Top : 2007 : 2007_03_09

Madison Wis. named most walkable

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:00:07 GMT
By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press Writer
MADISON, Wis. - With the thermometer hovering at 22, and the wind ripping off a frozen Lake Mendota, Rink DaVee and his brother Jim decided to take a stroll. And why not? After all, according to a recent top 10 list, there's no better place in the country for walking than the capital city of a state known more for cheese and beer than exercising.
"It makes you feel better," DaVee said during a break in his walk Wednesday, standing on the icy, snow-covered trail that extends out over the lake. "It gets you through a cold month of March."

Prevention magazine named Madison — 1,300 miles north of sunny Miami — as the most walkable of the country's 100 most populated cities. The list was commissioned by the American Podiatric Medical Association based on certain criteria. It ran in editions of the magazine released this week.

Madison beat out the likes of Austin, Texas , San Francisco and Miami, which barely cracked the list at No. 98.

Factors contributing to the ranking were air quality, the percentage of people who walk to work, access to parks, number of athletic shoes sold, and weather.

Number of beaches versus frozen lakes apparently was not a factor. Crime rate, unfortunately for Miami, was.

Adopting a walker-friendly plan 10 years ago was a major plus for Madison, said Prevention magazine's deputy editor Karyn Repinski. That plan focused on maintaining and improving the city's walkability and requires that when roads are redeveloped, they should accommodate not just cars, but bikes and pedestrians, too.

But don't be fooled by all the signs of fitness around town. Madisonians also love their beer, bratwurst and Wisconsin cheese. The city of 250,000 plays host to a four-day extravaganza dubbed "The World's Largest Brat Fest," where nearly 200,000 brats are consumed over four days.

Madison was the only city in the walking top 10 in a state that's not in the South or the West, a point of pride for people like Kathy Andrusz, coordinator of the Fit City initiative. Started in 2003 by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, the program is a collaboration between Madison city officials and more than 30 other groups to combat obesity and get people moving.

"We're definitely touting it," Andrusz said of the walking rating. "We're definitely proud of it and will be able to use it as a sense of pride, if nothing else."

Madison is no stranger to No. 1 rankings. People still talk about Money Magazine naming it the best place to live in 1998, although that ranking dropped to 53rd last year. Outside Magazine named it the best road biking city in August, and other high rankings have come for its being vegetarian-friendly, gay-friendly, environmentally friendly, and, well, according to Midwest Living in 2003, the overall friendliest city in the Midwest.

Even with all that love going around, who wants to break out the walking shoes in the middle of winter? Especially this winter, with snow on the ground every day since Jan. 14 and an average high temperature in February of just 21.7 degrees and an average low of 7.2 degrees. It also snowed 22 inches last month.

"Winter weather is only a barrier if you let it be," Andrusz said. "It's a matter of attitude."

Repinski, the magazine editor who spoke from New York City, which ranked 39th, said only a cynic would let a little winter weather get in the way of walking.

"I walked a mile this morning and I was walking in an inch of snow," she said. "The conditions don't have to be perfect for walking, that's what's nice about it."

Downtown Madison lies on an isthmus with Lake Mendota to the north and Lake Monona to the south. Stretching to the west from the state Capitol is State Street, which is crammed full of bars, restaurants and boutiques, but no cars. It's perfect for, you guessed it, walking.

At the west end of State Street rests the University of Wisconsin, where students are known to complain about the steep climb up Bascom Hill to the administration building, which offers a stunning view of the city and the Capitol dome.

Even with 40,000 students mostly walking to and from class — and bars at night — Madison has a remarkable bike trail system, with more than 30 miles of trails and 110 miles of bike lanes even on the busiest of streets. Not to mention the 6,000 acres of parkland.
Zac Stencil, 23, a senior at the university, said he walks about two miles every day to and from classes.
"You can meet cool groups of people who are walking beside you," Stencil said. "Plus, when the lakes are frozen you can walk right across."
___
On the Net: Prevention magazine: http://www.prevention.com/cities
APMA: http://www.apma.org
Madison Visitors Bureau: http://www.visitmadison.com/visitorinfo/award s.php
Madison walking routes: http://www.ci.madison.wi.us/mayor/getFit/walk .html

Morning after access sought at Kroger

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:30:05 GMT
By DOUG GROSS, Associated Press Writer
ATLANTA - Activists are calling on Kroger Co. pharmacies to make the so-called "morning after" pill available at all of their stores after a Georgia woman said she was denied the contraceptive.
Carrie Baker of Rome, Ga., said a pharmacist at a Kroger store in her hometown would not sell her the controversial drug in December, several months after the federal http://www.prochoicegeorgia.org/
Georgia Christian Alliance, http://www.gachristianalliance.org/

Indians face health clinic crunch

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:04:13 GMT
By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Writer
FRESNO, Calif. - After tribal elder Vera Quiroga was turned away from the very clinic she had helped to found, she had little choice but to drive to a far-off reservation for her dental work.
The reason, she said, is that the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs doesn't recognize her as a Yaqui, even though her children and grandchildren have tribal documentation.

"They said if you don't have federal paperwork you can't get service anymore," said Quiroga, 82.

While federal law requires taxpayer-funded tribal clinics to serve all patients of Indian ancestry, some have recently stopped admitting those who can't document their federal tribal status, patients and clinic officials tell The Associated Press.

Federal officials deny that qualified patients are being turned away and say they're doing all they can to ensure a health program for urban Indians isn't shut down entirely. The Indian Health Service oversees 33 clinics nationwide that provide free or discounted medical services to city-dwelling Indians.

But Martin Young, chairman of the board of the Santa Barbara clinic where Quiroga was denied care, said it received a letter last fall from the IHS regional office in Sacramento instructing it to stop offering free health services to patients from unrecognized tribes or who don't have a bureau identification card.

It has since turned away about 200 patients, he said.

An Indian Health Service spokesman said the letter explained who was eligible for care, but did not instruct Santa Barbara to withhold services. However, clinic managers in Tucson, Ariz.; Wichita, Kan.; and Boston reported getting similar directives.

"IHS is suddenly saying that you can't serve this Indian even though he looks Indian, and his family says he's Indian and has all of this history of being Indian, but he doesn't have this piece of paper," said Susette Schwartz, director of the Hunter Health Clinic in Wichita. "We need some consistency."

Under the Indian Health Care Improvement Act of 1976, Congress funds health care programs for members of tribes recognized by states or the federal government, as well as their descendants. Many states recognize tribes the federal government does not.

In California, the right to government-supported medical care is extended a step further, to those whose ancestors lived here in 1852 and are "regarded as an Indian by the community."

Phyllis Wolfe, who oversees urban Indian programs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said clinics that are granted federal dollars must follow federal guidelines. Program officials did not answer requests to clarify any possible exceptions.

Wolfe could not explain why the clinics would have changed their policies. "I don't believe they would do that, but I can't say that that's not been done," she said.

At a Senate Indian Affairs Committee hearing Thursday, commitee chairman Sen. Byron Dorgan , D-N.D., said current laws allow providers to care for all urban Indian patients.

"We shouldn't be having people turned away from these health clinics because they don't have a piece of paper," said Dorgan, who said he had also heard reports of patients being turned away for care.

"There are legal discussions about the constitutionality," he said. "We need to find a way to address them."

The U.S. Supreme Court could see subsidizing care for patients who can't prove their federal status as a violation of equal protection laws, Deputy Assistant Attorney General C. Frederick Beckner III told the committee. Those concerns were not likely to block the reauthorization of the 1976 act, he said.

Nationwide, more than 60 percent of American Indians and Alaska natives live in urban areas, according to the U.S. Census. For the poorest of them, the clinics are a lifeline, a place to get treatment delivered by doctors well-versed in native culture.
The urban clinics are managed by local contractors with funding from Indian Health Service. President Bush's 2008 budget proposal would eliminate the program's $32.7 million annual allocation altogether.
Under the circumstances, federal officials say, the cash-strapped clinics are doing everything they can to care for all patients in need.
"We recognize that the urban Indian population is in need of care and we don't want to disenfranchise any native Americans who are living in urban areas," said Paul Redeagle, deputy director of the Indian Health Service office in Sacramento. "We're currently working with the urban programs in California to resolve their problems."
Redeagle said his office had looked into questions about the management of the Santa Barbara clinic and found no proof of wrongdoing.
That's no consolation to Quiroga, who helped start the clinic in the 1970s. She said her already limited finances are taxed by regular 40-mile trips to the tribal lands of the Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians.
In Boston, workers at the North American Indian Center said they were told not to treat the Mashpee Wampanoag of Cape Cod, whose ancestors shared Thanksgiving dinner with the Pilgrims. But they were allowed to keep offering free health services to the tribe's members after they read the text of the 1976 law to their federal funders.
"We actually got requests from IHS to deny service to the Mashpees," said Barbara Namias, who oversees community health programs at the Boston clinic. "We had to refer them back to the legislation."
Lisa Flores, an environmental planner and documented Pascua-Yaqui member who attended diabetes counseling classes at a now-defunct Fresno clinic, has given up on getting native-focused care in her area.
"From a tribal perspective we're all supposed to take care of each other," she said. "Now that they closed it, the question then becomes: Are you unworthy of health care?"
___
Associated Press Writer Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.

Experts Safeguards lacking on cadavers

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:33:21 GMT
By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer
LOS ANGELES - Despite recent ghoulish cases of illegal sales of human body parts, the nation still lacks a universal oversight system to prevent illicit marketing of cadavers donated to science, experts say.
The situation persists three years after a scandal rocked the University of California, Los Angeles and shed light on the booming body-parts business. Police this week arrested a former school official and a middleman for investigation of illegally trafficking parts of bodies that were willed for research.

"There was some hand-wringing after the UCLA case. But at the end of the day, I don't think we've seen any serious attempt by Congress or state legislatures to wrestle with this issue," said Arthur Caplan, a bioethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The demand for human body parts has skyrocketed in recent years. Cadavers donated to science are typically used by first-year medical students to hone their surgical skills or by experienced surgeons to practice new techniques to earn continuing education credits. Tissues are also used in various medical procedures.

Each year, thousands of cadavers are supplied to medical schools. Donors often sign a contract giving the school leeway to use the body as it sees fit. Some medical schools share cadavers when there is a surplus. In some states like Maryland, there is a central system that distributes donated bodies among medical schools for research.

It is illegal in the United States to sell body parts for profit, but there is no prohibition on suppliers charging acquisition and handling fees for body parts. Experts estimate a human body can sell for six figures if all parts are used.

Anatomy professor Todd R. Olson of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York said there should be a national clearinghouse run by an independent group to track and distribute donated bodies supplied for research similar to the way organs are allocated for transplantation nationwide.

Olson admits a national clearinghouse overseeing cadavers would not prevent illegal sales of tissues and body parts, but he feels it would be better than the existing hodgepodge of rules.

"This system is so broken that until it's fixed, illegal activity will just continue," Olson said.

Authorities said the UCLA scheme reaped more than $1 million in profits between 1999 and 2004. Prosecutors alleged Henry Reid, the former head of UCLA's willed body program, sold remains to middleman Ernest Nelson, who in turned sold hundreds of body parts to more than 20 private medical private medical, pharmaceutical and hospital research companies. Lawyers for both men have denied wrongdoing.

The scandal prompted the suspension of UCLA's program for a year and forced the University of California system to examine its donation rules. Founded in 1950, the willed body program received about 175 donated bodies a year before it was suspended. It now receives eight to 15 bodies a month since restarting in 2005.

Prior to the UCLA case, the head of the willed body program at UC Irvine was fired after allegations surfaced that he sold spines taken from cadavers to an out-of-state research facility.

Former California Gov. George Deukmejian, who led a task force that looked into the UC system's donated body programs several years ago and made reform recommendations to the Board of Regents, said the new system is stronger.

"Before ... each one of these programs was more or less being operated independently at each campus," Deukmejian said. "We've built far more accountability into the process and much more control."

Among the changes is the creation of a new position that oversees all five willed body programs in the university system. Workers also have to pass criminal and financial background checks and must have security card access in some buildings, said UC spokeswoman Jennifer Ward.

In addition, a pilot program at UCLA in which cadavers are tracked by radio frequency devices will extend to other medical schools in the system, Ward said.

However, some experts say a high-tech fix is not a panacea. The most important thing is to hire ethical people who will not be tempted to sell body parts for profit and to have safeguards in place, said Ronn Wade, who heads the Maryland State Anatomy Board.

"The issue is public trust. If everything is behind closed door with no oversight and control, then it's scary," he said.
___
On the Net:
UCLA: http://www.ucla.edu
56 user(s) online 1 here 262 most online 149 Visitor(s) Today 4,018,071 Visits 11/01/2002

View HTML