Highlighting a New Yorker Article: The Poverty Clinic by Paul Tough

As many of you know, I am an avid New Yorker reader. It's just so full of interesting articles that are well-written and such clever cartoons that receiving it is really a high point of my week. As I've been knee-deep in my own writing for my recently submitted scholarly paper (Uncovering the Common Grounds of TennCare Stakeholders: A Complete Timeline from 1935-2010 with the Stakeholders' Perspectives) that I haven't posted in awhile and that I have become consumed with health care policy. In the March 21, 2011, edition of The New Yorker, Paul Tough wrote about Dr. Nadine Burke and her Bayview health clinic in San Francisco. She is busy working on research proving a relationship between a stressful childhood and later physiological problems such as heart disease, cancer, asthma, diabetes, etc. One study has been done, and it showed a causal relationship between diseases with adult-onset with higher rates of childhood exposure to violence, sexual abuse, divorce, drug exposure, and neglect. However, that study was discounted by the medical community, as a whole, because of its retrospective nature. Thus, Dr. Burke along with other researchers and a group in New Zealand are completing prospective research on any possible causal relationship.

If such a relationship is proven, it raises the bar for society to protect its children. It would also begin to question, how much violence, abuse, neglect, etc., are we, as a society, willing to accept or live with, knowing that the effects go beyond perpetuating the cycle of poverty and imprisonment and extend to massive health care costs that were preventable. Balanced in with the desire to control future costs and preserve future health of our citizens is the constitutional right to parent and raise children. Would these potential outcomes further blur the line of what is acceptable and what is not? I can see a two-tier system developing to where those who are on government-funding now would be under higher scrutiny than those wealthy enough to provide for themselves and their families because the children of needy families will likely grow up to also be needy themselves. It would be like a justified big brother system: because I'm paying for you now, and I'm going to be paying for you in the future, you've got to really toe the proverbial line so I can minimize your costs to me in the future. I think there would need to be a strong stand to protect constitutional rights for those receiving aid while also trying to put the best interest of the child first.

I recommend all read Tough's article (and have a little chuckle about the cartoon on p.30).

Poverty Issues in Nashville

Nashville, the city I love and call home, is having real issues with poverty. In his Tennessean article today, Michael Cass cites that the poverty rate in Nashville rose from 13% in 2000 to 16.9% in 2009. The poverty rate for children under age 5 is 34.4%. That is astounding -- over one-third of the children under age 5 live in poverty in Nashville, Tennessee. Between September 2009 and September 2010, the number of people receiving food stamps increased by 11.25%. In addition, over 13, 000 families in Davidson County live on an income of less than $15,000 a year. The "experts," whoever they may be, are saying this increased poverty rate are due to the economic recession (and the loss of non-knowledge-based jobs) and May's flood. The article also hints that the 33,000 foreign-born residents gained in 10 years may also be contributing to the poverty rate.

When I see these statistics, my heart hurts with the incredible loss of potential I see in Nashville. I think about the children who are waiting lists to get into Preston Taylor Ministries's after-school program. (PTM serves families living in the Preston Taylor public housing neighborhood north of Charlotte Ave.) These children want to succeed, and their parents want them to succeed, but the realistic (and fiscally-responsible) economic limits on programs like PTM leave them without help. I think about my friend who is struggling to find a job teaching English as a second language to adults (she was laid off this month), and how she could be a key to helping some of these families escape the poverty cycle. The people she meets are from Africa's war-torn countries, the Middle East, and Asia -- they have skills, they just need the language. These are courageous people who have left all they've known to come to America, the proverbial land of opportunity, and they are shoehorned into low-paying jobs because they don't know English. I think about the people who criticize TennCare programs as being too generous, and I want to introduce them to these children who literally would never see a doctor without TennCare's benefits.

When the flood hit Nashville in May, the city pulled together to help those in need. The crisis isn't over -- this city needs to continue pulling together to help the increasing number of people in financial peril and create options for success.