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African American children are taking their lives at roughly twice the rate of their white counterparts, according to a new study that shows a widening gap between the two groups.

The 2001-2015 data, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, confirm a pattern first identified several years ago when researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio found that the rate of suicides for black children ages 5 to 12 exceeded that of young whites. The results were seen in both boys and girls.

Although suicide is rare among young children, the latest findings reinforce the need for better research into the racial disparities, lead author Jeffrey Bridge said Monday. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for older children and adolescents in the United States.

“We can’t assume any longer that suicide rates are uniformly higher in white individuals than black,” said Bridge, an epidemiologist who directs the Center for Suicide Prevention and Research at the Columbus hospital. “There is this age-related disparity, and now we have to understand the underlying reasons. … Most of the previous research has largely concerned white suicide. So we don’t even know if the same risk and protective factors apply to black youth.”

Historically, suicide rates in the United States have been higher for whites than blacks across all age groups. That remains the case for adolescents, ages 13 to 17, according to the new study. White teens continue to have a 50 percent higher rate of suicide than black teens.

Overall between 1999 and 2015, more than 1,300 children ages 5 to 12 took their own lives in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers translate into an average of one child 12 or younger dying by suicide every five days. The pace has actually accelerated in recent years, CDC statistics indicate.

The researchers based their latest analysis on the CDC’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, which does not include geographical or socioeconomic data.

Although the study was unable to provide a cultural context for the racial difference in suicide rates, psychiatrist Samoon Ahmad thinks a number of reasons could account for the disparity.

“To me, the 5-12 range is more related to developmental issues and the possible lack of a family network, social network and cultural activities,” said Ahmad, a clinical associate professor at the NYU School of Medicine who was not involved in the research. “And with the introduction of social media, there is more isolation with children, not as much neighborhood play. Kids are more socially in their own vacuum.”

Ahmad described this age group as “probably the most vulnerable.” Yet adults tend to think the children are somehow too young to experience such depths of despair, he noted.

“No one talks about that with them. We tend to put them in silos, and don’t discuss these things because we think it’s too traumatic,” he said. “Instead, there must be a slow and steady flow of communication.”

Previous studies have looked at some of the characteristics and circumstances surrounding children’s suicides.

In 2017, research by Bridge and colleagues found that among children, ages 5 to 11, and young adolescents, ages 12 to 14, those who took their own lives were more likely to be male, African American and dealing with stressful relationships at home or with friends. Children who had a mental health problem at the time of death were more likely than young adolescents to have been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Young adolescents who killed themselves were more likely to have had relationship problems with a boyfriend or girlfriend. They also had higher rates of depression, according to last year’s study, which was published in the journal Pediatrics.

That 2017 report found more than a third of elementary school-aged suicides involved black children compared to just 11.6 percent of early adolescent suicides.

Bridge said his motivation for delving into this issue was a suicide in a town not far from Columbus. The child was not yet 10.

“We went into the original study because suicide rates were increasing among adolescents in the  United States,” Bridge said. The local death “made us think if there was a change in the suicide rate of children, and that’s what made us look into it.”

Read more on WashingtonPost.com

For the past three years, a striking visual statement has marked Memorial Day on the University of Washington campus: thousands of miniature flags dotting the HUB lawn.

The first year, student veterans placed hundreds of flags as a solemn gesture to underscore the significance of the holiday. The next year, the office of Student Veteran Life placed some 4,400 flags, to recognize the number of soldiers killed in the Iraq War. And in 2017, more than 5,800 flags honored the fallen in Vietnam – one flag for every 10 U.S. deaths.

This year, nearly 7,400 flags will mark the number of veterans who died by suicide in 2014 (the most recent year for which statistics are available). The display, along with a series of events beginning May 21, is meant to call attention to veteran mental health issues and the ways friends and loved ones can respond.

These statistics aren’t simply data points, said Sam Powers, director of the UW Office of Student Veteran Life. In 2017, two student veterans at the UW died by suicide.

“Instead of ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t happen here, we thought we’d open that dialogue,” said Powers, an Air Force veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We want to make sure that the resources are known, that veterans have a family here, and that this is a safe place for them to be.”

Veteran mental health has gained increasing attention in recent years. A 2014 study found that nearly one in four active-duty service members suffered from a mental health condition. In addition, statistics from the Veterans Administration show that veterans also have a higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder than the general population. The risk of suicide among veterans is 22 percent higher than for civilian adults, according to the VA.

At the UW, the Office of Student Veteran Life was established in 2016 as a way to formalize a student group and provide programs and services beyond financial aid and other administrative needs. Funding was just renewed, for example, for the second year of a psychologist dedicated to serving veterans at the campus Counseling Center.

This academic year, a little more than 1,000 veterans – members of the reserves or National Guard, those who have been discharged or on active duty – are enrolled at UW’s Seattle campus. About three-fourths are male, and their average age is a decade older than the typical undergraduate: 33. Student Veteran Life’s office in the HUB sees at least three dozen veterans a day, from those who stop in with a question to those who like to hang out for hours with friends.

The weeklong build-up to Memorial Day is one of the largest community-oriented events that Student Veteran Life sponsors each year. In addition to the flag laying, there is a photo exhibit; a workshop geared toward faculty and staff on spotting students, especially student veterans, in crisis; and a session on coping strategies with the UW Resilience Lab and Forefront Suicide Prevention, “Coming Back from the Ledge” for student and alumni veterans.

“Our intention is to acknowledge barriers that may develop for student veterans, while simultaneously not perpetuating the stereotype that all veterans are broken,” Powers said. “Veterans bring amazing strengths to our university.”

Read more on Washington.edu.

The following is an interview by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) with Gloria Lucas, Founder of Nalgona Positivity Pride.

Gloria Lucas is a self-described “chubby warrior, DIY punx educator, and eating disorder survivor” dedicated to increasing the representation within the body positive and eating disorder community. After struggling with her own eating disorder, Gloria felt the impact of cultural differences with the difficulty she felt about speaking out. Now, she hopes to fulfill her mission with Nalgona Positivity Pride, an organization that centers the diverse backgrounds of community members and gives back to her own community.

NEDA: Can you tell us a bit about Nalgona Positivity Pride and its goals?

Gloria Lucas: Nalgona Positivity Pride is a xicana-brown body positive organization that provides education, support groups, and a platform for people of color and indigenous descent folks who are impacted by eating problems. NPP was created in response to the lack of resources that exist for low-income people of color and indigenous-descent people. 

NEDA: How did your identity as a woman of color affect the support you received for your eating disorder?

Lucas: The truth is that whether I identify as a women of color or not it does not change the history of my ancestors. The violent establishment of this country created multi-generation legacies of disparities, economic inequality, and historical trauma all which impact health, representation, and resources. For the past 40 years eating disorders have been seen as mainly impacting white, privileged women and therefore awareness and treatment have been centered on this demographic. 

NEDA: Where do you want to see the eating disorders field go?

Lucas: I would like to see people of color and other groups who have not had the same opportunities create alternative healing models outside the medical industrial complex. It would be great to see indigenous peoples create more ancestral healing models to help heal indigenous peoples.

NEDA: What do you wish more people understood about eating and body image issues among people of color?

Lucas: I wish white folks would not compare our unique struggles to theirs. It would be great if white folks could recognize that they will never understand what it is like to live in our bodies and know that there are different ways to be in solidarity. 

NEDA: You started a support group for women of color. How did that come about?

Lucas: Sage and Spoon was created due to lack of closed spaces that exist for people of color. One of the first steps towards healing is connecting with others and that is very hard to do in support spaces where there is no one else like you. Sage and Spoon is a twice a month peer online support group that is free and open to all people of color and indigenous peoples.

NEDA: What advice do you have for people of color who want to create their own communities or safe spaces?

Lucas: To do it. The need is urgent. To not worry if they don’t know everything and to not be afraid to ask for help.

NEDA: What should allies to marginalized groups be aware of when attempting to improve healing spaces?

Lucas: Support the folks who are already doing the work. Also, to listen to their clients and find out what their needs are. 

NEDA: What words of encouragement or hope do you have for marginalized groups struggling with body image issues?

Lucas: Just know that you are not alone and that healing is possible. We as people of color have to learn to be our best advocates because no one else will do that for us.

Read more on NationalEatingDisorders.org.

In physics, resilience is an object’s ability to bounce back into its original form after sustaining a shock. In communities, it means something much more.

Wendy Ellis, project director of the Building Community Resilience (BCR) collaborative at the Milken Institute of Public Health at George Washington University, associates community resilience with an ability to “bounce forward”—moving forward, in the wake of disasters like Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina, towards more equitable living conditions.

This week on the Hogg Foundation’s Into the Fold, Ellis and Lourdes Rodriguez, director of the Center for Place-Based Initiatives at Dell Medical School, talk with host Ike Evans about what community resilience really means—and how individuals and institutions can come together to achieve it.

Bouncing Forward: Avoiding a Return to Inequity

Two kinds of disaster, or shock, can be used to talk about a community’s resilience: “acute” (e.g. Hurricane Katrina), and “chronic”. According to Rodriguez, the latter category consists of “disasters of the everyday”—the social, economic and structural sources of adversity that persist over time.

“I think about acute disasters as a magnifying glass that helps us understand the tender points…that are putting communities in vulnerable positions,” Rodriguez says.

Acute disasters reveal not only the true severity and extent of chronic disasters, but the deep-seated attitudes and cultural beliefs that sustain them as well. When survival is treated as something reserved for the deserving alone, the prejudices that stratify community spaces—everything from housing to local retail and clinical services—become startlingly clear. Even empathy, Ellis says, is rationed.

“If we think about addressing resilience as something that people have to deserve,” Rodriguez says, “then we are undermining this idea that communities can bounce forward.”

If resilience is to be achieved, community leaders can’t afford to ignore the vast gaps and inequalities that leave individuals unprotected. “At the end of the day, when we’re talking about resilience, we’re looking through the lens of equity,” Ellis says. “So resilience does equal equity, and there’s no resilience with disparity.”

Building Community Resilience is “Everybody’s Job”

Once the lens of equity is in place, organizations that wish to lead resilience-building efforts strive for approaches that, as Rodriguez puts it, are “more relational than programmatic.” That perspective, which liberates projects from the bureaucratic constraints of a step-by-step approach, inspired the Center for Place-Based Initiatives to put out a “Call for Ideas.”

The call implores “all Central Texans” to submit ideas for improving the health of their communities. “We’re trying to make room at the center for folks that are not necessarily part of generating knowledge and problem-solving to come alongside us as partners,” Rodriguez explains. When the members and institutions of a community collaborate, the underutilization of resources due to missed connections or poor circulation becomes less likely.

This proved to be the case for the Faubion School in Portland, Oregon, where 90 percent of students live at least 200 percent below the federal poverty level and 20 percent are homeless. By establishing a partnership between the school, Concordia University and healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, the BCR Collaborative was able to coordinate services and supports across all three institutions—bringing art classes, education students and trauma-informed trainings for staff.

In seven years, Faubion School has seen reduced absenteeism rates, behavioral problems and suspensions—with parallel increases in teacher retention levels. The intervention’s impact is a virtuous cycle—operating at the community level to touch the lives of individuals, who in turn become more active in their communities.

“Building community resilience isn’t only for folks that are in public service, or that are in academia, or that are in the public world,” Rodriguez says. “It is everybody’s job and everybody’s responsibility.”

Read more and listen to the podcast episode on Hogg.UTexas.edu.

May 19 is the annual observance of National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (#APIMay19). It’s a time for all of us to reflect on the impact that HIV has had on Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. It’s a time to remember those we’ve lost to HIV, to support the survivors who continue to fight for their lives, and to celebrate and lift up the heroes among us who have dedicated their lives to ending this epidemic. It also reminds us that no community has made it through the last three decades without losing family members and community members who were loved.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders account for a relatively small percentage of the American population. Accordingly, they make up small percentage of new HIV diagnoses and a small percentage of people living with HIV in the United States. The surveillance data tell only part of the story. Preventing HIV among Asians and Pacific Islanders and caring for those living with HIV are important aspects of our work to end HIV. Each infection that we prevent matters and so does the life of every person living with HIV.

A total of 1,032 Asian and Pacific Islanders were diagnosed with HIV in 2016 in the U.S. and its six dependent areas. The majority of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders diagnosed with HIV in 2016 were gay and bisexual men. The numbers of cases are small, but show a troubling increase between 2011 and 2015. Cases increased by 35% among Asian gay and bisexual men and by 50% among Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander gay and bisexual men. We do not know to what extent these represent true increases or if they are a byproduct of the methods used to estimate these cases and will no longer be evident next year when more data are included. Regardless of what next year’s report shows, we need to make sure that Asian and Pacific Islander gay and bisexual men are being reached and served with culturally appropriate information for those at risk for HIV and living with HIV.

When we look at data for people living with HIV who received medical care in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program in 2016 we see results for Asian clients that are substantially better than average. Nationally, 84.9% of clients receiving HIV medical care were virally suppressed. Viral suppression was higher among Asian clients, with 92.3% having a viral load that was 200 copies/mL or less. Viral suppression among Pacific Islanders was almost exactly the same as the average (84.8% for Pacific Islanders vs 84.9% overall). These are encouraging data, especially for Asian clients, and show the benefits of high quality HIV medical care.

The theme for this year’s National Asian Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, “Love & Solidarity: Together PrEP, Testing, and Treatment Can End HIV,” underscores that we now have highly effective tools that can bring an end to HIV if we work together to deploy them successfully.

The most important thing is for everyone to know their HIV status. Everyone should be tested for HIV at least once. If you are at risk for HIV infection, even if you are using condoms or other risk reduction strategies, you should be tested for HIV at least once a year. You need to know your status to make the right decisions about your health. If you are negative, think about your risk, the effectiveness of the prevention strategies you are using, and how well they work for you. Maybe pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is right for you. Maybe another strategy would work better for you. If you haven’t used it, check out the CDC’s Risk Reduction Tool and see what you might be able to do to reduce your risk even further.

If you are living with HIV, know that you can take control of the virus. It should not have control of your life or your future. Today’s HIV medication can stop the virus from replicating and damaging your immune system. You should be able to be as healthy with HIV as you were without it by keeping your appointments with your health care provider and taking your HIV medication every time. If you achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load, you will stop HIV from damaging your immune system and have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner. HIV treatments will not, however, protect you or your partner from other sexually transmitted infections.

Today, HIV treatment is safer and more effective than ever before. Don’t let what you might have heard about earlier treatments stop you from being tested or starting HIV treatment. Today’s HIV medications have profoundly changed what it means to be living with HIV and how to prevent it.

Know that you are loved and that there are people in your life and in the community who are there to support you. As an individual, you can take charge of your HIV risk and your health. You also have the power to help others. What will you do on National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day to raise awareness, take charge of your health, express your love, stand in solidarity with people living with or at risk for HIV, and move us closer toward the vision of ending HIV among Asian and Pacific Islanders and others?

Read more on HIV.gov

Resources

• Learn more about National Asian Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day from the Banyan Tree Project
• Learn about how HIV stigma affects the Asian Pacific Islander community
• View the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC)’s page on the National Asian Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day to learn more about the CDC’s efforts to increase prevention efforts and find out how you can contribute
• Learn more about HIV among Asian-Americans from the CDC
• Read the Human Rights Center blog post recognizing API HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

The 2017 State of Health Equity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Forum is now available to view and to earn free continuing education credits.

The theme of the 2017 forum was Healthy Start, Healthy Life: The Building Blocks to Health Equity. This program is designed to inform participants of risk and protective factors in early childhood and provide strategies to reduce disparities and achieve health equity through scientific and programmatic activity examples.

Top experts in the field of child development deliver presentations focused on – biological and social factors that affect child development, adverse childhood experiences, and state and national efforts to promote healthy child development from preconception through childhood and adolescence.

Watch the forum and earn continuing education credits from the CDC.