I will be chronicling the start of the conference and the back-to-back morning sessions that focus on the disproportionate impact of prison and the criminal justice system on specific communities in New York City, mainly in the Bronx and Central Brooklyn, and how community-based strategies can promote healthy children, families and neighborhoods.

Read and watch the full coverage here.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) named last week National Influenza Vaccination Week. Tuesday, December 9, was Children’s Vaccination Day. Thursday, December 11, was Senior’s Vaccination Day.

“[Parents and grandparents] may bring in a child for immunization, but they won’t for themselves,” said Norma Villanueva, M.D., M.P.H., the Network Chief of Child and Adolescent Health at Lutheran Medical Center.

Read the rest of the article here…

“Voris, you’re like an old man” (paraphrase) – More People Than I Can Count

I have friends who would rather undergo dental work without anaesthetic than have a discussion of what images flashed across the back of their eyelids the night previous.  If you count yourself a member of this cohort, I advise you to read no further.

I’m not a very ambitious person.  Dreams, in the ambitious sense, are not that interesting to me.  I want to do good work, travel, read, at some point have a family, and perhaps one day synch my body clock to the time zone in which I reside.

I am, however, fascinated by the brain, and dreams, in the unconscious gobbledygook sense, rank right up there with music and Modernist literature in terms of shit that I spend far too much time pondering.

Here’s why: I wake up in the morning and my conscious mind begins processing the linear movement of time and space – it’s 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, December 16, 2008; I am 27 years, 2 months and 16 days old; I walk down the 18 steps from my apartment to the street, pick up the day’s New York Times from my stoop and head to my deli, where I get a large coffee with milk, no sugar and a toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese.  The process takes about five minutes.  Each second moves like thread through a sewing machine, spooling from unknown future to remembered past via that brief hiccup we call the present.

But the brain doesn’t only exist in the present moment.  Nor does it follow the linear progression of time.  As I walked to the deli for my bagel this morning, I was remembering the cemetery in Chicago on Friday, how flat and spare it was in comparison to Green-Wood.  So while my body was in Brooklyn on Tuesday, at least a part of my mind was in Chicago last Friday, and what’s more, the memories of the cemetery that came to me this morning didn’t occur in the order they occurred Friday: there was the board covering the grave that my grandmother’s casket would eventually be laid in, which was basically the last thing I saw; my cousins and I walking the casket into the chapel, which was earlier on; my uncle Jimmy staring furiously at my cousin Ryan, who couldn’t bring himself to stop crying and walk out into the afternoon frost, which happened in the time between the two preceding memories.

I value my dreams because my mind’s natural tendency to jump across time is uninhibited by the constant flow of the present.  The deep patterns of memory, of what might be called my soul, are on display.  Recurring themes include: The Unfinished Bridge, Tree Cities, Absolute Body Control, Lights In The Distance, The Island That Cannot Be Reached, Telepathy, Resurrected Brother Who Must Die Again, Jimmy McNulty, Star Wars, The Interaction Of Rocks And Sunlight, Neverending Cafe and The Long, Curly Hair Of Various Girlfriends.

I’m not sure what many of these themes mean.  Smart as they were, I have my doubts that Freud or Jung could unravel all the layers of meaning from my life that my brain throws out on busy nights.  I don’t think I’d care to know, because the answers are never as interesting as the questions, and my own belief is that life is best not when understood but when shared.

How can dreams be shared, though?  I don’t expect anyone reading this to have the slightest idea what that list of images above could possibly mean, and yet words are the best means available to me to convey what happens when the barrier of the world is removed and the unconscious takes over.  My friend Kel would argue that film is the best method for documenting the interior life of a person in that film, like memory, can jump back and forth across time and space, is imagistic, and can edit out those moments that are unimportant.  To a certain extent I agree.  I was born in 1981, and so I have spent my life being inundated by moving pictures.  This has an obvious effect on my dreams, in that I almost always dream in the third person (I see myself as if a camera was following me) and that there is a cinematic quality to these visuals (sweeping, all-encompassing landscapes, angles, even zooms).  However, I believe that if I spent my whole life attempting to document my dreamlife with a camera I would give an impression that was muddled at best, inaccurate at worst.  This is because a filmed image is a concrete thing.  When you see a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge, that is the image you have.  When I write the words “a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge,” you can probably think of a number of pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge.  This suggestive aspect of words is why they are my preferred means of communicating that which is inherently non-communicable.

My best friend and I call this thing empathetic imagination.  The Unfinished Bridge means something very particular to me, and the image it conjures for you is, in all likelihood, very different.  But by inviting you to have your own definition rather than imposing a specific picture, there is an opportunity for you to speculate what The Unfinished Bridge looks like and what it means.  This affords you the chance to bring your own experience into play and, in essence, meet me halfway.

So what does this have to do with journalism?  The attacks in Mumbai were documented using just about every conceivable method, and while all of these methods successfully conveyed the horror of those days (though how could they not), it was the written accounts that hit me hardest.  Reading about the carnage in the train station was more shocking for me than seeing it on television because the words put me in the station, while the camera is someone else in the station; the blood on CNN is the blood there is – the blood in The New York Times‘ story is as much as my mind will allow.  I understand that, as a matter of accuracy, the image captured by the camera is better, but the nebulous border that divides accuracy and truth is straddled more effectively by the words.  The truth of Mumbai’s suffering came across the less I was spoonfed the information and the more I was allowed to imagine.

It is true that the dreams of one young man are of little consequence when held against the totality of the world and the depth of history, but it’s in dreams that those few things that transcend the world and its history – love, death, timeless memory, the potential of a brain unencumbered by a desire for bagels, a body that is no slave to gravity or insulin – reveal themselves.  They are sacred precisely because they are untranslatable.  You have to imagine.

I meant this to be a light post about how I’ll be glad when the semester’s over so I can get more sleep and enjoy a few good dreams, but somehow it’s gotten away from me and become some sort of manifesto in praise of writing and imagination.

Sorry about that.

Is the fact that this possibility has surfaced doesn’t surprise me troubling? Even before I declared my concentration in health/medicine reporting, I was aware of the corruption and rampant abuse of power by what is referred to as Big Pharma. Government deregulation and regulation on a slew of business and healthcare policy issues end up benefiting these corporate entites, whether allowing unapproved drugs and drugs with possible side effects to go on the market before they are fully vetted by the FDA or removing/weakening price caps on prescription drugs so that Pharma can charge more for less and profit from donations of life-saving drugs to Third World countries. And of course there are the deceptive drug ads that have had varying levels of regulation over the last two decades.

Journal articles are an important “first draft” introducing new developments in medicine to the public and are among the sources used by health professionals and medical reporters in their story research. Doctors and reporters already look at journal articles with a wary eye, and the likely possibility of journal articles being fabricated can be even more detrimental to the trust people place in such written work.

And that doctors would sign on to put their names on these works they haven’t written – even if they agree with what is being written – is egregious and says they condone this deceptive practice. Like the regulations placed on drug advertisements, all that would be needed is for the doctors to acknowledge that this IS NOT their work. It would be better if it were, but if this is the way they want to roll, then disclose your affiliations.

It is tantamount to plagiarism.

Once a month Sonia Diaz says she would take her sixteen-year old daughter, Kassandra Rodriguez, to the hospital due to asthma.  “It sounded like a whistle in her chest, she would start wheezing, and sometimes she couldn’t breathe,” says Diaz, 41, a mother of two. 

Along with her daughter, Diaz, and her son, Nicholas, 19, all suffer from asthma. 

As residents of East Harlem, Diaz’s family health problems are not unusual. 

In East Harlem the rate of hospitalization for asthma in children 0-14 years of age is doubled compared to children overall in New York City.  According to the NYC Department of Health in 2005, for every five children who were hospitalized for asthma in New York City, over ten children were hospitalized for asthma in East Harlem.

Dr. Betty Perez-Rivera, director of the East Harlem Asthma Center of Excellence set to open its doors in the winter of 2009, says East Harlem has the highest rate of hospitalization for asthma in all of New York City. 

She adds that bordering neighborhoods, the Upper East Side and Gramercy, located directly south of East Harlem have the lowest rates of hospitalizations for asthma.

To account for the health disparities between the two neighborhoods, Dr. Perez-Rivera says one must look at the socio-economic backgrounds of the two communities.

 “South of 96^th street there are high risers and people that are middle to high income,” says Dr. Perez-Rivera, “in East Harlem north of 96^th street  . . . we probably have the greatest number of housing projects, immigrant populations, people with everything from housing issues, to issues around health literacy and language barriers.”

She says, “It’s definitely a very different population even though we are located so close together and that could be a very big component on why we have the difference in hospitalization rates.”

Environmental health worker, Eric Hinderlie, from Little Sisters of the Assumption, a community organization that provides public heath services to residents of East Harlem, agrees and sees many housing factors that directly complicate someone’s asthma. 

He explains, a high prevalence of pests, cockroaches, dust, molds, and structural damages in homes of East Harlem residents often trigger a person’s asthma.

“There will be places that we go into with just tons of mold and people are breathing that in that in everyday,” says Hinderlie.

“But there is not a law that says landlords have to get rid of mold or have to call someone to get rid of the mold right away,” he says.  “A lot of times it just sits there and if there is an asthmatic child breathing it in everyday, it’s a horrible mix.” 

Sonia Diaz says cockroaches and mold affected her daughter’s asthma and she reached out to Little Sisters to help control the problem. 

Little Sisters works with families to arrange and maintain a healthy home environment, by cleaning cockroach residues, contacting someone to seal cracks in cabinets and walls, and isolating small concentrations of mold, says Hinderlie.

For larger structural damages and high concentrations of mold, Hinderlie says the problem is more difficult to address.

“A lot of times you have to get New York City Housing Authority to do the work, you put in a compliant and someone will come and check it out usually within a week,” says Hinderlie.  “But then there’s no follow up, or it varies, its too inconsistent.  I think it depends on the building and each building has a different managerial staff.”

To remove the mold around her bathtub, Diaz says the NYC Housing Authority took about two months to complete the process.  

Since improving her housing conditions, Diaz says her daughter has not been back to the hospital for asthma.  

Dr. Perez-Rivera says not only do molds, pests, cockroaches, dust and the need for home repairs add to hospitalizations for asthma, but that 30% of households with an asthmatic childhood, also have an adult smoker.    

Although the rate of hospitalization for asthma has significantly declined since 1994, Dr. Perez-Rivera says rates in East Harlem have reached a plateau. 

 The East Harlem Asthma Center for Excellence aims to reduce hospitalizations rates of the community down to the norm in line with the rest of New York City, says Dr. Perez-Rivera.  

 The center plans on forming and combining a number of resources, utilizing hospitals, clinics, educational and environmental services, to create one standard to address the issue of asthma in East Harlem.

 “We want to focus on one chronic illness, in one community to see how we are able to impact it through our different programs,” says Dr. Perez-Rivera, “if it works well we will expand our model to other areas in the city.” 

A series of morning crackdowns over three weeks resulted in 39 arrests along 56th and 57th streets between Second and Third Avenues, according to Deputy Inspector Jesus R. Pintos, of the 72nd Precinct. But the prostitution busts were only part of a larger effort that shows how local law enforcement can involve community organizations to find long-term solutions for neighborhood crimes.

The campaign began with getting the offenders off the streets. In what Inspector Pintos described as “precinct-based enforcement,” officers arrested 21 johns – the term used to describe the predominantly male clientele of prostitutes – and eight prostitutes.  They also arrested nine others for related crimes of car theft (cars used by those arrested) and drug use or sales. Five vehicles were also confiscated at the scene.

Within days, the only signs that illegal activity had taken place were used condoms and other debris scattered on the sidewalk.  The Brooklyn D.A.’s office lent several hands to deal with that. Kings County District Attorney Charles J. Hynes assigned individuals sentenced to community service hours in the neighborhood to assist the precinct in sidewalk clean-up.

To maintain the quality of life in the area and prevent the problem from simply relocating, police increased surveillance.  First they installed Sky Watch – a surveillance tower that extends via mini-crane atop an NYPD car, traveling between high crime areas in the city – along the main intersection on Third Avenue and 56th Street during the two weeks following the arrests.  Precinct officers were also assigned to conduct regular sweeps of the problem corridor, making arrests when necessary.

For residents and schoolchildren, the effect of the changes was immediate. “Where did the prostitutes go, Mommy?” one grade-schooler asked her mother on the way to school a week following the first arrests.  The grateful mother shared the story with Deputy Inspector Pintos at the monthly Community Council meeting. Says Pintos, “We’re making headway, but we’ll continue to monitor the problem.”

Others are trying to help those arrested in the busts. The Red Hook Justice Center, in collaboration with the 72nd precinct, is offering first-time offenders an alternative to trials and jail.  Instead they have to attend “Project Respect,” often called the Brooklyn John School. The six-year-old program puts offenders face-to-face with former prostitutes, videos of sexually abused children and images of the diseases inflicted on them.

EPIC (Ending Prostitution In our Communities) and “Saving Teens at Risk” are two programs targeting prostitutes above age 21 and younger girls, respectively. They offer educational and rehabilitative services to help these women find other options and to deal with the issues that originally caused them to turn to the streets.  Kings County DA statistics note that 80 to 90 percent of the women prostituting themselves have been sexually abused.  The U.S. Dept. of Justice says that girls enter prostitution at an average age of 13.

According to Gerianne Abriano, Bureau Chief at the Brooklyn D.A.’s office, “the vast majority [of offenders] that come to Red Hook go through these programs. Anyone with a prior record, we try to get them drug [or other] treatment. [And as for] the prostitutes, they tend to be the most accessible. We have good results with them.”

Danny, as everyone calls him, has trisomy 21 Down Syndrome, where each gene has an extra chromosome.  But his outgoing and independent personality, combined with a love of life and all the people in it, make him a natural friend and leader.  They also challenge commonly held public preconceptions about what someone with this most common of genetic conditions is capable of achieving in life.

Sarah Palin’s nomination as the Republican vice presidential candidate promised to broaden that awareness.  As Americans met  the Alaska Governor and her family, including her newborn son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, Gov. Palin declared that if she and John McCain were elected, families of special needs children would have “a friend in the White House.”  In that large and tight-knit community whose voices often go unheeded, such promises have sparked contrasting feelings of hope and circumspection.

“As a mother, your heart goes out to her because even in this day and age, it’s hard,” said Mary Dory, Danny’s mother and a nurse for almost 30 years at Beth Israel Medical Center in Brooklyn.

In the 1980s and 90s, Ms. Dory and her husband’s efforts to find strong school services for their son were helped by doctor’s referral and the word-of-mouth among supportive parents in Brooklyn’s Catholic school network.  Last year, Danny graduated from Bishop Ford High School in Park Slope and is now at the nonprofit Guild for Exceptional Children in Bay Ridge, where he has occupational therapy and works at businesses throughout Brooklyn, earning a small stipend.

But in the public school system, it is more difficult to find similar programs. Mei Fung Zhang knows this from personal experience. She spent the last 10 years helping her brother and sister-in-law find programs in their Sheepshead Bay neighborhood to challenge and educate their now 17-year-old daughter, Lily Zhu, who also has trisomy 21 Down Syndrome.

“She started special education classes when she was two [and] she learned a lot in elementary school, especially when she had [a bilingual] paraprofessional” said Mrs. Zhang, referring to the teaching aides for children with special needs. But now Lily is enrolled in a program where students of different grade levels learn the same material together. “ She’s learning things she already knows, like third grade level math,” said her aunt.

“The summer-only training does nothing and she’s going to graduate high school soon.  We are looking for programs [that provide] job training and social benefits,” said Mrs. Zhang.

When it comes to the presidential election, Mrs. Zhang says her family has been pretty apathetic, but she wonders how the country could afford any additional services for students.

“I hope the government or the education department can do more for hoever wins the election,

“I think it’s great that [Trig Palin is] in the public eye,” said Mary Dory.  “It’s going to make people more aware, more educated and less judgmental.  I don’t really know if it’ll do anything for education programs, though.”

Others are even less optimistic. In a September column in the Phoenix New Times, editor Amy Silverman, the mother of a 5-year old girl with Down Syndrome, writes that Gov. Palin’s promises are not realistic for many reasons.

“There’s never enough funding … but worse, the whole system is so poorly managed you practically need a Ph.D. in public policy (or another parent who’s already been though this, or a lawyer, or all three) to help you get services,” Mrs. Silverman wrote.

“All you need to do is drive to the center of any large city in America and watch homeless schizophrenics push shopping carts to see the effects another social conservative — Ronald Reagan — had on another disenfranchised group, the country’s mentally ill.”

Neither presidential candidate stood out for Danny Dory although he did vote, exercising a right that the National Disability Rights Network has been actively promoting “I don’t like what I’m seeing on TV,” Danny said. “It is going to be a battle between them, but I don’t care who wins or who is president.  I just want a president.”

Housing Works is a non-profit group in New York that attempts to simultaneously fight AIDS and homelessness. For the last 14 years they have organized a 24 hour vigil where hundreds of volunteers read the thousands of names of those New Yorkers who have died of AIDS. Five podiums were set up around the park in City Hall and names were read from books as thick as the Oxford Dictionary. The names were read simultaneously making it difficult to hear any one individual name, but making it easy to understand AIDS is not over.
Click here to view the embedded video.

This was a particularly somber year for the event as this past June the Mayor and the City Council voted to cut $6 million dollars from the city’s budget for prevention and care. Dennis Weakly, an event organizer, read an hourly statement, imploring the state, city, and federal governments to do more.

“Until all people living with HIV have the services and respect they deserve, we will stand before you, as I am standing here now. Every World AIDS Day, every December 1, we will read the names of those we have lost to AIDS to honor their memory and to call the world to action. Today we remember. For all of them. For all of us.”

Gregory Martin, lost a cousin to AIDS. He has been attending the vigil since she died, and every year he is still surprised by how many people have been lost to the disease.
Click here to view the embedded video.

Housing Works Client and AIDS activist Diana Williams says the treatment she receives now is much better than when she was first diagnosed. She worries still that people think the AIDS epidemic is over in the US and would like to see more education around the disease. “I don’t want my name to be read on that list someday, I already have to read my daughter’s name,” she said.
Click here to view the embedded video.

But between the demands of grad school and a sidelining due to a foot injury, I haven’t had a good run for at least two months. And, yes, eight pounds later–I’m freaking. So I need to run faster!

Starting tomorrow, Monday, I hope to start running again at least three days a week. I need to amp it up with new music. Any runners out there want to share? I love drums and a crescendo.

Here are my top-four favorite running songs for this week:

Johnny Appleseed – Joe Strummer

Journey From A to B – Badly Drawn Boy

Bruises – Chairlift

Here Comes the Night – Van Morrison

At first, when I called, the receptionist gave me a run-around about not having any appointments available for the rest of the month. So I just showed up and amazingly, I was able to see the N.P. in less than 10 minutes. Not only that, but she was very competent, caring and able to prescribe the medicine I needed. In fact, she had the drugs on hand and because the GC gets meds for a discount, I only paid $10. Now I’m feeling much better and am thankful for having that resource. I highly recommend it.