Needless Suffering

One brutal reality of deep poverty can be observed daily in the inner-city of Dallas:  needless, preventable suffering. 

Equally difficult, and linked in a causal manner to the suffering I envision, is simple, but maddening delay. 

When you live in poverty, everything seems to slow down in the face of complicating distractions. 

Take my friend "John." 

I met John over a year ago at our Opportunity Center.  He came seeking medical attention for his gigantic, abdominal hernia that protruded from his tight t-shirt.  After we visited for a while, I referred him to CitySquare's health clinic.  He ended up in the ER at a local hospital after which he made his way to Parkland, our public hospital in Dallas County.

Several weeks later, John shows up at my office looking as if he had lost 50 pounds, a step his physician recommended as a pre-surgery precaution.  He had a ways to go on his diet plan.  Again, a goal made more difficult to he extreme because  he lived on the streets. 

He signed up for housing and languished for weeks on our jammed packed waiting list (just here read "more delays"). 

Then, he reappears two days ago. 

He had gained back the weight that he had shed, and then some.   He explained that he just gotten of jail behind warrants for tickets that actually were not his. 

As we discussed his dilemma, many more defeating, delaying details surfaced.  Of course, not the least of these worries included his hernia, now larger than before. He also informed me that he battled severe diabetes, a fight made almost impossible by his homelessness. 

He looked sick and felt worse. 

I took him to see our community health expert, J. R. Newton, RN, MDiv.  Next thing I know I have a text from J. R. telling me that she has John at the  Parkland ER.  Today she updated me, saying that John was admitted to the hospital where he was receiving treatment for his diabetes. 

When admitted to the hospital he was "very, very sick."  His blood sugar on admission read 723 (normal  is 95-110).  He was lucky to be alive. 

I feel compelled to record his story.  Not to make anyone feel bad, but to  describe what people trapped in poverty face on a daily and often prolonged basis.

Pray for John, please.

Think of  him as you think of our city and our collective response to deep, extreme poverty.  Think of how we might effective ways to at least decouple "needless" from "suffering." 

A message from our partners. . .

October 20, 2014 To:        Dallas Faces Race Partners and Subscribers From:    Lauren Embrey and the Embrey Family Foundation              Cecilia and Garrett Boone and The Boone Family              Foundation   As Dallas’ major racial equity initiative, Dallas Faces Race is confronted with a real life and immediate situation in the aftermath of Ebola patients being diagnosed in our city.           We are disturbed by reports about the racial bias that immigrant communities and communities of color have been experiencing as a result of Ebola panic. People in the Vickery Meadows neighborhood are experiencing bias related to job security, service providers and taunting at sporting events.  Others are being turned away from restaurants and being told that they brought this disease to the US. We understand that people are afraid.  Targeting victims of Ebola and shunning whole communities is not going to keep us safe.   We know the people of Dallas are good people who care about each other.  While we may not intend to discriminate or divide, that is in fact the impact of individual and institutional decisions over the last few weeks. We call on Dallas Faces Race Partners, our community and our public officials to do three important things in this moment. First:  Call out discriminatory behavior whenever and wherever you hear it or see it. Let people know that things like refusing to serve people at local businesses on the basis of their looks or national identities is not legal, and not okay. Second:  Show your support to the communities of Vickery Meadows and the nonprofits that serve them.  Vickery Meadow Youth Development Foundation is one example, learn more at www.vmydf.com.  And if you are interested in volunteering to support individual or group needs or neighborhood projects, please contact Ellen Mata at Northpark Presbyterian Church for more information:  emata@northparkpres.org or 214-363-5457 ext. 24. Third:  Make your own statement to your contacts condemning xenophobic and racially biased actions in the aftermath of this         crisis. Share success stories and lift up positive examples. Our country and city have experienced such waves before. Xenophobia and targeting innocent people for punishment were problems when we first earned of AIDS, H1N1, and SARS. There were terrible consequences for communities at the heart of those crises.  It's up to us to step forward, broaden awareness and make sure we don't repeat history. Ebola will be solved, but the impact of divisive behavior will last much longer. Read more:   Dallas’ Vickery Meadow residents enduring backlash over Ebola. The Dallas Morning News, October 6, 2014   Copyright © 2014 Dallas Faces Race, All rights reserved. Our website is: http://dallasfacesrace.com

Healthcare reform looming

The following article appeared in the Harvard Gazette, May 6, 2011.  Here's an honest, comprehensive assessment of what we face in healthcare's needed reform.  The counter-intuitive truth remains:  the way out of our bankrupt system of health care will involve providing Medicare-like coverage for everyone. 

Health reform may require a crisis

ABC’s medical editor cites obstacles to improved care system

A new, more sweeping version of health care reform that provides universal coverage and controls costs is still a few years away, according to ABC-TV’s medical editor Timothy Johnson. Unfortunately, it likely will take a budget crisis to get it through Congress, Johnson said.


Despite the passage of national health care reform that extends coverage to the uninsured, ends discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions, and allows parents to keep children on their insurance until age 26, Johnson said even more sweeping changes are in the works that would create a system similar to Canada’s single-payer program.

The reason, Johnson said, is that health care costs in the United States remain far higher than those in other countries and are climbing fast enough to threaten the nation with bankruptcy within a few years.

“In five to seven years, we’re going to be facing true financial catastrophe, with the possibility of actual bankruptcy in this country,” Johnson said. “We’ll probably throw up our hands … and what we’ll probably do at that point is expand Medicare to cover everyone.”

Johnson, who is also the medical editor for the local ABC affiliate, WCVB-TV, and who holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital, analyzed America’s health quandary Wednesday evening (May 4) during the annual Lowell Lecture, sponsored by the Harvard Extension School and the Lowell Institute of Boston.

Johnson based his talk on his recent book “The Truth About Getting Sick in America: The Real Problems with Healthcare and What We Can Do.” He was introduced by Dean of Continuing Education Michael Shinagel.

There are no easy answers to America’s health care problems, Johnson said. Per capita costs for health care in America are more than double those in other industrialized nations. Though some observers may say that the quality of care is better in America, Johnson argued that it is not more than twice as good, and the problems of the uninsured and of the bureaucratic burden placed on doctors far outweigh any benefits.

Read the entire article here.

More on spread of hunger in USA

Thanksgiving 2010:  Now this disturbing report from The Washington Post:

America's economic pain brings hunger pangs

By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 17, 2009

The nation's economic crisis has catapulted the number of Americans who lack enough food to the highest level since the government has been keeping track, according to a new federal report, which shows that nearly 50 million people -- including almost one child in four -- struggled last year to get enough to eat.

At a time when rising poverty, widespread unemployment and other effects of the recession have been well documented, the report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture provides the government's first detailed portrait of the toll that the faltering economy has taken on Americans' access to food.

The magnitude of the increase in food shortages -- and, in some cases, outright hunger -- identified in the report startled even the nation's leading anti-poverty advocates, who have grown accustomed to longer lines lately at food banks and soup kitchens. The findings also intensify pressure on the White House to fulfill a pledge to stamp out childhood hunger made by President Obama, who called the report "unsettling."

The data show that dependable access to adequate food has especially deteriorated among families with children. In 2008, nearly 17 million children, or 22.5 percent, lived in households in which food at times was scarce -- 4 million children more than the year before. And the number of youngsters who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.

Among Americans of all ages, more than 16 percent -- or 49 million people -- sometimes ran short of nutritious food, compared with about 12 percent the year before. The deterioration in access to food during 2008 among both children and adults far eclipses that of any other single year in the report's history.

Read the full report here.

Embracing Community Health

Interesting comments from Dr. Oz on health care reform.

Reactions?
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A must read on health care reform. . .

What follows may be the best, most succinct thing I've read during the current health care reform debate. Thanks to my good friend, Randy Mayeux for sending me the link. I encourage you to read it all.

And, of course, I hope to read your reactions after you've done so.
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I'm safe on board. Pull up the life rope
By Roger Ebert on August 20, 2009 4:44 PM

Having read through some 600 comments about universal health care, I now realize I took the wrong approach in my previous blog entry. I discussed the Obama health plan in political, literal, logical terms. Most of my readers replied in the same vein. The comments, as always, have been helpful, informative and for the most part civil. My mistake was writing from the pragmatic side. I should have followed my heart and gone with a more emotional approach. I believe universal health care is, quite simply, right.

Read the entire post here.