News

To address persistent rural poverty in America, the philanthropic, nonprofit, business, and government sectors must form new partnerships and make investments aimed at catalyzing broad-based economic growth, a report from NeighborWorks America argues.

Released at NeighborWorks America’s first national conference on rural poverty and economic development, the report, Turning the Tide on Persistent Rural Poverty (pdf), found high rates of persistent poverty — defined as at least 20 percent of the population living in poverty for at least thirty years — in rural areas, primarily Appalachia, Indian country, the Mississippi Delta, and colonias in the Rio Grande Valley. According to the study, factors contributing to the prevalence of persistent poverty in rural areas include population loss due to out-migration, lack of accessible transportation and other vital infrastructure, and reliance on resource extraction. In addition, many rural communities lack services and community development resources; receive limited federal and philanthropic funding, in part due to mandated matching funds that smaller, less well-resourced organizations have difficulty raising; structural bias; a sense of hopelessness; and, in the case of Native-American communities, legal restrictions that hamper business transactions such as collateralizing business loans or home mortgages using trust land.

To address persistent poverty in rural areas, the report calls on business, government, and philanthropy to increase the supply of consumer banking services and partnerships with community development financial institutions in rural markets; provide broadband connections, training, and equipment more deeply into rural communities; and boost commercial lending to grow small businesses and encourage local entrepreneurship. 

Read more on PhilanthropyNewsDigest.org.

National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day (Awareness Day) seeks to raise awareness about the importance of children’s mental health and to show that positive mental health is essential to a child’s healthy development from birth.

Awareness Day 2017’s national focus is on the importance of integrating behavioral health and primary care for children, youth, and young adults with mental and/or substance use disorders. The 2017 national theme is “Partnering for Help and Hope.” Communities, national collaborating organizations, and federal programs across the country are busy planning local Awareness Day 2017 activities and events.

Olympic champions Michael Phelps, the world’s most decorated Olympian, and Allison Schmitt, an eight–time Olympic medalist, will serve as Honorary Chairpersons of SAMHSA’s National Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day 2017 national event! The national event will take place on Thursday, May 4, at 7 p.m. EDT in Washington, DC. SAMHSA will also webcast the event live on www.samhsa.gov/children.

Phelps and Schmitt will receive SAMHSA’s Special Recognition Award for speaking openly about their behavioral health challenges and encouraging youth to lead healthy and active lives.

“Children and young adults often look to athletes as role models for leading healthy lives. By speaking about treatment and recovery, Michael and Allison are helping youth view behavioral health as an important part of their overall health,” said Kana Enomoto, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary.

“Allison and I are excited to be a part of this national effort. As we travel all over the country, we’re often asked about our training, diets, and routines for staying fit,” said Michael Phelps. “Being involved in Awareness Day and with SAMHSA gives us the chance to emphasize that paying attention to mental health is another important component of growing up healthy.”

The event will feature interactive panel discussions about understanding the connection between physical and behavioral health; improving communication between primary care providers, behavioral health providers, and youth and families; and supporting the mental health needs of youth who experience chronic illness.

Read more about Awareness Day on SAMHSA.gov.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requests comments on the proposals that it has received from the Federal Interagency Working Group for Research on Race and Ethnicity (Working Group) for revisions to OMB’s Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. The Working Group’s report and proposals in their entirety, are the result of a two-year, focused review of the implementation of the current standards. The Working Group’s report reflects an examination of current practice, public comment received in response to the Federal Register Notice posted by OMB on September 30, 2016, and empirical analyses of publicly available data. The report also notes statutory needs and feasibility considerations, including cost and public burden. Initial proposals and specific questions to the public appear under the section Issues for Comment.

None of the proposals has yet been adopted and no interim decisions have been made concerning them. The Working Group’s report and its proposals are being published to solicit further input from the public. OMB plans to announce its decision in mid-2017 so that revisions, if any, can be reflected in preparations for the 2020 Census. OMB can modify or reject any of the proposals, and OMB has the option of making no changes. The report and its proposals are published in this Notice because OMB believes that they are worthy of public discussion, and OMB’s decision will benefit from obtaining the public’s views on the recommendations.

Submit comments by April 30, 2017. Read more about the request for comments.

A survey of two groups of Pacific Islanders draws comparisons between the health of two populations of Pacific Islanders residing in California, revealing they lag behind the state in several key areas of health. Led by Sela Panapasa, a scientist at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, a group of researchers administered surveys to 240 Samoan and Tongan households in California. They included a companion survey for adolescents, ages 13 to 17, living in the home.

The survey found that both Samoans and Tongans had higher rates of hypertension than Californians at large, smoked at about four times the rate of Californians, were less likely to have health insurance, and used available health care services at lower rates, relying heavily on emergency room care.

The researchers found that about 61 percent of Samoans and nearly 53 percent of Tongans reported having health insurance compared to 79 percent of Californians. Both groups also tended to delay medical care—likely because the groups were underinsured. At 36 percent for Samoans and 26.5 percent for Tongans, both groups were highly likely to visit the emergency room for health care.

The report also provided a more nuanced view of high blood pressure among Pacific Islanders. Previously, research showed low rates of hypertension among Pacific Islanders—much lower than the United States as a whole, and on par with rates in California. But these lower rates among Pacific Islanders may be because of underdiagnosis rather than good health, according to Panapasa.

The gap between reported hypertension and the new findings from the survey may be caused by the practice of aggregating the health information collected across more than 20 Pacific Islanders ethnicities into a single measure, according to Panapasa. In fact, until 1997, the federal Office of Management and Budget grouped data collection such as health statistics for Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders under the same category.

“These are very distinct groups. Each has its own culture, language and unique history,” Panapasa said. “Going in with this one-size-fits-all attitude is not going to work.” Panapasa hopes the report will allow health care providers to develop more targeted approaches to help improve health behaviors among these underserved populations.

Read more on UMich.edu.

This year during the on-site NNEDLearn 2017 training in New Mexico, participants collaborated and transformed during the NNED-a-thon! The NNED-a-thon was a new opportunity for NNEDLearn 2017 participants to engage with each other in teams to solve a challenge. NNEDLearn 2017 participants were requested to browse all components of the NNED website prior to their arrival in New Mexico in preparation for the NNED-a-thon. 

The following video shows highlights from NNED-a-thon 2017. Participants collaborated to develop strategies focused on enriching the NNED and cultivated approaches focused on implementation and sustainability of best practices learned from the on-site NNEDLearn 2017 meeting!

Stay tuned to see NNED-a-thon winners showcased on the NNED homepage! Learn more about NNEDLearn 2017and NNED-a-thon.

As the outreach counselor for Battle High School in Columbia, Missouri, Dana Harris’s job is connecting students with services when they have mental and emotional troubles such as ADHD, anxiety or depression.

This used to mean hours of calling community organizations and service providers, looking for available appointments, calling in favors, trying to to get students the help they needed. “You could spend a whole day trying to get those services met,” Harris says. Today, she just has to make one call: to a case manager. That’s thanks to an innovative program, MU Bridge Program, that essentially brings comprehensive psychiatric care into the school. It got its start at Battle High in 2014 and now is available to all school-age children in Boone county.

The MU Bridge Program provides case managers who come to the school, meet with the child and their family, and a psychiatrist to perform evaluations. The case manager will also help connect the child to long-term services.

There’s a growing interest in programs that bring mental health care into schools, as schools around the country struggle to tackle the unmet mental health needs of students, says Darcy Gruttadaro, the director of advocacy at the National Association for Mental Illness. She says when kids can “walk down the hall and see a mental health professional” that removes many of the barriers to care.

Read more on STLPublicRadio.org.