Photo Update

Here are latest photos of CitySquare's new Opportunity Center!

The path to ending poverty. . .

Pictured below is the new sign identifying our new Opportunity Center site at the south east corner of I-30 and Malcolm X Boulevard in South Dallas/Fair Park! The two-sided sign announces our arrival!

[By the way:  check out the great, new company that Janet Morrison is creating at Believography.  Thanks to Janet for the photo!]

Sad cities

10 Saddest Cities in America


posted by Melissa Breyer Apr 29, 2011 6:01 pm

What makes a city sad? A lack of fluffy frolicking puppies? Burnt-out buildings and vacant lots? Limited access to cupcakes? Measuring which cities in the country are the least content seems an objective pursuit, at best. Yet last month when the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index published their findings about which cities were the happiest, they ended up with the other end of the spectrum as well. The miserable, no-good, down-and-out cities, where, clearly, not a soul can manage a smile. I kid, of course. Undoubtedly there are sad people in the nation’s happiest city (Boulder, Co) as well as happy people in the saddest. But nonetheless, it’s interesting to see what the index came up with.

Read more.

The children. . .

The recently agreed upon federal budget that resulted in funding cuts of almost $40 billion included a $504 million cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).

Taking a closer look at the WIC website, I identified the program mission:  "WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk."

A program description reads:  "WIC food packages and nutrition education are the chief means by which WIC affects the dietary quality and habits of participants."

WIC has worked hard to make the program incredibly efficient, while also upgrading the dietary quality of the food provided low-income mothers and children.  Here's a description of recent gains in the quality of nutritive food products distributed: 

"New food packages are now being provided to WIC participants in all States. On December 6, 2007, an interim rule revising the WIC food packages was published in the Federal Register. The new food packages align with the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and infant feeding practice guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The food packages better promote and support the establishment of successful, long-term breastfeeding, provide WIC participants with a wider variety of foods including fruits and vegetables and whole grains, and provide WIC State agencies greater flexibility in prescribing food packages to accommodate the cultural food preferences of WIC participants."

For years we've referred women with infants to WIC for the nutritious food products needed by their little ones.  Women earning at or below 185% of the federal poverty level have been eligible for the program.  To put that in real terms, a mother with one child could earn up to $338 weekly gross and qualify for WIC food products. 

Clearly, infant nutrition or the lack thereof drives a number of important social and , ultimately, economic and public health outcomes, including obesity, brain development and function, learning capacity, family stability, and overall well-being and health. 

Aren't are children worth the cost?  Isn't the investment one that will serve us all very well over the long haul?

More on urban farming and Detroit

Urban Farming: Vacant Public Land Could Provide Most of Detroit's Produce
BY Ariel Schwartz
from Fast Company
Thu Nov 18, 2010

The decline of the automotive industry and subsequent collapse of Detroit has been well documented. But as we explained last year, some entrepreneurs see agricultural opportunity in the city's decay. Now a study from Michigan State University backs them up by revealing that a combination of community gardens, urban farms, and greenhouses in the city could provide locals with more than 75% of their vegetables and 40% of their fruits.

According to PhysOrg, MSU researchers catalogued all vacant land plots in the city (excluding sensitive areas around schools, cemeteries, churches, etc.) and found 44,085 available plots spanning 4,848 acres. All of the plots are publicly owned.

The big task, of course, is to find people to farm all that land -- and pay to cultivate it. Michigan entrepreneur John Hantz invested $30 million last year in the Hantz Farms project, which aims to farm 5,000 acres of city land. So far, Hantz is only working around 30 acres -- a testament to the time and energy it takes to really get farming. But unless the auto industry magically recuperates, Detroit has time to spare.

Ariel Schwartz can be reached on Twitter or by email.

Looking for a community gardener

A number of community groups, churches and neighborhood associations with whom we work appear interested in community gardening.

The combination of concerns to develop access to healthy foods, strengthen community connections, teach children about nutrition and the environment and find ways to develop new markets for goods and services drive this growing urban interest.

I've been thinking. Why not hire a full-time urban horticulturist--an urban farmer whose only job it would be to engage interested groups, organize local neighborhood efforts and coordinate the production of great, thriving community gardens?

What do you think?

Anyone you know who might be interested in such a job?

Let me know if you know someone like this.

I'm serious.

Here's to your health, friend!

We've recognized for a long time now the power and the benefit of social networks, social capital, collective efficacy and strong community connections among people. Social bonding contributes to quality of life wherever it is found. Creating such bonds among low-income neighbors is a crucial part of what we attempt to do here at Central Dallas Ministries.

A recent report ("WELL; What Are Friends For? A Longer Life," April 21, 2009) by Tara Parker-Pope in The New York Times, provided more evidence of this powerful reality.

Here's what she says:

In the quest for better health, many people turn to doctors, self-help books or herbal supplements. But they overlook a powerful weapon that could help them fight illness and depression, speed recovery, slow aging and prolong life: their friends.

Researchers are only now starting to pay attention to the importance of friendship and social networks in overall health. A 10-year Australian study found that older people with a large circle of friends were 22 percent less likely to die during the study period than those with fewer friends. A large 2007 study showed an increase of nearly 60 percent in the risk for obesity among people whose friends gained weight. And last year, Harvard researchers reported that strong social ties could promote brain health as we age.

Read Parker-Pope's entire report here.

Any stories of the healing reality of friendship and community that you'd like to share?

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Health care as human right, not market commodity--an American physician speaks out

Dr. Marcia Angell has a message for Canadians: Don't be too quick to judge the U. S. system as superior to what is already in place in Canada.

I can already hear the "boo birds" bashing this post.

But, that's okay. We've been working for almost 20 years in the world of hands on medical service delivery and I've got to tell you the gaps and the people falling through them call for some fresh new thinking about how we do health and wellness here in the U. S.

Read her article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The key points of the essay include:

• Health care costs per person are twice as high in the United States as in Canada.

• The US health care system has worse outcomes, is less efficient and provides fewer of many basic services than the Canadian system.

• The United States is the only industrialized country that treats health care as a market commodity, not a social service,and leaves uninsured those who cannot pay.

• In the United States, for-profit health care is more expensive and often of lower quality than not-for-profit or government care, with much higher overhead costs.

• The notion that partial privatization in Canada will shorten waiting times for elective procedures is misguided.

• Partial privatization would draw off resources from the public system, increase costs overall and introduce the inequities of the US system.

• The best way to improve the Canadian health care system is to put more resources into it.

Angell is clear: privatizing health care in Canada is not the answer.

In our arrogance, we seldom take a hard look at the facts of the system employed by our good friends to the north. Hear her out.

Almost 50 million of our fellow citizens would likely find her point of view very interesting indeed.

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Haven't we always known this?

Haven't we really always known this?

Maybe we're simply "too smart" for our own good and that of our kids.

Several years ago, I coached a co-ed baseball team of 4th and 5th graders in the Texas Rangers' Rookie League. We played about 20 games during June each year. These kids had never played baseball.

As we started the season, they hardly knew each other. By the time we finished each of two seasons, the players had become fast friends, took up for each other and all seemed in better condition.

If I had my way, I'd still be coaching in that league. We had to stop because early season workouts conflicted with TAKS test preparation at the players' school. Another win for standardized testing and a huge loss to the children, their health and, I would argue, their academic capacity.

What do you say?

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Harkin's Confession

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Chairman of the powerful Senate Agriculture Committee, admitted in an interview with CNN today that America does not have enough fresh fruits and vegetables for everyone to follow the time honored dietary dictum of five servings daily.

He was asked about the connection between the Farm Bill and the rise of obesity in the U. S. He acknowledged that there was a direct connection between farm legislation and the growth of American waistlines.

Consider these facts.

Most fruits and vegetables are considered "specialty foods" by Congress. As a result, they are not subsidized like corn, for example. Subsidies mean production. Their absence leads to underproduction in the face of growing need.

Scarcity drives prices up. Result: the well-to-do in this country eat a more healthy diet than the poor.

Add to this the fact that low-income communities, especially in our inner cities, don't enjoy easy access to good supermarkets and you have the public health reality fairly well in view.

Solutions?

I'd suggest a healthy increase in the Food Stamp program for the working poor. In addition, Congress should find ways to incentivize the production of increasing amounts of fruits and vegetables and the development of good retail markets among the urban poor. These three steps along would begin to take a healthy bite out of obesity and all of the public health issues associated with it. The savings to the American tax payer in health care costs alone would be enormous.

We need to wake up to the fact that most things aren't the way they are today by accident.




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A place to shop for supper. . .

I've said it before, but it seems no one is listening, at least not here in Dallas.

So, I'll keep saying it: inner city neighborhoods and communities need high-quality, retail grocery shopping opportunities.

We need nice, real, grocery stores--you know, supermarkets--like every other part of the city enjoys.

And, we need them now, not later! Sounds fairly mundane, doesn't it? Actually, to the people who put up with the current situation, it is not.

It is very clear to me that any community truly concerned about health improvement and public health outcome disparities will get busy building accessible, quality grocery markets in the low-income parts of town.

Want to cut into public health epidemics like obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes? then make nutritious food products readily available to everyone.

Robert K. Ross, MD, President and CEO of The California Endowment, and Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and CEO of PolicyLink, put it this way,

"There is an emerging consensus among researchers and practitioners that conditions in the communities where people live--from local economic opportunities, to social interactions with neighbors, to the physical environment, to services such as local stores where people can buy healthy food--all affect health" (Healthy Food, Healthy Communities: Improving Access and Opportunities Through Food Retailing, Fall 2005, page 1).

The current crisis evidenced by our nation's growing "grocery gap," or the widening access disparity between more economically viable communities and low-income neighborhoods when it comes to the availability of good grocery options, has been brewing since the 1960s.

With the advent of middle-class, largely "white flight" from older, central city neighborhoods, developers and city planners turned their attention and almost all of their resources to suburbs, leaving low-income families to struggle with transportation challenges and limited, convenient food purchasing options.

Here are a few of the most important facts that I gleaned from the report referenced above:

1) Poor families endure poor diets because they lack access to places that sell decent quality, nutritious foods at an affordable price.

2) Poor folks are forced to opt for food products at corner groceries where prices are high, selection is limited and ending in diets high in fat, sugar and calories.

3) Middle and upper income communities in Los Angeles County have 2.3 times as many supermarkets per capita as low-income communities; predominately white communities offer 3.2 times as many supermarkets as predominately black neighborhoods and 1.7 times as many as predominately Hispanic communities. Other regional and national studies confirm similar findings for other parts of the country.

4) Corner grocery stores that dot the inner city can be as much as 49% higher than supermarkets, while offering a poorer selection of food products--very little meat and fresh produce, mostly processed and canned foods.

5) African Americans living in proximity to at least one supermarket are more likely to meet suggested dietary guidelines for fruit and vegetable consumption and for fat intake than their peers who live in neighborhoods without supermarkets.

6) New grocery supermarkets contribute to the overall economic health of neighborhoods and very often serve as catalysts and anchors for further community renewal.

7) Traditional market analysis typically undervalue inner city neighborhoods and their economic potential. National data cuts against inner city economic and retail development, whereas more careful local market analysis tends to "prove up" the viability of urban markets.

8) A classic mistake of much market analysis is to focus on average household income rather than total area income. In countless cases, total area income is shocking to researchers who dig more deeply into the community they are analyzing.

9) Low-income, inner city neighborhoods actually present major advantages to retail developers who will take the time to learn. These include density of purchasing power, limited competition, and an available labor force.

10) Most of the time we fail to recognize the "double bottom line" inherent in community-business partnerships. It is very possible to achieve a healthy financial return on investment and realize sustainable and substantial community benefit.

More on grocery stores coming soon. . .

Texas Proud!

Did you see USAToday on Wednesday (June 20, 2007)?

A front page story on the mounting numbers of uninsured Americans reported that Texas leads the nation with right at 25% of us having no health coverage at all.

Minnesota ranked 50th with a bit over 8% uninsured. The national average comes in at just over 15%.

Texas: 25%! That is 1 out of every 4 people you see on the street, right? Maybe not. Depends on where you live. But, it is one of every four Texans--millions are children.

When you factor in the costs of treatment in emergency rooms, lost productivity at work and school due to untreated illnesses and the loss of years of life, a well-documented fact among those who study such matters, you face a public health and economic crisis of the first order.

Our state legislature just adjourned until 2009.

While our leaders did restore some funding and applied reforms to our Children's Health Insurance Program, they obviously didn't do nearly enough.

How long will it be before we wake up to the cost, the reality and the overwhelming need for a different sort of leadership and vision for our state.

And, incidentally, I wonder which state has more churches today per capita, Minnesota or Texas? I think I know. What does this mean? How many people of faith who are also insured really care about this issue?

Just wondering.

Poverty Markets and Robbing the Poor

If you want a realistic look at predatory lending, high-cost financial services, and other "ordinary rip-offs" endured by low-income persons in the United States today be sure and visit this link to the cover story of the latest issue of Business Week, no liberal rag I might add: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/
content/07_21/b4035001.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_best+of+bw+this+week.

I expect the story will sicken you, as it did me.

Israel in the days of the Hebrew prophet Amos (circa 8th century B.C. E.) had nothing on the United States today! Might do us all good to read the words of Amos today, right after we read the Business Week article. Let me know when you hear either quoted in church.

What with largely unregulated loan sharks, disguised as reputable businesses; selling used cars complete with strategies to repossess a part of the business plan; rent-to-own electronics and appliances; payday loans; income tax services and extremely high interest credit cards; poor folks in this country discover just one more way to slide further and further into the darkness of not just poverty, but generational poverty. The Business Week report demonstrates that these businesses plan to exploit the poor as standard operating procedure on the way to remarkable profits.

Unchecked capitalism such as this, as well as the injustices it spawns, should be reigned in for the good of the entire society.

Behind this story is a fact that others in the business world should take note of. The subprime and predatory lenders have moved in on the poor for one simple reason: the poor have money and constitute a viable market opportunity.

Here's my question. If there is an opportunity for the shady, why not the legitimate?

For years we have been asking for grocery retailers to set up business in the poorer sections of Dallas, especially in the inner city neighborhoods of South Dallas. Our low-income friends need and purchase food more often and frequently than credit! The market is there. Where is the company willing to step up to the unique challenges of these areas of our city and deliver what would in many low-income neighborhoods be a smashing business success?

I doubt anyone starts breaking ground tomorrow, but I'll keep asking anyway.

Community Health Services at CDM

Since 1990, Central Dallas Ministries has been involved in bringing medical, health care and wellness initiatives to our community.

As you might expect, in the early days we offered fairly primitive services that would put you in mind of M.A.S.H.! Our operations back then were high touch and long on love!

Today, our family practice aims to provide a "medical home" to each of our patients. Thanks to our partnership with the Baylor Health Care System and Health Texas Provider Network, we now have three full-time physicians and a practice administrator working with us every day.

Our growth has been amazing.

This graph represents our trek from 1998 through 2006. Last year we enjoyed over 20,000 patient visits in our East Dallas clinic. Our pharmacy filled about the same number of prescriptions last year, as well.

Our annual budget on the CDM side for medical and wellness services comes is right at $1 million for 2007.

Thanks to those of you who help support this important part of our community building effort.

Action item: CHIP and the Texas Legislature

Last week the the House Health and Human Services Committee of the Texas House of Representatives approved CSHB109 and passed it along to the full house for a vote. The proposed legislation aims to reform Texas' Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). On the Texas Senate side basically the same provisions will be put forward in Senate Bill 81.

The bill includes a list of improvements that will help provide medical coverage to the children of low-income, working families across the state.

It eliminates the current 90-day wait period for uninsured children who are eligible. It restores the annual (12 month) certification requirement so that parents no longer have to go through the process twice annually. The proposed bill also raises the allowed "wealth" of a family to $10,000 liquid assets, plus reasonable values for up to two automobiles. The legislation also allows for the calculation of net income after deductions for child care and some work related expenses, as well as child support costs.

The proposed plan also adds an estimated $59.1 million in state revenue to the CHIP budget, while increasing the federal match as a result of the state's increased commitment to improving health care for children in Texas.

The bill will also restore funding for outreach so that the coverage can be more adequately marketed across the state.

Action: contact your Representative in the Texas House now and urge support for CSHB109. Contact your State Senator now and urge support of SB81.

If you don't know who your House and Senate members are, visit http://www.house.state.tx.us/welcome.php and http://www.senate.state.tx.us/.

Brace yourselves, poor folks. . .one more time

Just about every time the State of Texas decides it's time to "reform" anything related to health and human services, poor folks should prepare to take it on the chin.

That's why the headline in the "Texas & Southwest" section of Saturday's edition of The Dallas Morning News caught my eye: "State plans Medicaid experiment" (Saturday, January 27, 2007, page 3A).

On Friday, Governor Rick Perry, "key GOP lawmakers," and Albert Hawkins, Texas' health and welfare czar, met with U. S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. No doubt Medicaid financing poses a formidable challenge to the state, given that 25% of the state budget is earmarked for funding the health care delivery system designed to serve the poorest of our residents.

According to the report, the Governor wants to:

• Offer subsidies to small businesses to fund the purchase of health insurance for their employees.
• Give "customized" benefit plans to certain groups of Medicaid patients.
• Transfer part of the funding to "savings accounts" for the patients.

I will reserve judgment until all of the details are revealed and worked through during this session of the Texas Legislature, but I have noted a trend following the announcement of these kinds of plans.

First, the cost involved is often covered by reducing overall benefits to the poor, and sometimes those who need help the most are cut off.

The last time Medicaid was "reformed" in Texas, benefits were cut, people found it harder to be certified and private industry got involved in trying to administer programs. The result to date has been a disaster, and I happened to be in on one of the original planning groups for Accenture, the private company contracted to "improve service and access" to the poor. Hasn't happened.

Second, whenever government begins suggesting private insurance as a remedy for bulging health care costs, I counsel my low-income friends to head for cover!

President Bush's current plan for a health care overhaul includes inducements in the form of tax breaks to motivate more Americans to buy private insurance. According to Dr. Ron Anderson, President and CEO for the Parkland Health and Hospital System, Dallas' public health care institution, the costs associated with these tax breaks would be covered by cuts in funding to hospitals like Parkland that treat the poor and uninsured. Dr. Anderson estimates that under such a plan the loss in Medicaid revenue to Parkland could be up to $83 million annually.

One note of concern for me, as I read the report, is the fact that our Governor asked Secretary Leavitt for "as much leeway as states can be given to tinker with Medicaid." I'd love to know the definition of "tinker" here. One thing I do know, shifting around already limited Medicaid funds never seems to benefit the poor.

I'll stay tuned, but I'm not optimistic.