth swab for DNA.

Through new technology, they found that the children who had been distressed as babies but whose parents had not held them had a molecular profile in their cells that was underdeveloped for their age – suggesting they might be lagging biologically.

   Science Daily, which outlines the research, wrote: “This is the first study to show in humans that the simple act of touching, early in life, has deeply-rooted and potentially lifelong consequences on genetic expression.”

Read the entire story in Science Daily, with links to the original research.

School success starts at home: the video

Play with kids and provide books and crafts; it’s a headstart for school

“Parents who play with their kids and provide learning materials like books and craft supplies help ensure that their kids get started on the right foot,” reports Child Trends, and they’ve got an entertaining video to show how.

Researchers found it particularly valuable for more challenged families. They followed 2,200 children from ethnically diverse, low-income families and found that those from a household with reading and storytelling, learning materials in the home, and parental interaction, performed better in the fifth grade than children from middle-income households.

The YouTube page will connect you directly to the full research paper as well.