Comprehensive literacy education, starting at birth, will provide Nevada with an educated citizenship and a globally competitive workforce.   The primary purpose of the Summit is to celebrate the many literacy successes that Nevada has experienced and to enhance Nevada’s Comprehensive State Literacy Plan. It is the desire of the designers of the Literacy Summit to ensure aligned and focused work by policy makers around the state.

 The Literacy Summit will focus on the challenges of birth to grade 3.  Participants will have the opportunity to listen to and share ideas with a variety of state and national speakers who will provide information on child development and literacy research, details of the Nevada Comprehensive State Literacy Plan, and the use of assessments to collect and analyze early literacy data.  Representatives from the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA) will share a state policy framework they are developing to help states plan and implement comprehensive literacy strategies to improve 3^rd grade reading proficiency.    

•        When:  May 10, 2013 from 8:30 am to 12:00 noon

•        Where: The Guinn Room in the Annex of the State Capitol Building, Carson City

•        Who:  Speakers will include Governor Sandoval, Interim Superintendent of Public Instruction Rorie Fitzpatrick, and State and National experts in Early Childhood Education: Ellen Frede, Julie Pennington, Colin Usher, and Albert Wat

•        Sponsored by: Governor Brian Sandoval, the National Governors Association, the Nevada Department of Education, and the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.

In addition to participation in the Summit, the Nevada Department of Education (NDE) will provide each participant with a copy of Paul Tough’s book How Children Succeed.              This book will serve two purposes:  1) to provide valuable information about early education and 2) to create context that will be built upon at an Early Childhood Conference sponsored by the Governor’s Office, the NDE, the Nevada Department of Health and Human Resources, Southern Nevada Regional Professional Program, and the NGA in the Fall of 2013.

Karen Hughes, Lieutenant, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Vice Section
Michon Martin, Chief Deputy Attorney General for Nevada
Elynne Greene, Victim Services Supervisor, Anti-Trafficking Movement, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
Stacey Cramer, Director of the Human Trafficking Program, Las Vegas Salvation Army

Tentative topics to include:
Overview of human trafficking
Human trafficking in Nevada
Nevada laws related to human trafficking
Identifying human trafficking victims
Assisting human trafficking victims and family members
Enforcement of human trafficking

Registration Fee is $40 (plus on-line processing fee) and includes continental breakfast, lunch and afternoon break.

Applying for Continuing Education Units

CDC and FDA are seeking your support to help get the word out about these new, historic FDA tobacco regulations. You can support this effort by:

• Posting a “Put Out the Myth” graphical button on your Web site. When clicked, this button will take visitors to a consumer-focused feature article on CDC’s Web site (www.cdc.gov/features/tobaccocontrols) entitled “New Tobacco Controls Have Public Health Impact.” This article provides information on the regulations and their public health impact. The article also contains helpful links to resources—such as FDA guidance documents—that provide detailed information on the new regulations. Visit the “Put Out the Myth” download page at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/stateandcommunity/fda_regs/buttons/index.htm to obtain html code for a variety of button sizes.
• Following CDCTobaccoFree on Twitter www.twitter.com/CDCTobaccoFree and retweeting key messages related to the new FDA tobacco regulations.
• Becoming a fan of CDC’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cdc and posting “Put Out the Myth” status updates on your Facebook profiles.
• Telling others about our posting on CDC’s Everyday Health Widget at http://www.cdc.gov/Widgets/#everydayhealth.
• Viewing OSH’s latest entry on CDC’s MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/CDC_eHealth.
• Following OSH on GovLoop at www.govloop.com/group/CDCTobaccoFree. A post on GovLoop announces the significance of June 22 and encourages readers to visit the online feature article. GovLoop is a social networking site for the government community. It currently serves about 30,000 members, including local, state, and federal government employees and contractors. Academics and students interested in government are also welcome to join.
• Subscribing to CDC’s Smoking and Tobacco Use Main Feed at www.cdc.gov/tobacco/rss/index.htm to receive updates of new and recently changed content from CDC’s Smoking & Tobacco Use Web site on your browser or desktop.
• Encouraging readers to send Health-e-Cards emphasizing the value of being tobacco freewww2c.cdc.gov/ecards/index.asp?category=201.

Please also continue to access CDC’s Smoking & Tobacco Use Web site www.cdc.gov/tobacco for helpful resources and the latest information.

Read and view more at http://www.newsweek.com/id/40211#?l=1833873955&t=71186711001

To read more about this NIOSH investigation, please see summary NIOSH Science Blog on this topic at:

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/blog/nsb061609_casino.html

To find out more and to start your  My Family Health Portrait, visit https://familyhistory.hhs.gov

My Family Health Portrait allows users to assemble their family health information without retaining their personal information. Consumers using HealthVault decide what information is stored and shared. Privacy and security are top priorities for HHS and its arrangements with third-party health solutions, such as Microsoft HealthVault. Stringent security measures are required to ensure that the user’s information is protected.

For more information about The Surgeon General’s Family Health History Initiative visit http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Washoe County District Heath Department recently published the results of an extensive assessment of childhood overweight and obesity in our community. This important study was conducted in collaboration with the Washoe County School District Student Health Services.

Utilizing the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) formula for calculating an individual’s Body Mass Index (BMI is essentially a measure that is a function of one’s weight and height, and provides a screening tool to identify potential weight problems), the study’s researchers calculated the BMI for each student in a randomly selected sample of elementary, middle‐school, and high‐school students in Washoe County.

The primary purpose of the study was to estimate the percent of youth in our community who are underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obese. Local health and school officials were also interested in establishing baseline data on youth obesity and overweight in our community in order to compare local trends with national and regional rates.

The majority of Washoe County children are considered to be at a healthy weight (60.1 percent). However, study results indicated that 19 percent are overweight and another 18.5 percent are obese, and Washoe County youths are overweight or obese in greater rates than the nation.

While the results of this study confirmed what many health officials suspected, documentation of the fact that nearly two of five children in our community are overweight or obese is important for several reasons. Foremost, obese children and teenagers are developing diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular, formerly only seen in adults.

Additionally, obese and overweight children are more likely to become overweight and obese adults and thus face a lifetime of poorer health – indeed, recent research suggests that the current generation of children could be the first generation to have shorter, less healthy lives than their parents.

In its recent report, “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing America,” the Trust for America’s Health contends that we have been slow to take action to deal with obesity because it has typically been seen as an issue of personal responsibility. In other words, there is the predominant view that individuals making decisions about what to eat and how active to be should bear the burden and blame for their unhealthy choices.

A public health perspective on obesity acknowledges that individual behavior and personal responsibility are important parts of the equation. However, there many factors beyond any individual’s control that have contributed to rising obesity rates in Nevada and the rest of the US. These include the high cost of healthy foods, the location of grocery stores, access to safe places to exercise, and access to and the availability of preventive health care services.

To take one local example, there are a little over 70,000 children in Washoe County between the ages of 5 and 18, yet only five skateboarding parks in the Reno‐Sparks (the area’s only indoor skate park closed earlier this year). These parks are inaccessible to the vast majority of kids in that they require a willing parent or sibling with a car to drop off and pick them up at the park.

Skateboarding represents a relatively inexpensive form of physical activity – all five outdoor parks are free and equipment costs and maintenance are reasonable – that can be had as long as the weather is good and the pavement is dry.

To be sure, skateboarding comes with its own set of health risks – I’ve made more than one trip to the ER and have come to know three orthopedic physicians since my oldest son began skateboarding ten years ago.

Nonetheless, my admittedly unscientific observation has been that there are few, if any, overweight skateboarders.

The creation and strategic placement of a few more skate parks in residential areas of Washoe County thus represents a fairly straightforward and inexpensive opportunity to increase physical activity among local youth.

Addressing the obesity epidemic in our community must be a shared responsibility that will require us to collectively move beyond bland admonishments to young couch potatoes to “eat better” and “get more exercise.”

As the Trust for America’s Health succinctly puts it “we need to find ways to make healthy choices easy choices.”

A copy of the Washoe County District Health Department’s report on childhood overweight and obesity can be found at www.washoecounty.us/health/cdpp/epinews.html. The Trust for America’s Health issue report on obesity can be found at http://healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2008/.

John Packham, PhD is Director of Health Policy Research at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. He currently serves as the President of the Nevada Public Health Association.

You may wish to communicate your own views to your elected representatives.

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