Month: June 2020

Keeping Michigan Residents in their Homes: Eviction Diversion and Rental Assistance Programs

From CEDAM: For More Info, Go Here…

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for many Michigan renters to stay current on their rent payments. The Michigan Legislature passed SB 690, appropriating $880 million in federal dollars from the CARES Act. This included $60 million for a rental assistance program.

Join our panel of experts to get an overview of the rental assistance program as well as understand how Eviction Diversion Programs (EDPs) fit into the pandemic-related housing program adopted by the legislature. 

  • WhenJuly 07, 2020
  •  9:00 AM – 10:00 AM
  • LocationVirtual – Zoom Meeting
  • Spaces left31
  • Registered56 registrants

Registration

  • CEDAM Member
  • Fellows & AmeriCorps 
  • Public – $15.00

Sleep Predicts Migraine Recurrence

by Judy George: For More Info, Go Here…

Sleep quality at a single time point was tied to headaches occurring over the next 6 weeks among people with episodic migraine, a prospective study presented at the American Headache Society annual meeting showed.

Baseline poor sleep quality in episodic migraine patients was associated with a 22% higher rate of headache recurrence on each day over the following 6 weeks, reported Angeliki Vgontzas, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and co-authors.

“This is the first study to show that a baseline report of poor sleep quality may be able to identify patients with higher future headache burden,” Vgontzas told MedPage Today.

“Taken together with other studies that report increased sleep complaints in those with chronic migraine, we believe that baseline assessment of poor sleep quality in those with episodic migraine may help identify those at risk of developing chronic migraine,” she added.

Disordered sleep, poor sleep quality, and insufficient or excessive sleep duration are known triggers of migraine and tension-type headaches. The large, population-based CaMEO survey of nearly 13,000 migraine patients showed that people with chronic migraine were more likely to report poor sleep quality — including sleep disturbance, snoring, shortness of breath, and somnolence — and were less likely to report sleep adequacy than episodic migraine patients.

Why Reddit has become a favorite social media platform for many blind and visually impaired people

By Rachel E. Greenspan: For More Info, Go Here…

Samuel Proulx, a 32-year-old blind man living in Ottawa, Ontario, isn’t that interested in using traditional social media. Proulx doesn’t find Instagram and Facebook pictures of relatives’ and friends’ babies that exciting — but even if he felt differently, those images are usually inaccessible to him. 

“I love my extended family, but that content is of significantly less value to me,” Proulx told Insider. Instead of spending time on Facebook or Instagram, Proulx prefers Reddit, a text-based, rather than image-centric, platform that offers him a community of strangers to interact with, and a community of users from all over the world who live with blindness or visual impairments. 

On Reddit, Proulx has been an active user for a decade, where he has participated in different subreddits. Now, he spends most of his Reddit time moderating r/Blind, the main community for the blind and visually impaired on the platform. Because of Reddit’s design, which encourages users to talk to each other in various interest groups, it’s become Proulx’s favorite platform. 

“I think there’s something culturally different about the space on Reddit,” he said, comparing it to other social platforms. 

Beyond r/Blind, the r/TranscribersOfReddit subreddit is also popular among blind users. On the transcribers subreddit, people write image descriptions for inaccessible pictures posted on the platform. 

Data provided by Reddit indicates that the r/Blind subreddit has seen massive growth in the last few years. Activity on r/Blind more than doubled between 2018 and 2019, and activity on r/TranscribersofReddit few more than 68 percent, according to the company. 

How Facebook scammers target people at risk of suicide

By By Marco Silva: For More Info, Go Here…

It’s late. I open WhatsApp and see a message from the dealer, claiming he can sell me deadly pills.

“Minimum order is 100g and it will cost you £150,” he says. “We package discreetly and ship from Douala, Cameroon.”

He wants to know where I am and how much I plan to order. I ask him whether the claims made on his page are to be believed: are his pills really lethal?

“It’s true, but I hope you really know what you want,” he says, “I just sell.”

He tells me in great detail how I should use his pills and what they will supposedly do to me. He doesn’t ask if I’ve sought help, try to dissuade me or make me think about the consequences my actions might have on my family and friends.

For him, this is just another transaction.

What he doesn’t know is that I have no intention of taking my own life – or even of buying the deadly chemical he claims to be selling.

I already know he is a scammer. For weeks, I have been following his every move, mapping his online presence and investigating his shadowy business dealings.

Disabled Peoples’ Lives Have Value

by stephanie: For More Info, Go Here…

Michael Hickson was a quadriplegic with a brain injury who was refused treatment for COVID 19 that he acquired in a local nursing home.  Mr Hickson died on 6-11-20.  ADAPT of Texas has long been concerned about the devaluation and resulting lack of care for people with disabilities, especially in this pandemic.  As cases rise in Austin and hospitals fill, the threat grows greater.  More just triage plans are available and being used elsewhere, but will Austin in general, and St David’s South Austin Medical Center in particular care enough to do anything about this?   

Our hearts go out to Mr Hickon’s family, who were apparently left out of the decision.  

ADAPT has long battled against Texas’ draconian laws regarding end of life decisions and their disregard for people with disabilities and their families.  People with disabilities and their families know best.

#disabilitylivesmatter

#blackdisabledlivesmatter

#lifeworthyoflife

A New Addiction Crisis: Treatment Centers Face Financial Collapse

By YUKI NOGUCHI: For More Info, Go Here…

Fewer patients in recent months have been showing up for drug and alcohol treatment at REACH Health Services in Baltimore. But Dr. Yngvild Olsen, the medical director there, suspects it’s not for good reasons: Some have likely relapsed or delayed drug and alcohol addiction treatment, while others likely fear infection and have stayed home.

Prior to the pandemic, REACH, a program for outpatient treatment of substance use disorder, saw about 15 new patients a week; since quarantine began, that’s been down to about 5. Moreover, social-distancing requirements have meant the clinic has been seeing fewer people at a time.

For Olsen, this isn’t just a medical worry; it’s a business problem. Less money is coming in, while investments in technology for teletherapy and safety protective gear have added new costs.

In the past, Olsen says, the program hasn’t had to budget for face shields or gowns or face masks, “because those are things that typically we … have not really had to ever use.”

What Parents Can Learn From Child Care Centers That Stayed Open During Lockdowns

By ANYA KAMENETZ: For More Info, Go Here…

When Arizona schools shut down in mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Tatiana Laimit, a nurse in Phoenix, knew she needed a backup plan. Laimit is a single mother of a 6-year-old girl and had recently relocated to the area. She didn’t have any friends or family nearby to ask for help.

It was past 8 on a Friday night when she shot off an email to her local YMCA to ask if they were providing emergency care for the children of front-line workers. “And immediately [someone] responded and let me know, ‘Yes.’ “

Throughout the pandemic, many child care centers have stayed open for the children of front-line workers — everyone from doctors to grocery store clerks. YMCA of the USA and New York City’s Department of Education have been caring for, collectively, tens of thousands of children since March, and both tell NPR they have no reports of coronavirus clusters or outbreaks. As school districts sweat over reopening plans, and with just over half of parents telling pollsters they’re comfortable with in-person school this fall, public health and policy experts say education leaders should be discussing and drawing on these real-world child care experiences.

The Y says that during the lockdowns it cared for up to 40,000 children between the ages of 1 and 14 at 1,100 separate sites, often in partnership with local and state governments. And in New York City, the pandemic’s national epicenter in March and April, the city’s Department of Education reports that it cared for more than 10,000 children at 170 sites.

Working in early days, and on very short notice, these two organizations followed safety guidance that closely resembles what’s now been officially put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Y says a few staff members and parents at sites around the country did test positive, but there are no records of having more than one case at a site. This, among a population of essential workers.

COVID-19 has created more cyclists: How cities can keep them on their bikes

By Wuyou Sui and Harry Prapavessis: For More Info, Go Here…

As physical distancing measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 begin to relax in some countries and people return to work, the fears surrounding transportation and commuting continue to weigh on the minds of many.

Once popular options like public transit and ridesharing, such as Uber, now carry the risk of potentially exposing riders to COVID-19. The Toronto Transit Commission recently reported that even if it operated at only 30 per cent of capacity, roughly 510,000 riders, passengers would not be able to keep a safe distance from each other.

Personal vehicles do allow for adequate distancing, but many cities cannot support the shift of public transit riders to cars. There is also a substantial cost-barrier associated with car ownership: parking, insurance, gas.

As a result, more people in North America are taking to cycling — and bike shops across the United States and Canada are seeing record sales and facing supply shortages.

Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Causes Lasting Blood-Brain Barrier Dysfunction

by Deborah Joye: For More Info, Go Here…

ngd- This leaking of molecules into the brain introduces noise and unpredictable instability in the way the brain functions…

What’s the science?

Players of contact sports such as American football are at particularly high risk for traumatic brain injury, which occurs when a sudden impact damages the brain. Repeated traumatic brain injury can result in neurodegenerative diseases later in life such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The brain’s microvasculature (the many small vessels supplying blood to the brain) can be damaged as a result of a traumatic brain injury. Specifically, dysfunction of the blood-brain barrier, which regulates which molecules can enter the brain, is connected to complications after traumatic brain injury and is also a hallmark of other brain disorders including stroke and epilepsy. To visualize how well the blood-brain barrier is working, researchers can measure how fast a tracer accumulates in the brain. Most previous studies have focused on tracer accumulation that happens very quickly and have seen very few differences. This week in Brain, Veksler and colleagues investigate more subtle blood-brain barrier dysfunction and demonstrate that a specific increase in slow-paced blood-to-brain transport is a hallmark of microvascular pathology that persists long after the initial brain injury.

What did they find?

The authors found that compared to healthy controls, football players had a much higher percentage of brain volume with abnormally high blood-brain barrier permeability. Increased leakiness was consistent across scans both during and after the season (roughly 6 months later). Some players showed a gradual decrease in abnormal permeability over time, while the other players actually showed an increase in permeability. An increase in blood-brain barrier dysfunction was associated with age, but not with number of concussions, years playing football, or scores on a concussion assessment test. The authors also found that certain regions of the brain were particularly susceptible to blood-brain barrier dysfunction, including the lefttemporal andoccipital lobes (involved in understanding auditory and visual signals, respectively), thethalamus (an important relay for sensory information), thebasal ganglia (important for movement), and white matter tracts (neuron tracts that connect different brain regions).

Getting to Know Military Caregivers and Their Needs

By Terri Tanielian: For More Info, Go Here…

A military caregiver is a family member, friend, or acquaintance who provides care and assistance for, or who manages the care of, a current or former military service member. They help with a wide range of both physical and mental illnesses and injuries.

Other civilian caregivers are better understood: Individuals caring for the elderly, for example, have been widely studied. But there are unique circumstances surrounding military caregivers, particularly those caring for younger individuals who served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

To better understand the needs of this population, RAND researchers conducted the most comprehensive study to date of America’s military caregivers and the support available to them.

“[These military] caregivers provide an estimated $3 billion in care annually, saving the United States substantial sums in avoided long-term care costs.”

Project Description

The study, commissioned by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation, was the first national, comprehensive study of military caregivers in the United States. It aimed to understand the magnitude of military caregiving; define existing policies, programs, and initiatives for caregivers; and make recommendations to better address their needs.

To answer these questions, the research team completed

  • the largest and most comprehensive survey of military caregiving ever conducted
  • an environmental scan to assess caregiver services and identify gaps.