News

Luke Baker has worked in the most remote reaches of Australia and Papua New Guinea, but leaving his family is always a painful rupture. But Facebook is helping in surprising ways.

Now based in Bundaberg, Queensland, he was sent to mining camps as a “fly-in, fly-out” worker (or FIFO), where he’d often spend around three weeks on-site and one week off in an endless, “torturous” cycle. Deciding that writing down his emotions could help, he launched a Facebook page called Fifo Man where he posted thoughts about work, family and wellbeing.

Baker’s page, which now has almost 17,000 followers, is part of network of Facebook pages that are stirring conversations about mental health among men who are not always upfront with their feelings.

FIFO workplaces, where employees often live in isolated, temporary compounds, have been recognised as increasing risk of mental illness.

“When I first started it [the Facebook page] it was just me putting my thoughts and feelings out there,” Baker said. “More and more, messages I got were about guys on-site who had taken their own lives and people that had suffered some depression, and I started to see how bad it really was. “I wanted to break down the stigma around guys’ mental health and encourage them to seek help.”

Dameyon Bonson, a Mangarayi and Torres Strait Islander man based in the Kimberley, has worked extensively on men’s mental health issues. He’s also built an app called YFronts that aims to help men working FIFO jobs with health education. Bonson pushed back on the idea men won’t talk about mental health. “If the environment is suited and is deemed to be safe, then men contribute quite openly and honestly,” he said. “Men are actually really active in this [Facebook] space, but they’re doing it on their terms,” he said, pointing to Fifo Man, but also pages like The OZ Project and A Chance for Change. 

Read more on Mashable.com.

New University of Liverpool research – published in The Lancet Public Health — shows that children who move into poverty are more likely to suffer from social, emotional and behavioral problems than children who remain out of poverty.

Researchers from the University’s Department of Public Health and Policy explored the impact that moving into poverty had on the mental health of children and their mothers, using a nationally representative sample of children born in 2000 and followed up until 2012 (UK Millennium Cohort Study).

The researchers identified 6063 families who were not in poverty and had no mental health problems when their child was 3 years old. They tracked these families and compared the mental health of those that moved into poverty to those that remained out of poverty by the time their child was 11 years old.

Fourteen percent (844) of these 6063 families moved into poverty over this period. The children that moved into poverty were 40% more likely to develop social, emotional or behavioural problems, compared to those that remained out of poverty. The mothers who moved into poverty were also 44% more likely to develop mental health problems and this partially explained the negative effect that poverty had on children’s mental health.

Read more on News-Medical.net.

African-American women are more likely to be infected with HIV than other women, and many don’t know it. So public health officials and advocates are trying to get the word out about PrEP, pre-exposure prophylaxis. It’s a daily medication that helps prevent HIV infection.

According to the CDC, African-American women make up 62 percent of women diagnosed with HIV in the U.S. White women account for 18 percent, with Latinas at 14 percent. McCray says the CDC is planning in the upcoming months to produce campaigns targeted at black women that educate them on their risk and how PrEP can be used as a preventive measure.

Women in the nation’s capital face a higher risk because about 2 percent of residents are already infected with HIV, making exposure more likely. In addition, Blout says, social issues like incarceration and poverty tend to increase the risk of HIV within the black community. In addition, Blout also says there is a lack of empowerment among black women to ask their partners to either get tested or wear a condom. McCray agrees. “Many women do not know the status of their partners and they are weary of asking them to get tested,” he says.

“A lot of the issue has to do with misinformation or simply not being informed at all,” says Nancy Mahon, executive director of the MAC AIDS Fund, which is providing financial support for the effort. “When it comes to PrEP, many people still don’t even know it exists, especially heterosexuals. Many black women we’ve spoken to felt puzzled about why we were addressing how this drug is available to them. A component of the issue is that the drug is hard to obtain without a doctor.”

One of the challenges in getting women educated about PrEP is that primary care providers such as OB-GYNs often aren’t aware of it. That problem is compounded with low-income patients who don’t always get regular doctor visits and preventive care.

Read more on BlackAIDS.org.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Annual Conference provides a forum for people in the business of social change to learn about ongoing and emerging issues in the Hispanic community, connect with key community leaders, and generate partnerships with Hispanic community-based organizations.

The 2017 NCLR Annual Conference call for workshop presentations is now open. Proposals are being accepted for workshop tracks in education, health, housing and community development, nonprofit management, STEM, and workforce development. The event will be held July 8—11, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona. The deadline to submit workshop proposals is March 17, 2017.

Read more about the call for workshops and submit your proposal online.

Juvenile justice reform efforts should more directly engage youth who have had first-hand experience of the juvenile justice system and whose experience could help shape more effective prevention and diversion programs, a report from the Pittsburgh Foundation argues.

Based on discussion groups conducted with more than fifty youth about their experiences with school suspensions and the juvenile justice system in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, the report, A Qualitative Study of Youth and the Juvenile Justice System: A 100 Percent Pittsburgh Pilot Project (pdf), highlights the importance of paying attention to the actual experiences of youth and the factors that led to their involvement with the system. The latter include racial and gender disparities in how youth are treated by the juvenile justice system; the prevalence of physical and sexual abuse in their homes, communities, and schools; disciplinary practices that criminalize common youth behaviors and label them as “delinquents”; lack of access to supportive adults and mental health services; structural racism that promotes negative self-images among youth of color; and policies and practices that often punish youth for circumstances beyond their control.

In addition to ensuring that youth have a seat at the table along with human services staff, law-enforcement authorities, and school officials, the study calls for greater focus on addressing disproportionate involvement with the juvenile justice system among youth of color, especially girls; supporting efforts aimed at reforming school culture, curricula, and disciplinary policies, including restorative justice programs; supporting prevention and diversion initiatives; and increasing access to caring adults and mental health services. The report also recommends engaging youth as advocates and agents of change among their peers; supporting reform of court-related fees and restitution systems; and funding interdisciplinary training opportunities.

Read more on PhilanthropyNewsDigest.org. Read the full report (pdf).

Healthy People 2020 is the nation’s health promotion and disease prevention initiative, with overarching goals and specific objectives for improving the health of all Americans. Healthy People 2020 objectives cover 42 topic areas and serve as a national benchmark for improving the Nation’s health.

The Healthy People 2020 Midcourse Review provides a snapshot of objective progress toward meeting targets halfway through the 10-year initiative, providing a roadmap for the second half of the decade. This 820-page report provides detailed progress and health disparities data, as available, for over 1,200 objectives. 

The Healthy People 2020 Midcourse Review Infographics are interactive infographics that show progress toward Healthy People objectives, where we’ve met our targets and where we still have work to do to meet our targets by the end of the decade.

Read more and access the full report on CDC.gov. Visit the Healthy People 2020 website.